Rail freight company CSX has ambitious plans to improve the efficiency of America’s freight network. Their plans include upgrading the country’s freight rail infrastructure to allow trains to haul double-stack container cars and significantly increase each train’s capacity to haul freight. The company announced its “National Gateway” initiative in May 2008 to reduce the amount of trucks hauling freight on America’s crowded interstates, create new freight and transportation jobs and increase the country’s rail infrastructure between Mid-Atlantic ports and the Midwest.
As more and more of the world’s economies and companies rely on international shipping, the use of standard shipping containers has become a common part of doing business for many companies. Moreover, it makes sense as these freight containers can be easily transported via trucks, railroads, and ships. These intermodal containers improve the efficiency and flexibility of the national and international freight transportation network and the rail network in the U.S. CSX has set its sights on improving the rail infrastructure in the eastern U.S. first as the rail networks there are the nation’s oldest and most restrictive in terms of cargo weight and height. The railroad tunnels and bridges in and around Baltimore and Washington D.C. are not high enough to accommodate double-stack shipping containers from east coast ports to Midwestern markets.
In 2006, CSX’s main competitor Norfolk Southern (NS) began its own double-stack rail freight initiative called the “Heartland Corridor.” NS is currently improving this route to accommodate taller shipments and plans to use this route to link ports in the Hampton Roads area in Virginia to the Midwest. When Norfolk Southern’s project is complete, they estimate that it will remove 200 miles and a half-day of travel off the current route for the company’s double-stack freight trains. The Heartland Corridor, similarly to the National Gateway, will involve replacing some current railroad bridges and raising or blasting the roofs of current railroad tunnels. Another part of these ambitious plans is the construction of new freight transfer facilities to move shipping containers between ships and trains and trains and trucks.
The cost of the Heartland Corridor project was $311 million but NS had had financial assistance through Virginia’s $9.75 million, Ohio’s $800 thousand and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s $95 million. Not to be outdone, CSX is lobbying for $194 million in public funding from the federal government and E$193 million from the states that stand to benefit from the National Gateway project. CSX claims that the benefits from the project will include new, well-paying jobs, reduced congestion and accidents on highways and interstates, reduced highway maintenance costs, and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
