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Speaker: Restore rail service to boost economy
By Ed Runyan
YOUNGSTOWN
Ken Prendergast, head of the nonprofit organization RESTORE, says government officials interested in capitalizing on as much of the shale-gas business here as possible should consider the potential benefit of restoring some of area’s lost rail service.
Prendergast, of Cleveland, says the rise of the shale-gas industry in eastern Ohio and the resurgence of manufacturing in the Mahoning Valley suggest the need for better rail service.
Prendergast would like to see local officials develop an initial action plan costing around $10,000 that would identify the most important short-term rail improvements.
Prendergast says such an action plan could come from Youngstown State University, RESTORE or a small engineering firm.
“The places that have their rail act together will get the bulk of the business,” Prendergast said of the shale and railroad business.
In a presentation he gave in Youngstown a week ago, Prendergast said the loss of most of the Mahoning Valley steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s resulted in loss of much of the rail traffic traveling less than 100 miles through the area.
A map provided by Prendergast suggests that close to half of the rail lines in the eastern part of the state where Marcellus and Utica shale deposits are located are inactive or have been removed.
But because of the expansion of V&M Star in Youngstown to make steel pipe for the gas industry and because of steel-scrap recyclers here, equipment manufacturers and the need for natural-gas liquids to be hauled away, the need for rail is coming back Prendergast said.
The Youngstown- Boardman-Warren area ranked first in the nation in 2010 in manufacturing-job growth and 14th in 2011, he noted.
“Rail infrastructure losses are restraining faster industrial and commercial growth and redevelopment of the region,” he said in his presentation.
Andres Visnapuu, a member of the Western Reserve Port Authority, attended Prendergast’s presentation and said the only role the public sector would play is to identify the most critical missing links in the rail system. “The private sector comes in and does the rest,” he said.
Sarah Lown, director of economic development for the port authority, said it would be good to get such a study done as quickly as possible if one is going to be done because “in rail, nothing is immediate.”
Dan Mamula, director of the Mahoning River Corridor Initiative, said the thing he likes about Prendergast’s organization is the expertise on railroads Prendergast brings to the discussion.
Prendergast’s presentation describes several industries, most of them related to gas exploration, that would find better rail service helpful to their goals.
One certainty is that the sand used in the shale hydraulic-fracturing process will come by rail, Prendergast said. The variable is the loading station where the sand is taken from a train car and transferred to a tractor trailer.
One scenario is that sand will come up the Ohio River on a barge and then proceed north by rail. But there’s a break in rail service in the Alliance area that could produce a slow-down Prendergast said.
In addition to helping shale companies and their suppliers do business, improved rail also reduces the wear and tear on roads, Prendergast noted.
A 1 percent increase of U.S. railroad market share in 2020 would shift 600 million tons of freight off of America’s roads, save shippers $239 billion and reduce highway costs by $17 billion, he said.
Pennsylvania is providing 10 to 20 times as much funding for railroad improvements as the Ohio Department of Transportation.
The Susquehanna Economic Development Association-Council of Governments in north-central Pennsylvania — in the heart of the Marcellus Shale region — has acquired 153 miles of rail lines since 1983 and contracts with railroads to provide freight service over its tracks, Prendergast said. Rail service is up 25 percent over the past year on the organization’s tracks.