The Indiana Rail Road Co. announced Wednesday that it has partnered with a Canadian company to construct an intermodal terminal at its downtown Indianapolis location.

Indiana Rail Road and the Canadian National Railway Co. said the terminal should be operational in June, giving Indiana importers and exporters an all-rail option for products moving to and from Asia in containers.

The intermodal terminal will be located at its existing transload terminal on Senate Avenue near Lucas Oil Stadium. Transload facilities transfer cargo between train and truck or vice versa.

In contrast, an intermodal facility allows containers of cargo to be transferred between trains, or from truck, instead of the cargo itself.

“This is a great day for Indianapolis-area importers and exporters who for years have asked for all-rail, direct-West Coast intermodal service to the city,” IRR president and CEO Tom Hoback said in a prepared statement. “Anyone who drives Interstate 65 between Indianapolis and Chicago knows what a bottleneck it is.”

Indiana Rail Road closed its downtown facility five years ago amid the recession but reopened it last year. The private company owns 500 miles of rail and hauls the equivalent of more than 800,000 truckloads annually.

Canadian National Railway serves the Port of Vancouver and the Port of Prince Rupert and a range of container shipping lines that offer scheduled service from all major Asian ports.