The existing Norfolk Southern intermodal terminal in South Toledo should become the focus of a concerted local effort to expand freight warehousing and logistics activities in the Toledo area, recommends a special task-force report to be released at a news conference today.
The 19-member Joint Intermodal Task Force for Transportation and Logistics also urges local officials to pursue improved customs capability at Toledo Express Airport to support international air-cargo operations there and to buy modern, multipurpose cranes for the Port of Toledo to improve its cargo-handling capabilities.
But while other proposed locations for rail-truck terminals such as the one Norfolk Southern operates along its Cleveland-Chicago main line southwest of downtown Toledo have potential for use in the future, leaders of the task force said yesterday, they would be much more expensive and perhaps might not even fit into the railroads' operating plans.
TOLEDO JOINT INTERMODAL TASK FORCE REPORT
The Norfolk Southern facility, by contrast, is a going concern and could handle more business if tracks leading to it were modified and expanded to streamline operations, James Seney, who is a task force member and retired Ohio Rail Development Commission executive director, said yesterday.
For now, Mr. Seney and the chairman of the task force, James Tuschman, said the railroad's Toledo Intermodal Terminal is used primarily for domestic freight.
Oceangoing cargo carried in shipping containers is trucked in from Chicago, Detroit, or Cleveland.
"There are businesses here that could use container shipping if the containers were here," Mr. Tuschman said.
"We are always interested in working with communities we operate through on making our operations more efficient," Rudy Husband, a railroad spokesman, said last night.
While expanding the Norfolk Southern terminal could bring 60 jobs, Mr. Husband and Mr. Seney said, the real growth po-tential is in the warehouse and logistics - freight sorting and repacking - businesses that such terminals attract.
While land immediately abutting the terminal is largely developed, they said, there is about 2,000 suitable acres scattered within a few miles and reachable on existing truck routes, notably the former Jeep plant property on Jeep Parkway and various tracts between Bennett Road and I-75 in North Toledo.
The report is the result of five months of meetings by the task force that was initially set up by Toledo Mayor Carty Finkbeiner in May.
Members then brought in others with differing transportation backgrounds and in midsummer, merged with a similar committee formed by the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority.
The report's formal presentation to Mayor Finkbeiner and Toledo City Council is scheduled for 11 a.m. today in the McMaster Center at the Main Branch of the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, 325 North Michigan St.
"There is a good case to be made for Toledo as an intermodal center," Mr. Finkbeiner said yesterday, but achieving that goal will require cooperation between the public and private sectors.
In many of the meetings the task force held with business people involved in transportation-oriented industries, Mr. Tuschman said, the recurring theme was, "Toledo doesn't have its act together."
The task force's goal, he said, was to develop a single plan that local leaders could unify behind.
Still to be identified, Mr. Tuschman said, is the "implementor" for the panel's recommendations, with potential candidates including the city of Toledo, the port authority, the Ohio Rail Development Commission, or even a new, single-purpose entity.
Among the "implementor's" roles, Mr. Tuschman said, would be to apply for some of the $100 million in state funds the Strickland administration has earmarked to support business-related transportation projects.
The price for track and signal improvements that would be needed to support the South Toledo rail terminal's expansion, for example, has been very roughly estimated at $20 million, while new cranes at the seaport easily would run into seven figures.
Port authority officials have held several meetings with organizers of a proposed container port and transfer terminal in Melford, N.S., in hopes of positioning Toledo as an inland sister port to that facility in Canada.
But for freight-laden containers to travel in and out of Toledo by ship, Mr. Tuschman said, new cranes capable of handling them quickly must be obtained.
And while some international cargo already passes through the Schenker/BAX Global facility at Toledo Express Airport, Mr. Seney said, more customs-inspection and storage capability are needed if that market is to reach its full local potential, including freight that could come to Toledo if DHL follows through with plans to shut down most of its air cargo hub in Wilmington, Ohio.
City Council President Mark Sobczak noted that equipment for soft drink bottling recently imported from Germany for a PepsiAmericas plant in Toledo had to be trucked from an airport in New York City because of inadequate space in Toledo for customs inspection.
Besides the rail terminal expansion, the airport customs facility, and the seaport cranes, the report recommends a concerted effort to promote Toledo as the center of "Lake Erie West," a 100-mile radius zone that, if measured as a metropolitan area, would be the eighth-largest in the United States.
Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094. Permanent Link
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