(The following article by Eric Johnson was posted on the Long Beach Press-Telegram website on April 14.)
LONG BEACH, Calif. — As the Alameda Corridor celebrates its third year in operation, the public agency that governs the expressway connecting Southland ports to Los Angeles plans to release a report that shows the line’s effect on air pollution and traffic congestion.
To coincide with the anniversary, the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority’s governing board will release a report today detailing the line’s effectiveness in shifting cargo headed east of the Southland from trucks to trains.
The number of containers moved through the corridor has increased 33.9 percent since the 2002 opening, from 4,117 containers per day in the first year to 5,514 in the last, according to the ACTA report.
That increase roughly shadows the three-year rise in the number of cargo containers moving through the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, together the nation’s busiest port complex.
The report also touts the savings in air pollution the corridor has produced by keeping old diesel trucks off the Long Beach (710) Freeway.
In its first three years, 49 tons of particulate matter (PM) tiny particles of soot caused primarily by diesel combustion were removed.
To put that in perspective, it’s estimated by the South Coast Air Quality Management District that diesel container ships alone produce about 1,100 tons of PM locally each year. Over the three years, about 1,169 tons of nitrogen oxides were eliminated by operations at the corridor, about equal to about one day of nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions in the basin.
The South Coast basin exceeds federal air quality standards for both PM and NOx, both of which are produced in abundance by port-related sources, such as diesel trucks, ships and trains.
Containers hauled by train emit less pollution per mile traveled than those hauled by truck, according to a study last year by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Coalition for Clean Air.
While the corridor has been beneficial in cutting pollution that advantage may one day not be true, said Gail Ruderman Feuer, head of the NRDC’s Southern California air pollution program, .
“Our fear is that in the future, rail won’t have that advantage because trucks are getting cleaner and trains are not,” Feuer said. “Between 2007 and 2010, we’re going to see a 90 to 95 percent reduction in pollution in new trucks. But there’s no comparable rule for cutting train emissions.”
The benefits of the corridor are more tangible in the form of reduced truck trips on the 710 and Harbor (110) Freeway. A typical train using the corridor pulls 150 to 250 containers, meaning that many less trucks are required to haul containers up the 710.
From a helicopter tour provided by ACTA on Wednesday, it was easy to see how Southern California’s rail lines intertwine like the last few noodles at the bottom of a bowl of spaghetti.
Tracks owned by Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe overlap those used by Amtrak and Metrolink in improbably convoluted curves.
But set within that tangle of tracks is the 20-mile corridor’s arrow-straight stretch a subterranean freight rail expressway.
With revenue increasing 17.3 percent its first year and 12.5 percent the second year, the ACTA is now focused on a series of goods movement projects expected to further speed the flow of goods through the Southland and reduce air pollution.
In September or October, three terminal operators in the ports will pilot test a shuttle train system, which is intended to move cargo eventually headed for warehouses east of Los Angeles County by train straight from the docks. The shuttle train will use existing Union Pacific tracks to loop from train yards in Commerce to the Inland Empire and back.
“If a box is destined for Chicago, there’s no mystery. It’s going by train,” said Art Goodwin, ACTA’s director of planning. “But if it’s destined for a warehouse in Ontario, right now it could go by train or on a truck chassis.”
The shuttle train system would take a larger percentage of those containers, he said.
The corridor authority is also proposing a series of truck depots in Commerce and the Inland Empire to mesh with a plan to open container terminals at night. The plan, called PierPass, is set to begin in June and is designed to encourage cargo owners to move their shipments out of the ports when freeway traffic is at its lightest.
The depots would basically serve as overnight storage areas for containers trucked out of the ports during off-peak hours, because warehouses often aren’t open at night.
The corridor is being used at roughly 40 percent of its capacity, but officials have long said it was designed to meet future rail demand. Construction of a new BNSF intermodal container transfer facility and expansion of a Union Pacific one is expected to increase corridor usage.
Also called near-dock yards, the transfer facilities take containers hauled a short distance by trucks and put them on trains headed for other parts of the country.