Dan Culhane, president and CEO of the Ames Chamber of Commerce, urged an investment in passenger rail service.
“We believe passenger rail service will foster economic development and provide energy-efficient, environmentally friendly motor transportation that will benefit all Iowans,” Culhane said.
He also called for an increase in funding to expand rail service to industrial parks, calling it critical for Iowa’s economic development.
“More and more companies, as they work to trim costs, are seeking rail service to move raw materials and finish goods,” Culhane said.
(1) Industry wants it if it doesn’t have to pay for it.
(2) Industry’s and local developer’s lack of foresight is galling. The truckers have them right where they want them. Industry hastened the demise of many an existing industrial spur and doesn’t maintain what’s left.
(3) Speaking from experience, Iowa’s industrial/economic development efforts have been chronically weak and sometimes shoddy.
I’ve noticed a few places where an industrial park was set up the thought that some company may want rail service never crossed the planner’s minds. Even though there may be an active rail line, the park is situated where it would be near impossible to run a spur into it. Of course the industry going into some of these places wouldn’t generate enough traffic for the railroad to be interested in.
When it comes to industiral development, it seems like many people don’t want to see the type of industry that would use rail service come into their area in the first place. Maybe not so much in the rural areas. It seems like the emphasis is given towards insurance/financial services, IT, retail, etc. Jobs where you’re not likely to get your hands too dirty. I don’t think this is just an Iowa phenomena. There were those who were happy to see Maytag close up in Newton, partly for reasons that got a couple of other threads locked.
Look at many a small town development park. If they have rail, iron oxide and weeds often predominate the spur tracks. Heavy industry such as steel mills and auto assembly are not the type of business found in these facilities.
Most businesses in these rural development parks are like the community, small. Often these are start up businesses. If there is manufacturing, it is nearly all light manufacturing. Trucks bring and take what they make. Their scale does not justify rail.
Most involved with these businesses do not give rail serious consideration. A surprising number probably do not realize the role of intermodal in handling materials they deal with. They deal directly with a retailer of smaller shipment freight services, i. e. a trucking company.
With containers, the crumbling circus ramp down by the grain elevator for piggy back is no longer an option. It never really was. Still, the allure of less expensive rail rings in their ears.
Intermodal terminals handling containers require a larger investment that old ties cut up and bolted together to make a ramp. Rather than every small town with rail access having a siding, would the better development strategy be small intermodal terminals serving regions within a rural state?
Will local Chambers of Commerce overcome their provincialism to support the concept? Who will pay the costs involved with these smaller terminals?
If the market currently would support such a concept, it would probably be underway. Does the public sector become involved? Would it be considered seeding to build what will become self supporting? Would it ever be self supporting, or justified the same as a street, or sewer, serving the facility?
Like the doodle bug milk train long gone, is the idea of every small business receiving and loading box cars simply nostalgia?
Davenport, Iowa developed its Eastern Iowa Industrial Center on the city’s northwest side, but realized the limitations without rail service so it now plans to construct a spur from Canadian Pacific’s (ex-DM&E/IC&E) Eldrige Spur. The Surface Transportation Board has already approved an exemption for the new construction. Granted, Davenport is not a small town (pop. 100,000) but the principle is the same. If you have a combination of interstate access, greenfield and necessary utilities (gas and water mains), rail-spurred industrial development is possible anywhere.
It’s not a total waste - just a matter of picking industries that will use rail either in or out.
There is a small, off-track industry (served by a short-line) near me that gets a couple hoppers of plastic pellets once a week or so. They off-load them to a truck. I don’t even know what they make, but do know they don’t ship back out by rail.
Another nearby industry is a chemical distributor. They get loaded cars in as well, then repackage and deliver in the area by truck, either in bulk or in smaller containers (ie, barrels).
There’s another thread running as I write this about a lumber yard celebrating their first incoming load by rail. For quite some time there was a lumber wholesaler here (my aunt worked for them) that bought carload lots either for delivery direct to a dealer, or for breakdown into smaller lots for local distribution.
An intermodal facility is only going to work if the road hauls are favorable. Even then, I’d suspect you’d see a rather large facility - witness the new CSX facility at New Baltimore, OH, which as I recall is intended to serve large portion of northern Ohio.
Never say never - the fact that someone has taken an interest in attracting rail-using industry is a good thing, but…
Good to see that for Davenport. I lived there back in the late 80’s when I was with IAIS. Any idea where the proposed spur line would split from the Eldridge line and how long it would be?
Starke County, Indiana has one of the lowest incomes per capita in the state.
However, their local economic developement agency has done a pretty good job, partly by emphasizing rail transportation. The industrial park in Knox has rail service, including expanded spur. Recently a tank car relining plant was announced to be building in the industrial park.
Construction will soon begin for Sysco Food Service in Hamlet. The food D/C will have rail service from the Chicago Fort Wayne, and Eastern and anticipations are for over 500 jobs.
True, industries that traditionally use rail will seek it. What of those that do not currently? Lots of tonnage in bulk commodities, but the bucks are value added commodities that largely went to trucks.
I got the impression from the article that the concern was industries possibly shipping by rail because of rail’s perceived increasing cost competitiveness as fuel and possible regulations effect trucking costs.
Again not a small town situation but PMP Fermentation Products in Peoria, Illinois had manufactured food additives for years at a downtown plant (a former brewery, and more recently Pabst Brewing Co’s grist mill; Pabst sold PMP to a Japanese firm in 1985), even expanding it in 1997. But only since early 2007, after a rail siding switch was installed did they switch from trucks to railcars. Considering the volume of corn syrup tank cars (usually 4-6 per week), one wonders why they didn’t switch to rail a decade earlier! Also, for the past two years or so, the company has also been shipping wastewater by railcar.