Billy Townsend has a post up digging deeper into some of the major numbers associated with the CSX project. He's looking at three things: Jobs, Truck Traffic and Rail Traffic.

First off, are the jobs numbers inflated, or more specifically do they not accurately reflect the direct impact of the project? If you want to see a copy of the CSX job projections click here.

But that number – 8,500—requires quite a bit of context. As CSX’s projections make clear, the 300-acre train-to-truck yard, which makes up the first phase of the project, will employ 200 people when it’s built, likely in 2009. Another 1,800 jobs are projected for the 900-acre second phase, which will consist mostly of warehouse and office space operated by companies that rent from CSX. That’s it for direct employment at the center.

If you’re counting, that brings us to 2,000 mostly warehouse jobs. That would make the CSX center a top-15 Polk employer, but not the giant suggested by 8,500 jobs.

So where are the other 6,500 jobs?

They are far more theoretical. CSX labels them as “employment outside the park.” They are either employees of suppliers for companies located in the park, or “employees whose work depends on income generated directly or indirectly at the park.” CSX uses restaurant and convenience store workers as examples of that second group

Next up is traffic, both truck and rail. Since this is an intermodal facility there will be a great deal of trucking going into and out of the facility. There are traffic impact numbers for Hwy. 60, but no other roads.

They were not required to – and didn’t – project impact on U.S. 27 or U.S. 98 (Bartow Road). Those two highways are virtually the only logical way for a truck to get from S.R. 60 to the Polk Parkway or Interstate 4. Several stretches of U.S. 98 are considered failing today.

That 1,150 does not include the traffic that would be generated by the second, more warehouse-intensive phase of the project.

Finally rail traffic. If you remember from yesterday's post, the E/W rail corridor from Lakeland to Auburndale might see an increase in rail traffic, how much? Nobody knows.

Nowhere in the project or development files could I find a detailed projection of train traffic. No one I’ve talked to about this, from CSX officials to Lakeland officials to Pete Chichetto, who is shepherding the project for the city of Winter Haven, has been able to lay out the train traffic impact on central Lakeland, which appears to be on the main approach line to the center, or even to the center itself.

In the next few weeks we should hopefully see some of these answers come to light.