INTERMODAL TRANSPORATION A KEY TO PROGRESS

Ask someone to define intermodal transportation and you'll probably get as many answers as people you ask. Despite this obscurity, intermodal transportation plays an important role in our everyday life and economy.

When you purchase an appliance, a TV, VCR or new car in Cape Girardeau, it was most likely shipped here by intermodal transportation. In the grocery store, most of the fresh, out-of-season produce comes to Cape Girardeau via intermodal transportation.

Many local industries and business use intermodal transportation to obtain raw products and ship finished goods to national and international markets.

"Simply defined, intermodal transportation is using more than one mode of transportation to get raw products for manufacturing, and to ship manufactured products or goods to market," explains Allan Maki, executive director of the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority.

Maki says there are three basic modes of transportation.

"We call them the three Rs of intermodal transportation - rail, river, and road. Things move on the river in barges, in rail cars on railroad tracks, and in trailers and containers on roads," he explains. "Each is a different mode or form of transportation that is used in intrastate, interstate, and international commerce."

Closely related with the three Rs are air and pipeline. "Most people do not think of air and pipelines as a mode of transportation because they do not see them as often," Maki continued. "In fact, better than 20 percent of all products in the country move by pipeline, which is really the most efficient mode of transportation once the infrastructure (pipeline, compressor stations, and bulk terminals) are in place. A lot of petroleum products move through pipelines."

All five modes of transportation are located less than three miles from the Southeast Missouri Regional Port Authority's port on the Mississippi River, five miles southeast of Cape Girardeau.

The port authority operates a public dock facility at the port, along with a growing number of tenants located at the port site.

By year's end, the port will be connected with three major railroads (Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Burlington Northern) when it completes construction of the rail spur from the port site to the Scott City-to-Cape Girardeau railroad branch line. The port authority is in final negotiations with the Union Pacific Railroad to purchase the branch line and oper~ate it as a short line railroad.

The port is also connected by road with nearby Interstate 55. Within the next three to four years, a new port road, with direct access to the interstate, via Nash Road, will be opened.

Less than two miles from the port, three major pipelines owned by the Texas Eastern Transmission Corp., cross the Mississippi River. They carry liquid petroleum products and natural and propane compressed gases.

Nearby, the Cape Girardeau Municipal Airport provides air freight service in and out of the port authority area.

"We are extremely fortunate to have all of these modes of transportation within our operating area," Maki said. "It puts us in a very competitive position when attracting industry to our area.

"You have to have two (modes) to dance. After that, anything else is a premium or luxury. And soon we'll have all of five. From a distribution point of view, we're well situated by being in the geographical center of the country, and the fact we can offer different modes of transportation within our operating area."

Maki says intermodal transportation means flexibility being able to utilize more than one form of transportation.

"Combining truck with rail can lower overall transportation costs yet increase the number of locations accessed," he explains. "The same is true for combining water and rail or water and truck transportation. By utilizing more than one mode of transportation, a shipper can put together the most advantageous transportation package."

Maki says the cheapest way to move bulk commodities, such as coal, grain, or fertilizer, is by barge because time is not an important factor. But cargo or products that must get to market as quickly as possible are moved by truck, or in trailers or containers mounted on railroad flat cars.

At one time, only trailer-on-flat cars were available. "Finally, someone got the bright idea it would be a lot cheaper and more efficient not to have the extra weight of the trailer frame, axles and wheels. And that's how the container was born," Maki said. "A container is simply a trailer mounted on a frame with axles and wheels. After the container is loaded, it's transported by truck or rail to the seaport, where the container is lifted off the trailer frame and stacked with hundreds of other containers aboard a container ship destined for international seaports.

"When it arrives, the container is lifted out of the ship, placed back on a trailer frame and taken by rail or truck to its final destination."

Maki says the advantage of containers is that they can be sealed by U.S. Customs at the point of origin and remain sealed until reaching its destination. That avoids lengthy and costly customs inspection delays. Sealed containers deter theft and damage.

"In short, you have a lot more control over the security of pro~ducts moved in a container," he notes.

Maki says container traffic has become one of the most important forms of intermodal transportation in world commerce.

"That's why we're building an intermodal transfer facility near our port within the next one to two years," he said. "We plan to build the facility somewhere between I-55 and the riverport, near our branch railroad line. This will allow us to ship, receive and store containers as they arrive at the facility by truck or rail."

Currently, container traffic from Cape Girardeau must be trucked to St. Louis where it's loaded aboard railroad double stack cars or flat cars for shipment to the nearest seaport. The opposite is true for container shipments destined for the Cape area. "With our intermodal transfer facility near the port, we'll be able to handle incoming and outgoing container traffic and help shippers avoid the extra expense and delay at St. Louis," he said.

While barge container service is now offered by American Commercial Barge Lines between New Orleans and several Ohio River ports in southern Indiana, there is no such service on the Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans. But Maki remains optimistic that as more ports develop intermodal transfer facilities, barge container service may be resumed in the future.

Maki says the development of intermodal transportation in this area will mean two things.

"First, better, cheaper, faster access to goods and markets nationally and internationally along with a reduction in costs of transportation. Second, as we develop the port and our intermodal transportation facility, it will lead to more jobs as industry, and particularly, the distribution businesses, locate in, or near our port facility."

Maki says inter modal transportation is also important to the nation's surface transportation system. "You just can't keep overloading the roads and highways, and neither should we, because there are other modes of transportation available today," he points out.

The federal government is also aware of the importance of intermodal transportation in world competitive markets. Maki says the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1992 recognizes the need for a national intermodal transportation network that can compete with mega-economies that are growing throughout the world. The legislation provides funding for the development of facilities to increase intermodal freight shipments.

"This is going to have to happen in order for transportation efficiency and productivity go up and costs go down," he says.