Washington hasn’t become the nation’s 12th largest agriculture producer - no. 1 for apples, no. 2 for potatoes and renowned for its spectrum of specialty crops - because of accessibility.
No one knows that better than onion grower Jody Easterday. She’s loaded rail cars full of her family’s yellow, red and white onions destined for the East Coast only to see them stranded for days in an overburdened railroad system. She also ships by truck, but more and more she’s lucky to get one, and the costs are mounting.
She juggles an intricate system of sub-par transportation options that includes a diminishing supply of long-haul trucks and a less expensive rail system that, at the very least, takes twice the time.
That’s why the building going up on the west side of Walla Walla County holds so much hope. It represents a more than $34 million private/public investment aimed to streamline the transportation of Northwest produce to the East Coast.
Projected to open off Dodd Road late this year, the 200,000-square-foot Railex facility is billed as the answer to the growing transportation concerns of Northwest farmers and shippers. Through a partnership with Union Pacific Railroad and CSX Corp., Railex will offer a train dedicated to get produce to the East Coast in five days - comparable to the time of a long-haul truck, but less expensive.
"We just have never had this vehicle to allow us to market with this kind of tool,‘’ Easterday said during an interview in her company’s Pasco onion warehouse. "It’s an extremely viable option.‘’
No one knows how much potential there could be for Washington produce in those markets. Despite numerous attempts to improve transportation, nothing this big has been tried, and the ideas that have been tried have typically not endured, ag experts say.
They do not appear to be taking the bait. I beleive this is old news that was part of another thread a while ago. Sorry, thou I could be wrong. Happy Fishing and as always ENJOY!
It seems everyone on this forum supports this project, so where’s the debate?
Well, for starters, one could ask why UP and not BNSF? Isn’t BNSF’s route from the inland Pacific Northwest to the NS/CSX Mideast connections shorter and quicker than UP’s route? Doesn’t BNSF have more capacity to the east than UP?
One could also query why the financiers decided to stick to one Class I rather than locating a site with access to both UP and BNSF? I would guess UP is helping to finance the project.
And in answer to solzrules, Milwaukee did have a branch to Hanford (north of the Tri-Cities) at one time, which was truncated near Vernita Bridge when WWII and the Hanford atomic bomb project started (the federales took over the rest of the rail line within the Hanford reservation at that time). Milwaukee never made it down to the Tri-Cities nor Wallula (and subsequently barge port access), only BNSF’s predicessors and UP. Doesn’t mean that a Railex-type facility could have been built in Othello for the same purpose had Milwaukee survived.
Other than that, there’s not much there to rile the forum passions…
My point is that for all the problems that seem to be cropping up in the pacific NW with regards to rail monopoly and rate fixing, and keep in mind I am only reading about them here in the forums, it seems that it would have been beneficial in hindsight to maintain the presence of a separate transcontinental railroad. The BNSF has no real competitor in the pacific NW.
I’m happy ot hear this myself. I can’t debate the merits of the program, but if it works, I’ll be happy. it can be surprisingly hard to find a nice fresh bag of washington apples here in New York…
I hope that this will work for the shipper and receiver’s. The Grocery Warehouse is a whole other world. The East Coast receiver’s are a bizarre lot, and if they can throw a monkey wrench into this they will find the biggest one. I would predict that claims on freight will be a real stumbling block as the warehouses are used to cutting the price by recieving dock inspections, and then there is the driver’s labor to unload…
I sure wi***he people at Railex, all the best, in their attempt to take a bite out of the Big Apple.
Sam
In answer to Futuremodal’s point about equal access, I think this place is located close to where BNSF’s Low Line local can get to. But that wouldn’t get a unit train of perishables hitting the main line as quickly as UP.