At the John Locke Foundation, we’ve been keeping an eye on the proposed CSX Intermodal Terminal planned for Rocky Mount for the past couple years. Carolina Journal has been reporting on the story, too.
In November, there were rumors that the project might be dead. Now it’s sounding even more like that may be the case, with the CEO of CSX saying this week that he doesn’t see the company “needing to spend any significant money in the next few years, at least in the foreseeable future as far as I’m concerned, on things like expanding terminals.”
Given that the project was supposed to cost $272 million, his statement would seem to rule it out.
And yet, the state’s already spent at least $4 million on luring the project. This is yet another example of the pitfalls of spending taxpayer money to bribe companies into doing these sorts of projects in a particular area. As Raleigh enters into round two with Amazon, and as the state considers numerous other corporate welfare projects, they should keep the CSX Intermodal Hub in mind, and beware.
