Top BNSF executive highlights region at freight conference

St. Louis Regional Freightway’s Executive Director Mary Lamie St. Louis Regional Freightway’s Executive Director Mary Lamie Photo: Submitted Photo|For The Telegraph Photo: Submitted Photo|For The Telegraph Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Top BNSF executive highlights region at freight conference 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Transportation experts from around the metropolitan region, including several Metro East representatives, gathered in Downtown St. Louis recently to gain insight from a top BNSF Railway executive.

BNSF Railway Executive Chairman Matthew Rose expounded the advantages of the greater St. Louis market Wednesday as the keynote speaker at the St. Louis Regional Freightway’s second annual summit, which focused largely on railroad issues. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. is the parent company of the BNSF Railway (formerly the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway). The railroad is now wholly owned by Berkshire Hathaway, which is controlled by investor Warren Buffett.

The summit also included insight shared by America’s Central Port’s Executive Director Dennis Wilmsmeyer, located in Granite City, and St. Louis Regional Freightway Executive Director Mary Lamie.

Rose — who according to some business analysts is a likely successor to Buffet — said the St. Louis region is poised to become one of the nation’s chief shipping hubs.

“Growth in a region’s freight economy is rarely by accident or natural advantage alone,” he said. “But, I have to tell you, St. Louis with six Class 1 railroads, the river and airports, it truly is quite unique around our country.”

Lamie expressed a similar take.

“Our greatest resource is our location in the center of the U.S., our strategic location on the Mississippi River, our multi-modal freight network, our skilled workforce,” she said.

Lamie said she was focused on gaining national recognition as a national and global premier freight hub, and secondly on maximizing infrastructure dollars through public-private partnerships.

Both Rose and Lamie discussed infrastructure decay. Rose explained it endangered the ability of the region to maintain a strong economy. Forty percent of jobs in greater St. Louis are dependent on freight transport, Rose said.

Lamie noted that one of Freightway’s chief priorities is to retrofit the Merchants Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River between Granite City and north St. Louis. The bridge, which is almost 130 years old, has a span which needs to be replaced. While the bridge is double tracked, only one train at a time can cross due to the old span.

Rose also spoke about the issues the bridge is creating for his railroad, as well as Amtrak’s new high speed line to Chicago. Merchants Bridge is operated by the St. Louis Terminal Railroad Association, which is, in part, owned by BNSF Railway.

“Merchants Bridge is a great example of (infrastructure decay),” he said. “The railroads spend billions of dollars to increase capacity across their lines, but a single bridge over the Mississippi River in need of an upgrade means that the capacity of St. Louis and elsewhere can be reduced.”

But Rose warned against spending indiscriminately on infrastructure. He said it could unbalance the free market. Rose is particularly concerned about federal spending on highways, which he said unfairly subsidizes the trucking industry. Improvements to the highway system should be funded through user fees, namely gas taxes, he said.

Freight railroads, he pointed out, are entirely maintained through private funding, so non-user fee funding puts railways at a competitive disadvantage. Gas taxes once funded 90 percent of highway maintenance, but today that figure has fallen to 70 percent and is still dropping due to inflation, he said. Rose blamed former President Barack Obama for not taking action on the issue.

“What’s happened in our country is, we’ve lost sight of the fact that the gas tax truly is a user fee,” Rose said. “When President Obama came into office, he promised not to raise any taxes on anybody making less than $200,000.”

Rose said the administration worried that people would conflate the gas tax with a tax increase, and refused to act.

Rose noted that he was impressed by the St. Louis region’s willingness to work with his company.

“All this does take planning and a commitment to grow,” he said. “We actually operate in many places where freight projects can’t get approved.”

Wilmsmeyer noted that with marine shipping, things are looking up as well, especially with greater cooperation between St. Louis and New Orleans shippers.

“Reinforcing our relationship with shippers and carriers to the gulf port, like the Port of New Orleans, is just the beginning of our region’s effort at promoting St. Louis as the transportation hub of the nation,” he said.

Reach Alex Heeb at 618-208-6451 or on Twitter @alexheebs