Opinion ID: 1057972
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Legislative Intent for Shifting Highway Truck Traffic to Rail

Text: More than a decade ago, the General Assembly expressed its concern over the growing congestion of heavy truck traffic on the highways in Virginia. In House Joint Resolution No. 704 from the 1999 legislative session, the General Assembly indicated that, through utilization of the Virginia Port Authority's Inland Port at Front Royal, the Port Authority collected truck-hauled containerized freight in sufficient quantities to transport it in unit trains directly to the Ports of Hampton Roads. H.J. Res. 704, Va. Gen. Assem. (Reg.Sess.1999). This mechanism, according to the General Assembly, resulted in not only holding down costs paid by the shipper, but also eliminating a substantial number of trucks from the overcrowded long-haul highways of eastern Virginia. Id. Pointing to this example, the General Assembly declared, a network of intermodal transfer facilities might be established that could prove useful in reducing heavy truck traffic on other long-haul highways in the Commonwealth, particularly Interstate Route 81. [1] Id. In addition, some of the intermodal facilities might employ a variety of `piggy-back' container, trailer, or semitrailer configurations. Id. Accordingly, the General Assembly tasked Virginia's Secretary of Transportation, in conjunction with the Virginia Department of Transportation and DRPT, to study the desirability and feasibility of establishing additional intermodal transfer facilities; and to submit findings and recommendations from the study to the Governor and the 2001 Session of the General Assembly. Id. The following year, in Senate Joint Resolution No. 55 from the 2000 legislative session, the General Assembly again addressed the traffic problem on Virginia's interstates. S.J. Res. 55, Va. Gen. Assem. (Reg.Sess. 2000). The General Assembly declared that many of the Commonwealth's interstate highways are experiencing an erosion of safety as a result of staggering increases in traffic. Id. An acute example of this problem, the General Assembly explained, was Interstate 81, which was designed to carry no more than 15 percent of its total traffic volume as truck traffic, but whose current traffic is made up of as much as 40 percent trucks. Id. The General Assembly further declared that widening Interstate 81 alone was estimated to cost in excess of three billion dollars and take at least ten years to complete, and that similar improvements to Virginia's other interstates would have comparable costs and completion times. In an effort to provide an alternative measure that would alleviate the excessive volumes of traffic on Interstate 81 and Virginia's other interstate highways, the General Assembly determined that it may be both desirable and feasible to shift traffic on our highways to trains on our railroads. Id. The General Assembly thus requested that the Secretary of Transportation expand her study regarding the establishment of additional intermodal transfer facilities, pursuant to 1999 House Joint Resolution No. 704, to include the potential for shifting Virginia's highway traffic to railroads. Id. In 2001, the Secretary of Transportation issued a report to the Governor and the General Assembly presenting the results of the study commissioned by the General Assembly pursuant to the two resolutions described above. See Commonwealth of Va., Sec'y of Transp., The Potential for Shifting Virginia's Highway Traffic to Railroads, S. Doc. No. 30 (2001). The Secretary explained in the report that a variety of data was collected on truck movements, Interstate 81 improvement plans, and railroad plans. Analyses were then conducted to determine the reasonableness of both highway and railroad plans and cost estimates, the amount of highway traffic which might be diverted to rail, and the extent to which those diversions might impact I-81. Id. at 5. Based on the study, the Secretary ultimately recommended in her report, among other things, that the Commonwealth fully consider proposals advanced to divert highway traffic to rail transportation in light of the potential for significant public benefits. Id. at 36. In 2005, through House Joint Resolution No. 789, the General Assembly declared its support for such a proposal in the form of a major multi-state initiative between Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio, called the Heartland Corridor. H.J. Res. 789, Va. Gen. Assem. (Reg.Sess.2005). As described in the resolution: the Heartland Corridor proposes the development of a seamless, efficient rail intermodal route from an Atlantic Ocean gateway, opening up a significant portion of western Virginia and West Virginia currently excluded from international intermodal markets,. . . and connecting to a center of existing domestic and international distribution in the Midwest, thereby strengthening the economic vitality and improving the efficiency and capacity of Virginia's and the nation's transportation network. Id. According to the General Assembly, this newly designated railway corridor would allow intermodal containerized traffic to move directly across the heartland from the ports in Hampton Roads to the Midwest. Id. Further, these containers could be double-stacked on trainsa key feature of the corridoras a result of the construction of new clearance levels along the corridor. Id. The Roanoke Valley would be among the locations gaining direct connection, via rail, to both the Virginia ports and the Midwest, the legislature further declared. This would be accomplished by the provision of an intermodal ramp in the Roanoke Valley region. Id. As explained in the resolution, rail intermodal transportation requires such ramp facilities for the seamless transfer of rail-to-truck and the reverse; and such facilities must be well situated relative to other infrastructure, most critically, roadway connectors. Id. Upon completion, the General Assembly also declared, the Heartland Corridor would divert freight away from highways and onto trains in the double-stacked intermodal containers. Id. In doing so, the corridor would not only benefit the Commonwealth by way of economic development, it would also benefit the traveling public and address congestion by growing freight opportunities via rail instead of road (alleviating the magnitude of higher highway maintenance costs). Id. In short, the corridor, according to the General Assembly, will play an important role in diverting highway traffic to rail. Id. The General Assembly concluded this resolution by declaring support for the Heartland Corridor project upon the recognition that it would require a public-private partnership to bring [the project] to fruition. Id. The General Assembly further indicated that this partnership should include, among others, the Commonwealth and Norfolk Southern. Id.