LOS ANGELES — Running through a traffic-clogged area on this city’s south side is a brand-new $2.4 billion public works project that was completed on time, on budget, with only a moderate amount of federal money, with almost no public opposition and with a huge economic and environmental payback, the Washington Post reports.
It is the Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile rail freight line designed to transport shipping containers out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The new line handles containers previously trucked over the clogged Long Beach Freeway or city streets, or over three other circuitous and congested rail lines. Because half the line runs through a trench sunk beneath Alameda Street, it will eventually eliminate more than 200 grade crossings, where trains have previously blocked automobile traffic for hours a day.
At the line’s dedication last month, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta called the Alameda Corridor “a powerful example of what we want to encourage” throughout the country. Cities and states are studying the project as a possible model for reducing urban congestion, particularly the growth in truck traffic on urban freeways.
But what largely interests easterners with these problems is how the project was funded: Rather than relying too heavily on state and federal money, every player with an economic interest in the corridor was willing to pay something to gain advantages — the ports to retain their No. 1-in-the-nation status, the city to protect its economy, and the railroads to gain badly needed capacity to move freight. Local communities agreed to the chaos of construction knowing that the end result would eliminate grade crossings and gridlock.
“Alameda is like the perfect project,” said Mort Downey, former U.S. deputy transportation secretary, now a consultant with Parsons Brinckerhoff.
The corridor is “a phenomenal example of cooperation that will solidify California’s position as the country’s No. 1 trade corridor,” said California Gov. Gray Davis (D).
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contributed $394 million, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority $347 million, and the state and federal governments $130 million in direct grants. The largest contribution was $1.16 billion in revenue bonds sold by the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, a joint powers agency formed by the cities and ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Such agencies can be created by state law and given broad powers to raise money, but generally have not been allowed in eastern states.
Some $400 million in federal highway funds, separately earmarked years earlier, was used for street and highway overpasses, and the federal government loaned the project $400 million.
The bonds and the federal loan — which together account for 65 percent of the total cost — will be paid off by the railroads and shipping lines with fees of $15 for every loaded container that uses the corridor, and lesser fees for other types of rail cars and empty containers.
That effectively makes the Alameda Corridor a form of toll road. Airports are also usually built with bonds, then paid off by user fees. But such a mechanism has almost never been used for freight railroads, which are all privately owned profit-making ventures that have, until recently, received no federal or state money.
However, with truck congestion growing ever worse, especially in urban areas, government planners have been looking at the possibility of putting more trucks on trains — even as railroads have found it impossible to raise the necessary capital in the private market to sufficiently increase capacity.
That, planners say, is why the Alameda Corridor is a worthy model. It was certainly born of an extreme case of congestion.
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, locally called the San Pedro Bay ports, are the largest in the country. About 35 percent of all shipping containers entering or leaving the United States pass through here. And they go everywhere: An estimated 60 percent of all imports destined for the Chicago area enter through the San Pedro ports. Of the $97.3 billion a year in trade generated by the ports, about $14.9 billion comes or goes from the Atlantic Coast states.
As the shipping volume has increased, so has the logistical problem of getting the goods from the port to their eventual destinations. Rail traffic out of the ports tied up automobiles at grade crossings; and since the trains, like the cars, often sat still waiting for congestion to clear, even more pollutants were spewed into the air.
Truck traffic, meanwhile, grew even faster as trucks not only made local deliveries but transferred shipping containers from the ports to the rail yards just east of downtown Los Angeles.
Particularly hard-hit was Interstate 710, the Long Beach Freeway. More than half the 34,000 daily truck trips in and out of the port used I-710, and the freeway has had the highest truck accident rate in the state.
That kind of traffic tie-up encouraged public acceptance of the Alameda Corridor. Promoters also undertook an outreach program to prove to citizens that the corridor was vital to the ports, and the ports were vital to the economy of Southern California. About one in 15 jobs in Southern California is directly tied to international trade passing through the port, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation.
“What the Alameda Corridor has done is to lock up the San Pedro ports to be the largest ports in the nation, at least for the next generation,” said Ted Prince, a shipping consultant in Richmond, Va., and vice chairman of the Intermodal Transportation Institute in Denver.
But the benefits don’t stop at the state line. “Anybody with half a brain recognizes this is a major thing for the economy as a whole,” said Jack Basso, director of management and business development for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. “Yes, it’s California, but it benefits the whole country to the Midwest core, where it’s going.”
The funding package was completed in 1997, and construction began that April. When ground was broken for the mid-corridor trench in December 1998, the authority promised the project would be completed by April 2002. And it was: Trains began using the corridor on April 15.
The environmental benefits of the corridor are impressive. According to studies done for the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, motorists will save 15,000 hours a day waiting at crossings. With trains moving faster and not stopping as much, railroad emissions are projected to drop 28 percent, and noise and vibration to drop by 90 percent as trains run deep in the ground instead of at street level.
Jeff Morales, director of the California Transportation Department, said the state is also looking into other ways to enable the port to grow and thrive, including dedicated freeway truck lanes and new rail projects.
“The Alameda Corridor is a critical element of a much broader agenda,” said Morales.