President and CEO of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce

Kathleen Snyder is president and chief executive officer of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.  Her organization, the leading statewide advocate for Maryland’s business community, represents 860 member companies that employ more than 442,000 people.  Snyder, a chamber executive for more than 20 years in Virginia and Maryland, also serves on the board of directors of the American Chamber of Commerce Executives.

Question:

How will improvements to Norfolk Southern’s 2,500-mile Crescent Corridor rail network enhance the transportation supply chain for Maryland’s business community?

Answer:

One of the great opportunities I see is that the Crescent Corridor will open up different markets for Maryland to export some of its products, and also offer us the ability to import goods at less cost and in a more environmentally friendly way.  A lot of the retail, grocery, and restaurant operations in Maryland are currently using other means of transportation, particularly trucks, on our roads.  The Crescent Corridor actually will help divert almost 1 million loaded, long-haul trucks off of Maryland interstates and highways. That will help reduce congestion, it will help improve the quality of life, and it will provide a more efficient means of getting our goods to market, both in Maryland and throughout the southeastern and northeastern United States.  If you look downstream, it saves everybody money.  The other piece of the Crescent Corridor is its tie in to sustainability. Taking so many trucks off our highways will significantly reduce carbon emissions and the carbon footprint of transportation – not just in Maryland but also along the entire Crescent Corridor. That is very appealing to the business community here, because we all recognize that there is more we need to do to further improve our environment.

Really, this project is a no brainer. We have to look at using alternative means to cars and trucks on our roads, and freight rail options are a very important mix to our transportation network, in Maryland and across the country. The Maryland chamber supports this kind of public-private transportation project because there are a lot of win-wins. We need to bring our transportation infrastructure up to 21st century standards, and that is what Norfolk Southern is trying to do.

Question:

As part of its Crescent Corridor improvements, Norfolk Southern plans to build a new intermodal terminal facility in Greencastle, Pa., located in Franklin County near the border of western Maryland. What kind of benefits do you see for Maryland businesses and residents?

Answer:

Hagerstown/Washington County, Md., is just a few miles away across the state line, and the rail corridor also more or less parallels Interstate 81 going up through West Virginia and Maryland into Pennsylvania. So this terminal will open up some new economic development opportunities for the western part of Maryland. Hagerstown/Washington County already has a number of manufacturing and warehousing transportation hubs for a variety of regional and national employers. We believe this rail terminal will create even more employment opportunities that otherwise would have been more difficult if this project had not come forward. It will help employ more people in western Maryland, where there are areas, such as Allegany County, that have a much higher rate of unemployment than in the Washington/Baltimore corridor.