ExpressRail Staten Island, the ship-to-rail facility serving New York Container Terminal, completed a successful first year by moving more than 44,000 containers by rail and removing approximately 70,000 trucks from local roads, including the Goethals Bridge, reports the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Successful first year for Staten Island rail link

The US$26m facility was built on a 39-acre parcel of land on a former Procter & Gamble site, which was purchased by the Port Authority in December 2000. It consists of five tracks linked to the reactivated Staten Island Railroad. Containers loaded onto rail cars are transported via the Staten Island Railroad to the Conrail Main Line in Elizabeth (NJ), which connects with the nation’s rail freight network. Opened in June 2007, it can handle up to 100,000 containers per year.

ExpressRail terminals handled 358,043 cargo containers in total in 2007, an increase of approximately 20,000 over the previous record of 338,882 in 2006. In the past seven years, the number of containers transported by rail from the Port of New York and New Jersey has more than doubled.