Mid-Willamette Valley Intermodal Center Opens
MILLERSBURG—On December 15th, Governor Brown, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), Linn County Economic Development Group (LEDG), and ITS ConGlobal celebrated the grand opening of a new intermodal center that that will alleviate transportation challenges in the Willamette Valley and Central / Southern Oregon.
The Mid-Willamette Valley Intermodal Center (MVIC) is a truck/rail intermodal facility. The MVIC supports transitioning truck volume to environmentally friendly rail, and provides shippers competitive options for receiving imports and exporting their products to international markets.
At the ceremony, Governor Kate Brown spoke about the impact on Oregon “it will take our trucks, although we love our trucks, off highways in congested areas including Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma regions helping to reduce bottlenecks and greenhouse gases in the Pacific Northwest.”
ITS ConGlobal is the operator of the 64-acre property owned by the Albany-Millersburg Economic Development Corp and is located in the town of Millersburg, just north of Albany. The terminal features three train tracks, a gantry cranes and other material handling equipment to transfer containers between trucks and railcars. The center expects to handle 40,000 containers a year.
CEO Brant Ring noted, “this has been a great example of the private and public sectors working collaboratively for the stakeholders they serve. Our terminal experts have enjoyed working with the extended project team, and we appreciate the support from the Union Pacific and the Northwest Seaport Alliance.”
“This is a first-of-its-kind project for us at ODOT and for the legislatively directed Connect Oregon program,” shared ODOT Director Kris Strickler. “We have never developed a major freight intermodal transfer hub. Connect Oregon has never taken a site used for something else and turned it into a non-highway funded transportation facility.”
Linn County Commissioner Roger Nyquist shared with the nearly 200 attendees, “Our region has a long history of producing products that are beneficial to people around the world, from two-by-fours to the food people put on their dinner plates,” Nyquist said. “This intermodal facility increases the likelihood that producers of these products will have ample transportation access to those markets which use them long into the future.”
Potential shippers using the facility include Karla Chambers and her family’s company Stahlbush Island Farms. Karla spoke at the ceremony and emphasized, “with diesel costs going up, labor costs going up, we need to help our customers get their prices down. This will make all of us in the Willamette Valley more competitive.”
