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Transportation
Making Tracks
Two pending deals between the state and CSX will reshape freight and commuter transportation in central Florida. Did everybody get a good deal?
Development will be in two phases, the first starting in 2007 and the second in 2010. Employment at the ILC, including warehouse facilities, is expected to total 2,000 with an average wage of $43,000. Related employment in Winter Haven outside the ILC is expected to grow by 6,500. "It's a significant economic development project," says Pete Chichetto, strategic initiatives director for Winter Haven.
The hub will accommodate CSX's intermodal operations as well as its shipments of cars. Coal, another major product in CSX's freight operations, will not be handled at the Winter Haven site but will continue to go directly to utility power plants.
› Deal 2
The second announcement by CSX came in August, six months after the first, but the two are inextricably linked.
The bottom line for the state in the second deal is the acquisition -- for $150 million -- of 61.5 miles of CSX tracks on the railroad's "A-line" between DeLand and the Poinciana Industrial Park in southern Osceola County. It will use those tracks to create a commuter rail system serving central Florida.
 Building efficiency: Today's intermodal transportation system makes use of efficient Integrated Logistics Centers, where entire truck trailers are transported via rail cars from ports. Only a handful of big cities have the centers. CSX is planning one on 1,250 acres in Winter Haven. |
As it acquires that track, the state will help CSX shift traffic from the Aline, which travels from Jacksonville through Sanford, over to its other main freight line, the S-line. That line runs more westerly from Jacksonville down through Ocala and Winter Haven, the site of the ILC.
Making that shift means upgrading the S-line, and the state is paying, using $198 million from a state program set up in 2003 designed to finance high-priority transportation infrastructure, including airports, seaports and rail corridors. The improvements mean adding a kind of double-tracking called long-passing sides to allow trains on the S-line to pass each other. In addition, the state will spend $59 million to build five overpasses in Alachua, Sumter and Marion counties, make $52 million in improvements on other CSX rail lines around the state and allocate $9 million to build access roads to the ILC. The state will turn to the bond market to finance the $150 million for the A-line tracks and the additional $23 million to relocate CSX's rail yard near downtown Orlando to Winter Haven.
The upgraded S-line, likely to be finished by 2009, will then become CSX's primary north-south freight corridor. In addition to creating the possibility for commuter rail, the deal moves freight traffic away from Orlando. And it will also make it more efficient to supply anticipated development in Florida's heartland ["Final Frontier," July, FloridaTrend. com].
CSX is coy on whether it would have invested its own funds in improving its S-line if the state hadn't come up with the money. "Our long-range Florida rail plan recognized the need for additional capacity, and more than one option was available to us to realize that capacity," says Sease. "This particular option -- reflected in the agreement in principle with FDOT -- is driven by what the state of Florida sees as a critical need for commuter rail in central Florida."
