COLUMBIANA COUNTY Cargo project to attract global business

The cargo-handling facility should be ready by the end of 2005, the official said.
By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
WELLSVILLE -- Having a state-of-the-art, riverfront cargo-handling facility in Columbiana County operational within a year couldn't be more timely, said Tracy Drake, executive director of the county port authority.
Drake said Ohio Department of Transportation officials estimate that cargo handling in the United States will double in the next 15 years, increasing the need for the railroad and maritime industries to take on a greater share of cargo handling.
He said the port authority's Wellsville site now under construction is an important regional project that will enable the seamless transfer of cargo from truck to rail to river barge.
The facility will be attractive to companies seeking to locate in an area where state-of-the-art cargo handling is available, he said.
Drake said the total cost of the Wellsville facility when completed will be about $15 million. The Appalachian Regional Commission, an economic development partnership between the federal government and the governors of 13 states (including Ohio), contributed $1.3 million toward construction of access roads connecting the Wellsville facility with state Route 7, including a new highway interchange.
Significance
Facilities such as the Wellsville riverfront operation are crucial not only for companies in the region, but also for companies all over the United States to compete in the global marketplace, he said.
The port authority director said the development of the industrial park at Wellsville also continues, with highway access complete and realignment of area railway lines in progress.
If all goes as planned, the construction of the cargo-handling facility will begin early next year and be operational by the end of 2005, the director said.
Drake modeled Wellsville's cargo handling facility after the Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore, a project he was involved in as an attorney.
He said the Wellsville facility will be the only one of its kind in the area, and the only one along the Ohio River capable of moving cargo containers easily among river barges, trucks or train cars.
Pittsburgh has many cargo facilities along its river docks, but none are equipped to handle cargo packed in containers, which is the quickest, most efficient means of cargo handling, he said.
Although there are many cargo-handling areas along the Ohio River, none are as close to both highway and railway access as Wellsville, he said. Drake said the only other place along the river where land was available to build an industrial park and cargo-handling facility like the one under construction in Wellsville is near Cincinnati.
He said equipping the cargo facility to handle cargo containers is vital to its success.
Container vs. bulk hauling
Moving cargo among river, rail and highway transportation is more efficient in containers rather than simply in bulk as is done with raw materials such as agricultural products and minerals, he said.
Containers can be moved immediately from a truck or railway car to a barge, for example, or offloaded from a barge to the dock to be reloaded later, he said.
Drake said the county facility will be equipped to handle the increase in rail and maritime cargo transportation. He said rail and maritime cargo handling must increase because cargo handling is rapidly increasing.
He said about 6 billion tons of cargo is transported in the United States each year, with 70 percent of cargo handling done by truck, 16 percent by rail, 13 percent by ship and 1 percent by air.
To handle twice as much cargo by truck would require construction to increase the 44,000 miles of interstate highway in the United States to 96,000 miles, he said.
Since cargo handling is increasing faster than highways could be built to handle that much more truck traffic, rail, maritime and air transportation will have to pick up a larger share of cargo handling, he said.
Drake said the Ohio River Valley and the Cleveland-Pittsburgh corridor is the fourth-largest population market in the United States.
If Ohio were a nation, it would have the 17th-largest economy in the world, with 43 percent of its economic base in the Cleveland-Pittsburgh markets.
Ohio is first in the nation in plastics, machine tools and metal fabrication production, second in automotive and steel production, sixth in aerospace technology and 12th in information technology start-up businesses, the director said.