VP Biden to talk freight during Memphis visit
Vice P re sident Joe Biden will travel to Memphis nex t Wednesday to highlight work on Norfolk Southern’s Crescent Corridor freight-rail project.
Biden’s stop in Memphis is one of three he will be making from the Mississippi Delta to the headwaters of the Mississippi River to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the American Recovery and Rein- vestment Act.
T he re cover y ac t , which President Barack Oba ma si g ned into law just one month after taking office, was a st i mulus pac kage passed in response to the Great Recession. It dumped billions of dollars into infrastructure, education, health, energy and other projects across the country.
The Crescent Corridor Intermodal Freight Rail Project received a $105 million federal transportation grant under the recovery act.
The project is a $2. 5 billion plan to upgrade a 2, 500-mile, New Orlea ns-to-New Jersey network by 2020, ta k i ng 1 . 3 million trucks a year off highways. The project spa ns 1 3 states and will have intermodal facilities in Memphis and Birmingham, Alabama.
The ti me a nd location of Biden’s Memphis visit are still being finalized, the vice president’s office said Thursday.
Biden will be making two other stops to highlight projects that received funding under the recovery act.
The day he comes to Memphis, the vice president also will visit the Port of New Orleans, which received $16 million to help support a larger $26 million project to rebuild a rail yard at the Louisiana terminal.
The next day, Feb. 18, Biden will travel to St. Paul, Minnesota, which received a $35 million grant for a multimodal rail and transit hub in the city’s downtown area.