A rail transport extension groundbreaking ceremony was held in Jefferson City on Thursday for the Capital Area Rail Terminal, or CART for short. CART aims to provide industries an easier way to ship and receive goods by rail car versus using a truck.
“As we started to put the project together, we saw opportunities to expand the project and make it available not only for the private industry, but for also other industries within the region and make rail service available to industries that may not have rail service at their locations,” said Paul Samson, CART’s project engineer.
He said the approach is more efficient than using a truck.
“You can put many over the road trucks into a single rail car,” Samson said. “From a, not just fuel efficiency, but there’s trucking shortages all over the country, as well as getting truck traffic off of the highways. It definitely is a better mode of transportation for industrial movement of materials.”
The bid amount for the project is about $4.4 million – $2 million of which is made up from local money and $2.2 million from state and federal grants.
“There won’t be a lot of direct jobs, but we hope to grow the local economy regionally by making transportation more efficient and that by, in turn, should increase the economic activity,” said Samson.
The first phase of the project is scheduled to be finished in 2024.
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