Economic Perspective: CSx Comes to Eastern North Carolina

MARY WALDEN:

“Today’s program looks at CSx coming to eastern North Carolina. Mike, there was a major economic development about an intermodal transportation facility coming to eastern North Carolina, specifically Edgecombe county. Why is this significant?

MIKE WALDEN:

“Well this is a big deal. Specifically, this is called an inland port, and what it’ll do is it’ll take cargo that’s specifically coming up I-95, stop at the inland port and it’ll then be resorted for shipment from final destination. The estimates are that this could be big could for eastern North Carolina when you include secondary and supplier jobs, maybe up to fifteen hundred jobs.”

“And this is exactly what eastern North Carolina needs; the Rocky Mount, Wilson and Edgecombe county area has really never recovered fully from the Recession. So this is very good news. The reason this is happening is it’s all due to the expanded Panama Canal. The expanded Panama Canal, which actually came on line this year, is allowing large cargo ships now to come to east coast ports.”

“They used to have to dock in the Los Angeles, Long Beach, Seattle and then ship across country by truck. We’re not necessarily going to get much of that. Charleston will get a lot of this new cargo. It’ll be offloaded onto trucks, and again, then moved up and down the east coast. So then this inland port makes sense. So this is a major, major economic development for North Carolina, specifically eastern North Carolina. Hopefully, we’ll start to move things onto the upside in that area.”