Surface Transportation

Seasonal demand increases likely won’ t be enough to push truckload pricing out of a three-year rut Shutterstock. com

CSX restarts Baltimore tunnel service for double-stack in 2026

By Ari Ashe

As of Sept. 26, out-of-service( OOS) orders had been issued for 5,006 out of 12,055 violations issued to drivers year to date for failing to meet English-language proficiency( ELP) standards, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration( FMCSA). In comparison, about 31,000 OOS orders were issued for driving without a valid CDL.

The total number of OOS orders issued during roadside inspections for all types of driver violations to date in 2025 is 202,257. State officials have issued 873,977 violations.

Since June, the FMCSA has viewed an ELP violation as an out-of-service violation, except for drivers operating within the commercial zone along the US-Mexico border. The Department of Transportation( DOT) has been investigating state issuance of non-domiciled CDLs and intensified a crackdown on those licenses in September.

Although estimates of the number of drivers who could be disqualified by the crackdown on licensing and English-language skills range as high as 200,000 or more, exact numbers for unqualified, illegal or non-Englishspeaking drivers are, not surprisingly, hard to come by. Enforcement to date has not had a direct impact on the overall market.

The crackdown may be having an impact in specific lanes, notably outbound lanes from Southern California and westbound lanes from crossing points along the US-Mexico border.

“ You might be seeing an impact in some of the markets that have a higher propensity for non-domiciled drivers,” ITS’ Brashier said, noting California in particular.

Brashier said ITS has seen capacity tighten in long-haul lanes— those more than 500 miles— while short-haul capacity has been more readily available.“ We’ re having no problem [ finding capacity ] in intra-Texas lanes,” he said.

But that could reflect existing trends toward more regional freight, rather than a loss of non-domiciled CDL drivers.

email: bill. cassidy @ spglobal. com

www. joc. com

The restart of CSX Transportation services through the Howard Street Tunnel in late September put the railroad back on track to offer double-stack container services to and from Baltimore by the second quarter of next year.

The nearly $ 500 million project will still require additional work on two bridges before trains can carry containers stacked two high along the Interstate 95 corridor and between the Port of Baltimore and the Midwest. But reopening the tunnel on Sept. 26 removed the chokepoint that had slowed freight flows since its closure on Feb. 1.

“ The tunnel opens up for us options all the way from the Southeast to the Northeast and across to Chicago,” CSX CEO Joe Hinrichs told the Journal of Commerce.“ Doublestacking opens up between 75,000 and 125,000 new container opportunities once everything is finished.”

“ The tunnel opens up options all the way from the Southeast to the Northeast and across to Chicago.”

The official reopening of the Howard Street Tunnel ends a turbulent nine-month stretch for CSX. During the closure, its East Coast network was effectively cut in half.

Trains from the Northeast stopped at the Port of Baltimore, then truckers drayed containers across the city to the Curtis Bay terminal where new trains were constructed to the Southeast. Trains from the Southeast did the reverse to access the Northeast.

The reopened Howard Street Tunnel should immediately eliminate 24 hours from transit times, CSX said. It also marks the end of a four-year construction project to raise the vertical clearance in the tunnel built in the 1890s.

New possibilities

Through its double-stack service, CSX will be better positioned to compete with trucking and rival Norfolk Southern Railway between Atlanta and key Northeast markets such as Harrisburg( Chambersburg), Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; and Newark, New Jersey, three highvolume freight lanes.

The completion of the project opens an opportunity for CSX to collaborate with BNSF Railway via a

November 3, 2025 | Journal of Commerce 41