Traffic is busier along the railroads in Fort Wayne and northeast Indiana.
Freight trains are hauling more commodities and goods through the area as more companies choose rail transportation to move their products around the country. With the jump in train traffic, railroad companies have to invest more in track safety and maintenance in order to protect their end of the improving economy.
“What we’re seeing now in the 2010s is that rail transportation was starting to pick back up on the freight side,” said Bernie Beier, Allen County Homeland Security director.
Railroad volume dove after the Great Recession in 2008. The traffic has since rebounded, reaching pre-recession levels from 2007, according to an Association of American Railroads statement.
Total traffic in 2014 grew 4.5 percent over 2013’s total. That included a 5.2-percent surge in intermodal rail volume, meaning trains were carrying more semi trailers from one location to another.
“Intermodal freight has become an economical and viable shipping option,” Indiana Department of Transportation spokeswoman Nichole Hacha-Thomas said in a statement.
In other words, tracks are more fuel-efficient than trucks, according to Norfolk Southern Corp. spokesman Dave Pidgeon.
Northern Indiana serves as a key path for moving freight between Chicago and Cleveland. The increase in rail use resulted, basically, in train traffic jams.
“We did experience last autumn serious congestion challenges in northern Indiana around Elkhart,” Pidgeon said, describing the situation as “growing pains.”
As rail lines became overwhelmed, more trains were routed farther south through the Fort Wayne area to help break up the traffic and keep commodities moving in a timely manner, Beier said.
Norfolk Southern also addressed the traffic situation by expanding its yard in Bellvue, Ohio.
The company, as a Class-1 railroad, has about 1,400 miles of tracks in Indiana with four different lines running through this region.
CSX Corp., another Class-1 railroad, operates about 2,500 miles of track in the state, including a line that runs through Noble and DeKalb Counties, according to data on the company’s website.
In total, the state has about 40 freight railroads, including regional, local and other services that cover nearly 4,100 miles of tracks. Of them, about six companies operate in northeast Indiana, including the regional Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad, commonly known as CFE.
Coal, metals and steel, basic chemicals, auto products and farm products are among the top commodities that are transported in and out of Indiana. Consumer goods and construction materials are also coming through the Fort Wayne area.
“Anything and everything is moving through your neck of the woods,” Pidgeon said.
Oil is another commodity being shipped via rail through Indiana. In the past decade, light crude production has increased in North Dakota and other western states, as well as in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, he said. As a result, more barrels of the relatively inexpensive crude is traveling to the East Coast.
At the same time, 149,346 passengers rode Amtrak trains on Norfolk Southern tracks throughout Indiana last year, a 3.6-percent decrease from fiscal year 2013, a company fact sheet shows.
Amtrak’s Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited routes to the East Coast run through northern Indiana with a stop in Waterloo. The city, which saw 22,814 riders in 2014, is working to move the historic Waterloo Depot to the Amtrak platform there to create a new station for passengers.
With so much train traffic, the railroads put an emphasis on safety to protect each commodity.
“Safety is this corporation’s top priority,” Pidgeon said.
Norfolk Southern invested about $930 million in maintaining infrastructure, like rails and bridges, to ensure the lines throughout the company’s 22-state network continue to handling the train volume. CSX annually spends more than $1 billion per year on infrastructure work, company spokeswoman Gail Lobin said in a statement. Both companies also run safety checks on the tracks.
Additionally, the companies pay to train local first responders on safety procedures involving train and rail emergencies, and on hazardous materials.
“It does happen here, and it is typically handled pretty quick,” Beier said.
He listed a few incidents, including a large derailment near old U.S. 24 in Allen County last year and a few other smaller incidents.
In the event of an emergency, the general procedure is for the engineer or conductor to contact a dispatcher to halt train traffic and then contact local emergency responders as needed, Pidgeon said. The company then alerts federal and state authorities.
Local agencies will coordinate with the railroads to resolve the emergency, and the company is responsible for the cleanup.
To improve safety, CSX recently launched a mobile app, according to Lobin’s statement, that lets first responders look up information about hazardous materials being transported by CSX trains.
“That’s huge for us,” Beier said, referring to how it helps protect emergency crews and save them time and effort during a response. “It’s been a huge improvement.”
He feels the railroads have good safety procedures in place to meet the rise in rail traffic, saying they know very well that crashes aren’t good for business.