Fact Sheet

Birmingham Regional Intermodal Facility: Connecting the region to national and world markets

Nortolk Southern has selected McCalla for a new intermodal terminal in Jefferson County. The new facility will bring significant economic growth and thousands of jobs to Alabama. The timing couldn’t be better for an economic boost: according to June 2009 figures from Alabama’s Department of Industrial Relations, Jefferson County’s unemployment rate is currently 10.6%; the adjoining counties of  Tuscaloosa and Bibb have unemployment rates of 12.2% and 16.1% respectively. Bessemer, the closest city to McCalla, has an unemployment rate of 15.5%.

What is Intermodal Transportation?

• Two or more modes of transportation – rail, truck, or ship – are used to move freight from origin to destination.
• Freight moves in enclosed containers or trailers.
• At intermodal terminals, cranes transfer containers and trailers between trucks and trains.
• Intermodal is the safest, most efficient, and economical way to move freight. A typical intermodal train hauls 280 truckloads of freight and moves a ton of freight 436 miles on one gallon of fuel.
• Electronics, mail, food, toys, paper products, clothes, appliances, textiles, and auto parts all move on the country’s intermodal network.
• Toxic inhalant hazards such as chlorine are not handled at intermodal facilities.

Site Selection Criteria for Intermodal Terminals

• Adjacent to the main line.
• Flat or gently rolling and minimally developed land.
• Minimal highway/rail grade crossings.
• Convenient access to interstate highways.
• Expansion potential for additional economic development.

McCalla, Jefferson County Site

• Norfolk Southern conducted an extensive site search of the Birmingham region for a suitable location for domestic Crescent Corridor traffic.
• The McCalla site is the only one that meets all the necessary criteria.
• Location also will allow for improved intermodal service between the Gulf Coast and the Northeast, providing the region with access to the global marketplace.
• Access to I-20/I-59 is 1.4 miles from the terminal entrance over an existing truck route that avoids residential neighborhoods.
• The site’s proximity to the Jefferson Metropolitan Park at McCalla offers expanded logistics, warehousing, and distribution opportunities.

Birmingham Intermodal Terminal

• Target opening in 2012.
• Located within a 316-acre site.
• Six intermodal trains per day will serve the facility (four of those trains daily currently operate in the area). One train will originate at the IMF and one will terminate there.
• Three loading tracks.
• 1,440 paved trailer/container parking spaces.
• Capacity to handle 165,000 truck trailers and shipping containers annually.
• Environmentally designed to minimize light and sound spillover.
• Storm water drainage system will comply with state and federal water quality regulations.
• Total project cost is expected to be $112 million.

How Many Trains and Trucks?

• Presently, there are 21 trains that go by daily: 12 freight and local trains, 2 Amtrak and 7 intermodal trains. After the facility opens in 2012, six intermodal trains per day will serve the facility. Four trains will stop to setout, pickup, or both. One train will originate at the facility and one will terminate at the site.
• Two hundred ninety trailers per day will enter the facility and 290 trailers will exit the facility per day. One hundred seventeen bobtails (tractors without trailers) will enter the facility per day and 117 bobtails per day will exit the facility.
• These trailers will move past the JeffMet Industrial Park, via McAshan Road to Exit 104 (I-59/I-20) away from Eastern Valley Road.

Alabama and the Crescent Corridor

• The Birmingham intermodal terminal will be part of Norfolk Southern’s Crescent Corridor, a 2,500 -mile rail route that will link key markets in the Northeast and Southeast with high-quality intermodal rail services.
• Norfolk Southern is enhancing its existing rail lines to enable it to provide truck-competitive service and take more than a million trucks off highways such as I-20 and I-59 annually. The enhancements include straightening curves, adding passing tracks, double tracks, and signals, and building intermodal terminals in Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

Economic Benefits

• Intermodal terminals have proven to be a powerful engine of growth.
• Since opening in 1989, a facility at the Virginia Inland Port in Fort Royal, VA, similar to the one planned for Birmingham, has resulted in:
  • 27 major companies locating nearby.
  • $599 million of investment.
  • 7,000 new jobs.

  What are the Public Benefits to the Birmingham Region and Alabama?

  • Safety
  • Highway Congestion Mitigation
    • Deferred and reduced highway maintenance
    • Deferred and reduced highway expansion
  • Environmental Benefits
    • Fewer emissions and smaller carbon footprint
    • More efficient land use
    • Less fuel consumption
    • Lower impact on historic and cultural assets
  • Economic Development
    • Creates or benefits 8,600 jobs.
    • Cumulative 10-year economic impact of more than $4 billion.

    Alabama and Norfolk Southern

    • 1,372 route miles in Alabama.
    • $19.7 million in state and local taxes paid in Alabama.
    • 1,800 employees and $102 million payroll in Alabama.
    • 600 employees in Birmingham area.
    • NS attracted $3.65 billion in investment in new or expanded industries in Alabama over the last 10 years, creating an estimated 10,600 jobs.

    About Norfolk Southern

    • Serves most of the US east of the Mississippi River.
    • Most extensive intermodal network in the East.
    • NS has won the rail industry’s highest award for employee safety – the E.H. Harriman Memorial gold medal – for each of the last 20 years.
    • Employs environmentally sensitive management of land, water and property resources.