The state of Georgia today opened the Appalachian Regional Port (ARP), an inland port located in Murray County in Northwest Georgia that directly connects with the Port of Savannah.
The state-of-the-art facility will provide logistics solutions for customers in a four-state region. Officials said the port will remove an estimated 50,000 trucks and 15 million truck miles from local highways annually.
Through intermodal rail service from CSX, the Appalachian Regional Port offers customers across North Georgia, Northeast Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky a more efficient option to move cargo to and from Savannah’s container port. CSX will provide service on a direct, 388-mile rail route to and from the Port of Savannah’s Garden City Terminal.
“The Appalachian Regional Port is a powerful new gateway to the Port of Savannah that extends the efficiencies of Georgia’s superior port operations to new markets,” Gov. Nathan Deal said in a news release. “It will also serve as an economic development magnet, drawing business and industry to the Southeast U.S.”
Three electric rubber-tired gantry cranes will work the new rail terminal. Each has a lift capacity greater than 40 tons and, working together, can handle 100,000 container lifts per year.
