BNSF: KC rail project good for the environment

Written by Brad Cooper - Kansas City Star Friday, 11 September 2025 00:00

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — BNSF Railway today started to mount a public relations campaign against public comments that sugggest its proposed rail yard for Johnson County would make Kansas City's air pollution problems worse.

Here's a snippet of the letter sent today to PrimeBuzz as well as The Kansas City Star's editorial page.

"If the new intermodal facility is not built, overall air quality will suffer as new freight demand in a growing KC market would be forced to move to and from the area by truck alone.

"Rail is three times as fuel efficient as trucks and can help significantly reduce emissions compared to the all-truck alternative. That is why new intermodal facilities such as this are so important to develop. They can enable areas such as Kansas City to grow and become greener by harnessing both the environmental efficiencies of rail and the door-to-door flexibility of trucks."

Last week, PrimeBuzz report that air quality experts at the Mid-America Regional Council said emissions from the rail yard would worsen our already bad ozone problems.

The view is shared by some national environmental groups and Johnson County has hinted as much in a letter it sent to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is now deciding whether to give the project the needed environmental clearances.

A preliminary report from the corps has already indicated that the project would not significantly harm the environment, but that contention is being hotly contested by national environmental groups.

Meanwhile, rail yard critic Eric Kirkendall continues to battle the railroad, arguing that the preliminary federal report vastly unederestimated the capacity at the intermodal site.

He said the report bases its conclusion on a number of crane lifts (i.e. moving container from train to truck for instance) that are much smaller in scope that what BNSF predicted for the project. Kirkendall is essentially insinuating that the pollution will be much worse than what the corps predicts.

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