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The Alabama State Port Authority’s board recently approved two measures that will advance plans for a new $29 million intermodal rail facility at the Port of Mobile.

The board authorized $11.5 million for the construction, inspection and testing of a rail access bridge that will connect five Class Is and the authority’s Terminal Railway to a proposed Garrows Bend Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF), which is part of the Choctaw Point intermodal program. The five Class Is are BNSF Railway Co., CN, CSX Transportation, Kansas City Southern and Norfolk Southern Railway.

The board also extended Moffatt & Nichol’s engineering and program management contract through fiscal-year 2013 for key components of the Choctaw Point project that includes site development work for the second phase of APM Terminals' container terminal expansion and the north tract of an affiliated logistics park.

The ICTF will serve import/export containerized cargoes moving through APM Terminals and domestic containerized cargoes from regional manufacturers. Last year, the authority obtained a $12 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery IV grant to construct the facility's first phase by mid-2014. Completion is anticipated by 2015.

“The ICTF program is critical to servicing our regional market shippers, who have to rail their containerized freight longer distances at higher costs,” said James Lyons, the port authority's director and chief executive, in a prepared statement. “With this project, we can alleviate time and cost pressures on our customers, expand the container terminal’s natural market reach and provide an intermodal ramp for domestic shipments.”

Meanwhile, the Canadian government yesterday announced it would provide $19.9 million for a $45 million overpass on the Deltaport Causeway as part of Port Metro Vancouver's Deltaport Terminal, Road and Rail Improvement Project in Vancouver, British Columbia.
 
The export facilitation project is designed to increase container capacity by improving port infrastructure at the Deltaport container terminal, which is served by Canadian Pacific, CN and BNSF. The overpass will improve the efficiency, safety and fluidity of traffic to and from the terminal by eliminating conflicts between rail and truck traffic, government officials said in a prepared statement.

The project involves the construction of a two-lane overpass that will grade separate tracks and the Deltaport Causeway access road adjacent to the terminal. The grade separation will provide up to 200,000 20-foot equivalent units of additional capacity annually at Deltaport, government officials said.

The project "increases industrial density, adding container capacity at Roberts Bank, while easing the impacts of a growing port on nearby communities," said Robin Silvester, president and chief executive officer of Port Metro Vancouver.