Still waiting for intermodal's opening

Quincy Port commissioner says job increase will take time

QUINCY— Construction on the long-awaited intermodal system is all but complete, though a Port of Quincy commissioner says it will still take time to get it up and running.

"It's pretty much done," Commissioner Patric Connelly said. "We've got a few punch list things going on. We're waiting to get the fiber optics (brought) in … The water main that we're bringing into it was punched under the trucks last week and they're supposed to be working on it this week… Other than that, a few little minor things."

Intermodal operator Northwest Container was supposed to begin moving equipment up, but that was delayed because of the weather, he said. Weather was also a factor in delaying the opening of the intermodal, at first hoped for the middle of January.

"It's hard to say what the opening date is," he said. "They've got to get up and get established, and then they have to start getting their loads together, so I can't see it (opening) before the first of the month."

Connelly said the Port of Quincy is anxious to get things going with the intermodal, which is intended to provide a location for which truck traffic can drop and receive freight which travels through the ports of the Puget Sound.

"It's not going to happen overnight," he said. "It's going to be really slow in the beginning until they can get everything established and see how the railroad works with it, with the trains and stuff."

In the beginning, the intermodal system, located at 10580 Industrial Loop NW, will consist primarily of local containers of such items as potatoes, french fries and apples that are shipped out of the area. A container will be ordered, come into the Port, be off loaded, go out to wherever it's going be loaded, then come back to the Port and be loaded onto the train, he said.

Connelly said the goal is to send a minimum of 30 containers out at a time, explaining that amounts to 15 cars because containers are stacked on top of one another. Most shipments are westbound at present.

"A lot of the (companies) that we talked to initially are still watching," he said. "They're going to wait until it goes before they invest more time into it, but we are confident there are fairly good companies looking at it and watching."

The container loading phase of the intermodal system will not provide a huge increase in jobs in the area, Connelly said. Until business warrants otherwise, there will probably only be two or three people added, he said.

"If you can bring the other businesses in, the distribution centers, then that's where your increase in jobs comes in," he said. "If you bring one big (distribution center) in to work, where you're bringing stuff in from the coast here, off load it, break it off and then send it, you can look at a couple hundred jobs."

The intermodal is also designed to relieve maintenance of the roads by taking the shipments off of the highways. That was part of the original focus in designing the system, Connelly said.

"If we can pull 20 or 30 percent of the traffic going over the pass, and put it on a train, that's 20 or 30 percent savings in maintenance and everything else that the state highway has got to worry about, and the congestion on the coast," he said.

The intermodal system, already the recipient of about $4 million in grants, recently received a grant for an additional $1 million from the state's Department of Transportation, Connelly said. That money will be used for equipment and technology.

There's still a lot of construction to do, but the system is not quite there yet, he added.

"It would also help if we had a business to come in," he said, noting that one company has the desire to build a building, which would require the addition of more track to the intermodal system.

The Port began talking about the intermodal around 2000, Connelly said. He said that it's progressed quickly, and already more has been built than Port commissioners ever envisioned.

"We're in the infancy of it now, and it's just going to take a little bit of time to get it all (ready)," he said. "It may take a year, it may take longer than that, because you have to change the mind sets of a lot of shippers to go by train. Some of them are committed, they would love to send it all by the train if they can. We've just got to get in that rhythm and prove it."