CHARLESTON, S.C. — South Carolina Ports has broken ground on a new near-dock rail facility, the Navy Base Intermodal Facility in North Charleston, to bolster the competitive position of the Port of Charleston.
The facility is about a mile from the port’s Leatherman Terminal; containers will move to and from the terminal on a dedicated road to the new intermodal facility, which will have nearly 80,000 feet of track and a capacity of 1 million lifts in its initial phase. The facility will operate in partnership with Palmetto Railways, CSX Transportation, and Norfolk Southern.
Groundbreaking was held Monday, Oct. 17.
“This resolves the last remaining competitive disadvantage we have as a major East Coast container port,” SC Ports CEO Barbara Melvin said in a press release. “This critical infrastructure project will greatly enhance SC Ports’ capacity, allowing imports and exports to swiftly move between the hinterland and the Port of Charleston.”
Port of Charleston has the same issue it will always have no matter what changes are made at the port….almost all of their traffic is routed through the congested Atlanta Terminal. The rest gets routed to the inland port of Spartanburg (Greer).
Their second issue is that the Wando Welch port is on the opposite side the harbor and has no rail access. None. That means it has to be drayed over the Mark Clark Bridge or in most cases the containers are ferried over from one port to another up and down the Cooper River.
World Class? Well I guess its a matter of perspective.
Hopefully they will consider battery electric truck tractors. These types of short haul transfers that cause ports to be major air polluters.
Near-dock is no where near as good as on-dock.
Near dock is better. You can build trains off the dock eliminating a bunch of on dock switching moves and itheri associated cost. You can build trains at one point with traffic from all terminals.