Surface Transportation
joint-line service from Southern California to Philadelphia and Newark, as it has done to Atlanta for nearly two decades, and the company recently expanded to Charlotte and Jacksonville.
It also opens the possibility for BNSF and CSX to create a joint single-line service from Southern California to Philadelphia and Newark in the future. Opening a double-stack option through Baltimore would allow BNSF and CSX to avoid routing cargo through upstate New York, making the service viable even in winter months.
International intermodal service from the Port of Baltimore will also become more competitive with the Port of New York and New Jersey and Port of Virginia, which already offer double-stack service. Because Baltimore is farther inland than neighboring ports, the transit times to Chicago and the Ohio Valley are shorter.
“ It’ s hard to imagine that this tunnel could be such a chokepoint,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen( D-Md.) told the Journal of Commerce.“ It’ s been constricting the amount of cargo that we can bring out of the Port of Baltimore, but now we can double the throughput [ to ] 160,000 containers annually, and that’ s important for us to compete in international trade.”
On Sept. 25, CSX also reopened the Blue Ridge subdivision on the Tennessee-North Carolina border, which was significantly damaged during Hurricane Helene in
September 2024. The first coal train moved through the region ahead of a ceremony scheduled for Oct. 2.
Since the hurricane, trains from Alabama, Florida and Georgia have been detoured to Nashville, Tennessee, before turning back east to the Carolinas.
“ It’ s hard to imagine this tunnel could be such a chokepoint.”
The Howard Street Tunnel and Blue Ridge subdivision shuttered two of CSX’ s four north-south routes. CSX’ s service suffered in the first quarter before the railroad implemented workarounds last spring.
“ We learned that if we focus, work together with our customers and our internal team, we can get around these obstacles and still deliver a strong service product,” Hinrichs said.“ Now that we open these routes back up, it gives us even more fluidity to our network, and it unleashes us to even run better.”
email: ari. ashe @ spglobal. com
Closing the Howard Street Tunnel( pictured) effectively cut CSX’ s East Coast network in half for nine months. Baltimore Sun / Contributor / Getty Images
42 Journal of Commerce | November 3, 2025 www. joc. com