Rail Freight Could Lessen I-81 Gridlock

A consultant’s report on removing some truck traffic from Interstate 81 bears good news. The report’s chief finding is that a plan to move freight traffic off the highway and onto train tracks could shift about 13.5 percent of trucks off the crowded interstate highway.

Kevin Page, chief of rail transportation for the state, hailed the report’s finding as a worthy goal. “The 13.5 percent we feel is a very strong opportunity to move trucks off the road,” he told The Roanoke Times recently.

The December report released recently recommended that Virginia stick to its present plan to address truck congestion on I-81 by continuing its funding of the Crescent Corridor. That is a proposed new intermodal rail service under which Norfolk Southern Corp. intends to expand its rail system to better compete with, and integrate with, highway trucking.

The corridor is designed to connect the southern freight hubs of New Orleans and Memphis, Tenn., with those in New Jersey by way of western and central Virginia.

Cambridge Systematics prepared the report, which took note that Virginia has pledged $95 million to construction of parts of the Virginia leg of the corridor as the state’s strategy to relieve heavy truck traffic on I-81.

Just as importantly, getting some of those trucks off Virginia’s portion of the interstate will save wear and tear on the highway — something the state is having trouble coping with these days.

Some rail advocates, as the Roanoke paper reported, were hoping for a more ambitious plan than the one offered by the Crescent Corridor. A Salem group said the state should more fully embrace the trucks-to-rail concept by spending more money on it than the billions that will go into road construction and maintenance.

The group has proposed a high-speed, north-south train with platforms to hold any type of long-haul truck. That approach would shift as much as 38 percent of the trucks off I-81, but would be much more expensive. The Cambridge report put the infrastructure cost for Virginia at $9 billion versus $500 million for the Crescent Corridor.

Page pointed out that some 500,000 containers a year move through the corridor on rail and without the rail system already in place those containers would be hauled by truck. He added that when the corridor is completely operational, the number of containers would double.

Clearly, the corridor will contribute to managing the growth of trucks on I-81. The report noted that trucks currently constitute about 23 percent of traffic on the interstate, the highest truck percentage in the state. Without the corridor plan, the number of trucks is expected to double from more than 3 million a year now to more than 7 million per year by 2035 along the length of the interstate.

One of the state’s major transportation issues, according to forecasts, focuses on how to keep traffic moving on I-81, a major freight route. The obvious answer is a combination of some highway construction and railroad expansion to accommodate the growth of both trucks and passenger vehicles.

Dana Martin, who represents the Roanoke and New River valleys on the Commonwealth Transportation Board put the future this way: “We don’t believe pavement alone is going to solve the problems of the present and prepare us for the future.”

That leaves the railroads as a major player in the future of transportation in Virginia. The Crescent Corridor project is the best next step toward that goal.