Baltimore breaks ground for double-stacking 126-year-old tunnel in ‘absolute game-changer’

In a move Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called “an absolute game-changer” for East Coast freight transportation, officials broke ground on Nov. 29 on a $466 million expansion of the 126-year-old Howard Street Tunnel underneath Baltimore.

The move, expected to be a boost for rail and intermodal traffic because it will finally allow double-stacking of containers through the Port of Baltimore, will move an estimated 160,000 more containers a year when the project is completed in two years.

“This is an absolute game-changer, not just for Maryland, but for the entire region,” Hogan said in a groundbreaking ceremony. It follows seven years of negotiations between Maryland, CSX and the Federal Railroad Administration.

The $466 million price tag paid for by the state, the federal government and Class I railroad carrier CSX. The funding comes from a variety of sources and is being hailed as one of the largest federal, state and public-private rail partnerships.

In 2020, the Transportation Department awarded Maryland a $125 million grant under its Infrastructure of Rebuilding America Grant Program (INFRA) to increase rail clearances through the tunnel and at 22 bridges between Philadelphia and Baltimore.

The groundbreaking ends nearly a decade of on-again, off-again negotiations between the federal and state governments, CSX Transportation, the Port of Baltimore and others.

Maryland had earlier promised $147 million for the project. CSX, which owns the tunnel and the rail lines, has committed at least $91 million to the project. The remaining $103 million is coming from a variety of sources, including the Port of Baltimore and some large shippers using the port.

The work will be complex. That’s because the 1.4-mile tunnel underneath Baltimore is about 19 inches too short for freight trains to haul the familiar doublestack of containers that are used elsewhere throughout the nation. That limits the number of 58,000-pound containers that can be shipped by rail.

The idea is to lower tracks by about two feet underneath Baltimore where they can. Where they can’t, engineers and workers will employ a technique called “notching.” That allows the top of the tunnel to rise in areas to increase the effective depth of the tunnel.

Officials said the project will generate more than 14,000 jobs.

“We recognize the future of this port, which has so many advantages because we are inland and we are a great location, but we had a bottleneck here because we couldn't double stack, and we had to get that corrected,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.

The tunnel expansion provides a cheaper way to transport freight and reduce congestion along the Interstate 95 corridor with fewer truck diesel emissions to assuage environmentalists.

“Providing them with a new, modernized infrastructure and promoting the utilization of the most environmentally friendly of land transportation available kind of checks all the boxes on everything everybody is talking about,” CSX CEO Jim Foote said.

Baltimore ranked as the 14th busiest port by volume in LM’s latest rankings. But its 8.3% compound annual growth rate makes Baltimore one of the biggest growing ports in the nation and an attractive gateway to major East Coast cities.

For decades, Port of Baltimore shippers have been denied the efficiency of double-stack railroad use out of the port, which last year moved more than 10 million tons of freight for the third straight year. In 2020, Baltimore moved 11 million tons through its port—double the volume the Port of Baltimore handled in 2005.

“It's not about numbers on a page. It's about the difference it makes in everyday lives,” Federal Railroad Administrator Deputy Administrator Amit Bose said.