Page 20 - Port of Baltimore Magazine November/December 2016

HOWARD STREET TUNNEL
Gov. Hogan, CSX Promise
to Improve Howard Street
Tunnel Infrastructure
GRANT WOULD ALLOW ADJUSTMENTS FOR DOUBLE-STACKED CONTAINER TRAINS
BY TODD KARPOVICH | Photography by Bill McAllen
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, the Maryland Port Administration and CSX Corp. officials are optimistic the 121-year-old Howard Street railroad tunnel will soon be open for even
more business.
Hogan and Michael Ward, chairman and
CEO of CSX, got a first-hand look at the needed improvements while traveling through the tunnel aboard a CSX rail car in October. The ultimate goal
is to improve the tunnel’s infrastructure so double- stacked container trains—two shipping containers stacked on top of each other—can travel to and from the Port of Baltimore.
Height restrictions within CSX’s Howard Street Tunnel currently prevent the shipment of
double-stacked intermodal containers by rail in and out of the Port. This limitation puts Baltimore at a competitive disadvantage, since all other major East Coast ports have double-stack rail capacity.
“This is something that I talked about since I
first starting running for governor,” Hogan said. “I was going to find a way to get double-stacked trains through this tunnel. This is something we are going to make sure gets done. It’s critically important, not only to the Port of Baltimore and the City of Baltimore,
but for the entire state of Maryland. It can really be transformative to our economy, and have a dramatic effect on the economic development of our state.”
For many years, the cost to reconstruct the Howard Street tunnel to accommodate double-stack intermodal trains was estimated at $1 billion to $3
[18] The Port of Baltimore ■ November/December 2016