BNSF moving ahead with Kansas City area intermodal/logistics hub

BNSF moving ahead with Kansas City area intermodal/logistics hub    The Kansas City Area Development Council said Thursday that a BNSF Railway intermodal facility and accompanying logistics park is moving forward, with officials from the railroad presenting economic and environmental studies to state and local officials.
   The intermodal facility, which would be located in Gardner, Kan., would 'solidify our metro area as a major distribution hub and an important link in the international logistics chain,' KCADC said in an e-mail to investors.
   'The BNSF investment and those investments that will be made as the logistics park develops may reach $1 billion in the next 20 years,' the e-mail said. 'BNSF and other companies will develop more than 1,000 acres south of Gardner. The project and its warehouse spin-offs promise to bring huge economic benefits to the region by creating thousands of new jobs and hundreds of millions in new taxes.'
   BNSF’s rail route through Gardner is the busiest intermodal route in the country, according to KCADC, serving a 2,200-mile route that goes from Los Angeles to Chicago and handles the bulk of BNSF’s service from goods coming in from Asia. Today BNSF transports hundreds of thousands of containers through Gardner. In the future those same containers will stop short of Gardner, be offloaded and distributed, potentially creating economic benefit for the Kansas City region.