ROANOKE, Va. - Drivers who already contend with a hefty percentage of big-rig trucks on Southwest Virginia roads will not welcome news that more are coming, the Times reports.
But if a proposed intermodal rail yard is built at Elliston, the facility is expected to initially generate 87 or 88 truck trips per workday of 50 miles or less and almost three times that after 10 years. A good portion would likely use Interstate 81 through the Ironto interchange.
That said, a judge recently found that the project would "improve efficiencies of public roads" and rejected a legal challenge brought by local government.
What's happening here?
This conflict hinges on the differing vantage points of local residents and state and industry officials.
Montgomery County leaders and some residents say the paving of a rural farm for a permanent railroad facility would be an outlandish act.
"The inland port would destroy the rural character of the area," Lafayette resident Julio Stephens said. "The number of trucks will be ever-increasing. I think that's one of the concerns. The whole intention is that it will get bigger and bigger."
But to state transportation officials, the project represents an innovative, forward-looking strategy to expand rail transport of merchandise, commodities and general freight demanded by the American public and businesses.
The Department of Rail and Public Transit, which favors the project, downplays effects on local traffic following the planned construction of the $35 million facility.
"VDOT's assessment of the traffic impacts for the intermodal site location concluded that truck traffic generated by the intermodal facility should present little to no impact to surrounding roads," the agency wrote in a report, quoting information from the Virginia Department of Transportation.
Although they are looking at the same truck-traffic forecast as state officials, project opponents disagree with the conclusion.
Richard Rittenhouse, a Shawsville resident, said the projections of additional traffic concern people of the Elliston area greatly.
Nearly 90 trucks a day "is still 11 per hour" given an eight-hour workday, he said. It would go up as the rail yard handles more freight.
The Elliston yard would, in time, become busier, estimates show.
The estimate of 88 trucks is expected to hold for the first 10 years of the facility's operation.
After 10 years, 235 trucks would visit the proposed Elliston yard daily as the number of containers handled rises from 60 to 150.
In addition, if the project fulfills the objective of stimulating the local economy in the form of new businesses, even more traffic will result, he said.
"If you build this facility, it's pretty obvious that additional warehouse-type industries will spring up," said Rittenhouse, who is a member of a community group called Citizens for the Preservation of Our Country that formed in opposition to the rail-yard proposal.
"It should concern anybody that moves up and down the highway."
The site announced by the state with railroad concurrence is a flat, 65-acre swath of an agricultural property in eastern Montgomery County where a heavy-equipment operator last week demolished several buildings in the first sign of construction-related activity.
County officials, who aim to block the actual construction of the project in court, responded by faulting the contractor for razing structures without a permit. After that, the contractor agreed to get permits and did so Friday, according to county and railroad officials.
Seen within the context of existing traffic in the area, the forecast for additional truck traffic on Elliston-area roads may look insignificant to outsiders.
An estimated 8,100 vehicles a day use U.S. 11/460 in front of the proposed intermodal terminal site, according to the average daily traffic count for 2008 kept by VDOT.
Out on I-81, an estimated 45,000 vehicles pass the Ironto interchange, the closest to where the yard would be built, according to a combined southbound and northbound count for 2008.
Given those facts, a gain of 88 trucks would represent an increase of one-fifth of 1 percent on the interstate and an increase of 1 percent on U.S. 11/460.
But what about the change in the car-truck mix?
U.S. 11/460 carried an estimated 162 big rigs a day in 2008. Adding 88 more big rigs means that this slice of the traffic pie will surge by 56 percent.
Officials say, however, that only one road will need more capacity. North Fork Road, a winding two-lane route that offers the most logical path to and from the interstate, is earmarked for widening to accommodate intermodal yard-related trucks.
Its 2008 traffic volume was about 1,500 vehicles daily. No other road expansion is planned, though a rural lane will have to be relocated out of the way.
The site was chosen for its proximity to I-81 and location on Norfolk Southern Corp.'s Heartland Corridor, a freight corridor between ports in Hampton Roads and Midwest markets that is being beefed up to handle more tonnage.
The railroad is predicting that shipping volume will soar from 25,000 freight containers during the first year the intermodal yard operates to 150,000 by the end of the fifth year that the intermodal yard is in operation -- although not all those boxes would have to be handled at Elliston. The facility would operate on a five-day workweek.
The Elliston yard would ship 15,000 containers during its first year of operation, or about 60 a day, according to figures released by the state. State officials say the number of containers put on rail would approximate the number of truck trips on state roads that would be saved with the benefit of reduced road congestion.
Melvin Hughes, a Richmond judge who rejected a county lawsuit against the yard, said that because the intermodal yard would assist with the shifting of freight from trucks to rail, the yard has a public purpose justifying an expenditure of tax dollars.
A Roanoke attorney working for the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors intends to appeal that decision to the Virginia Supreme Court in March.
The county argues that, even if there will be public benefits, the use of state funds would represent an unconstitutional giveaway of public money to a private corporation.
The county attorney warned of "great" increases of trucks rolling through Shawsville, Elliston and Lafayette, while Annette Perkins, chairwoman of the county board of supervisors, said the concern also extended to I-81.
Railroad spokesman Robin Chapman said about half of the 88 daily trucks would drop off containers to go out by rail. Half would pick up shipping containers that had arrived by rail and take them to their final destinations.
