CSX Transportation Inc.
will raise and remove bridges and lower railroad tracks throughout Northeast
Ohio starting next year as part of its $840 million National Gateway plan,
according to the Akron Beacon Journal. The local work includes
removing the Park Street bridge in Akron, replacing the Knapp Road bridge in
Ravenna and raising the Portage County Hike & Bike Trail in Kent.
Preliminary designs of
Norfolk Southern’s $112-million Alabama cargo-loading rail hub call for 15-foot
berms next to McAdory Elementary School and a 16-foot sound wall along the
access road behind the Sadler Ridge subdivision, the Birmingham News reports. The
design will be shown at a public meeting Norfolk Southern is holding at the
Bessemer Civic Center. Some residents of the area and parent of students at the
school are vehemently opposed to the project.
U.S. Transportation
Secretary Ray LaHood today said $298.7 million in American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act dollars will go to NJ TRANSIT for 13 projects that will
improve aging infrastructure, help ease daily commutes and generate jobs across
the region.
Palm Beach County, Fla.,
has completed a new parking lot adjacent to the west platform at Tri-Rail’s
West Palm Beach Station. The new parking lot provides 118 additional spaces for
passengers and 45 designated spaces for South Florida Regional Transportation
Authority/Tri-Rail and Palm Tran employees. The parking lot also provides
special spaces for scooters and motorcycles, along with bicycle lockers that
will be used as part of a new passenger program/amenity to be launched in the
near future. The new lot, accessible from Clearwater Avenue, opened to the
public on August 18.
Pennsylvania Governor Ed
Rendell is trying to land $47 million in federal aid to upgrade Harrisburg rail
freight facilities, the Harrisburg Patriot News reports. The money would help
Norfolk Southern add a third unloading track and install additional parking
spaces for trailers at the terminal along Industrial Road.
Watco
Transportation Services, Inc., started up a new railroad, the Alabama Warrior
Railway August 7. The ABWR operates 15 miles of track in and around Birmingham,
Ala., and interchanges with BNSF, Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation. The
ABWR’s chief mission is to deliver coal to Walter Coke Inc., a furnace and
foundry coke producer based in Birmingham.
Ohio Governor Ted
Strickland will be on hand Aug. 14 to break ground on North Baltimore’s CSX
Intermodal rail yard, local media report. The company’s CEO, Michael Ward, will
join Strickland to break ground on the terminal which will serve the Midwest.
Railroad and economic
development officials are laying tracks to school leaders in hopes of
addressing concerns at McAdory Elementary School that threaten to derail a $112
million Norfolk Southern intermodal hub, the Birmingham News reports.
Years of planning a second
major rail facility in Franklin County will go public next week when Norfolk
Southern unveils plans for building near Exit 3 of Interstate 81 in Antrim
Township, a company spokesman said Friday, according to local newspapers
Knoxville, Tenn., mayor
defends NS confidentiality agreement
It has caused him no end of
political heat, but Jefferson County Mayor Alan Palmieri says that signing a
confidentiality agreement with Norfolk Southern was the right thing to do,
according to the Knoxville News-Sentinel. He doesn’t regret it and says he
would do it again. While some residents who have concerns about Norfolk
Southern’s plans for an intermodal facility fear that the agreement cloaks
behind-doors dealings, Palmieri denies this is the case.
Federal
regulators are underestimating the health threat posed by a railroad freight
center proposed for southwest Johnson County, environmentalists charge,
according to The Kansas City Star. They say that the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers didn’t fully assess the cancer risk tied to the BNSF project and that
the corps’ predictions of diesel emissions are much less than what’s generated
at rail projects elsewhere.
Although Norfolk Southern Corp.’s planned $129-million intermodal yard won’t be built within the city limits but instead in neighboring Rossville, Memphis’ logistics and distribution industries stand to benefit from the railroad’s decision to expand its local presence, The Daily News in Memphis reports. Not only is the railroad’s sprawling facility dubbed the Memphis Regional Intermodal Terminal, but it will be close enough for Memphis-based companies to gain unprecedented logistical access to eastern cities.
The distinct whistle blaring and the distant, thunder-like clanking commonly heard through Aberdeen, S.D. are the sounds of the Hub City’s history, the Aberdeen News reports. And, one railroad official said, they are the sounds of its future.
RailWorks Corporation named William Dorris vice president and area manager for the Greater Chicago area for its operating subsidiary, RailWorks Track Services, Inc. Dorris has successfully led projects of all sizes for Class I, government and transit agencies and private industry throughout his 32-year career in the railroad construction and maintenance industry. Under his leadership, RailWorks’ Chicago-based track construction operations achieved revenue growth of more than 200 percent over the past several years.
In his new position, Dorris will expand his geographic base to include northern Indiana and Michigan, as well as the Chicago metro area. He also will lead the company’s new project to construct the track infrastructure for Union Pacific’s new intermodal yard in Joliet, Ill.
RailWorks Corporation Executive Vice President John August said Dorris’ promotion is part of a broader, longer-term commitment by RailWorks to provide a comprehensive construction and maintenance service offering throughout the Midwest and Northeast.
“We recently expanded our offices in Minooka, Ill., constructed a new shop and office facility in Youngstown, Ohio, and established a satellite office in western Massachusetts, “ said August. “These expansion activities and Bill’s promotion reflect RailWorks Track Services’ continued commitment to expand both its geography and its customer service capabilities.”
The land where Norfolk Southern wants to build an intermodal yard was annexed July 13 by the town of Rossville, Tenn., paving the way for the railroad’s proposed multimillion-dollar, multi-acre facility, the Memphis Daily News reports. Only one hurdle remains—getting the land rezoned industrial—before the Norfolk, Va.-based company receives the official green light to begin one of the largest economic investments in Fayette County’s history.
Although that final step won’t be resolved until next week, Norfolk Southern CEO Wick Moorman is expected to confirm that the company has selected a site in South Fayette County for the new yard, dubbed the Memphis Regional Intermodal Terminal. At 2 p.m. July 16, at the Bank of Fayette County in Piperton, Moorman and other railroad representatives will be joined by a host of state officials, including Gov. Phil Bredesen, to announce the terminal will be built on about 500 acres in the newly annexed land in southwestern Rossville. Done deal
The city this week annexed nearly 1,600 acres in Rossville’s urban growth zone, stretching from just south of Tenn. 57 down to the state line. Much of the land is owned by former Direct General Insurance Co. owner William Adair, who sold that company and subsequently paid $28 million for 3,200 acres in Fayette County and Marshall County, Miss.
Adair bought the land with plans to develop it into a mixed-use subdivision called Piperton Hills. That project is still on the table, but Adair decided to sell a portion of his acreage to the railroad for the intermodal terminal in response to Norfolk Southern’s original site location, which county residents opposed.
The initial site was north of Tenn. 57 between Rossville and Moscow near the Wolf River. Locals reacted negatively to that site because of increased truck traffic along 57 and potential damage to the Wolf River.
Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern began looking at alternative sites.
State Rep. Barrett Rich, R-Somerville, said Norfolk Southern easily could have started building at that location (dubbed the Windyke site) because of the eminent domain that railroads possess.
“Instead, Norfolk Southern, when contacted by the South Fayette Alliance and the people in Fayette County, did what they could to be a good neighbor, come into our good graces and look for other property,” Rich said. “They knew (Windyke) was going to put an extraordinary amount of distress on Rossville and that the state would have to four-lane 57 highway. They listened to the concerns and they went out looking for another property.”
Norfolk Southern will now allow its option on the Windyke property to expire and will move forward with the land owned by Adair, who declined to disclose the terms of the deal.
Also, railroad officials declined comment prior to the event, but the intermodal yard is a key component of Norfolk Southern’s Crescent Corridor, a 2,500-mile rail network linking the southeastern and northeastern U.S. The Memphis yard, using a combination of trucks and trains to move goods into and out of the area, will serve as a critical western gateway for the corridor, whose $2.5 billion price tag is being funded by the railroad and the government.
The overall economic impact of the yard on Fayette County and the surrounding area, including Memphis, won’t be known for some time. First, the completion of the facility will take years. Second, the true benefit of the yard might come from ancillary businesses such as warehouses and distribution centers that tend to sprout near intermodal yards, and the development of those could be slow because of the sagging economy.
Rossville Mayor James Gaither said the development of the yard will provide some property tax base for the city and county, but beyond that he wasn’t sure of the direct impact for the economy or for jobs. All he knows is the annexation issue cleared the Board of Mayor and Aldermen. Also, the first reading of the land’s rezoning is complete with the second scheduled for Monday. Once that is finished, the next step is for the railroad to submit a site plan before the lengthy construction process can begin.
He also knows that the Adair site is a much better choice than Windyke, which might have resulted in a groundswell of protests like the railroad is seeing with intermodal site selections in Alabama and East Tennessee.
Kansas City Southern and Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics have reached an agreement to establish a finished vehicle distribution center adjacent to the CenterPoint Intermodal Center-Houston Metro hub for regional automotive distribution services in Texas.
WWL, one of the world’s largest providers of logistics services for manufacturers of finished vehicles, has agreed to open a new vehicle distribution center at the KCS, CIC-HM hub located near Houston, Texas. This new facility will allow WWL to provide new vehicle distribution service to three states from a single site. Located on the new Victoria to Rosenberg KCS main line, CIC-HM provides direct access to the Nissan manufacturing facility at Aguascalientes, Mexico and the Port of Lazaro Cardenas.
"It is exciting to have a customer of WWL/Nissan’s caliber select CIC-HM to serve their customers in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma," said Brian Bowers, KCS senior vice president of intermodal and automotive. "The facility has the rail capacity, highway access and available land to serve Nissan as the demand for new vehicles returns."
CIC–HM is an 800-acre intermodal and automotive logistics park located 35 miles southwest of Houston. The facility is a joint development project of CenterPoint Properties and The Kansas City Southern Railway Company.
The celebration will include a display of about 45 North American Rail Car Operators Association motorcars during an open house at the Harsco facility in Fairmont. The 45 restored cars were originally built at the Fairmont plant and shipped to railroads around the United States and Canada.
