BALTIMORE — There was a celebratory atmosphere at Mount Royal Station in Baltimore for work completed on time and within budget to expand the historic Howard Street Tunnel making way for double-stack freight trains.
"We’ve been actually running trains near here, taking the containers off of the train, go around the tunnel, put them back on another train so we can keep serving our customers at our expense,” said CSX President & CEO Joe Hinrichs, “We did that really starting on February 1 to now.”
CSX shut down the tunnel as workers spent months cutting out the existing rails, excavating the tunnel’s bed to allow for the taller loads and laying new track over a span of 8,700 feet or 1.6 miles---improvements first envisioned decades ago.
WATCH: A pathway to prosperity for the Port of Baltimore
“From the moment that I got in this Howard Street Tunnel, double stacking at the Howard Street, seemed like this boogeyman,” said Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, “This idea that it’s just too complicated. There’s so many pieces. It’s 130 years old.”
It’s a project that will help CSX and the port compete for more international shipping cargo destined for the I-95 corridor.
“We are going to be able to increase the number of containers through the Port of Baltimore by 160 thousand per year and boost jobs by 7,300 workers,” said U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, “That is a very big deal.”
In addition to being able to haul more cargo, the bigger rail cars carry another benefit as well.
Roads and highways taxed with additional traffic after the Key Bridge collapsed may finally see some relief.
"Now, we get to compete with double stack containers as you see behind me and the ability to take trucks off the road, hopefully, congestion off the roads around Baltimore, help the port, all the ports in the area [to] compete and move more traffic on railways,” said Hinrichs. “Of course, it’s good for the taxpayers, good for safety and certainly, good for CSX as well.”
