(The following article by Phil Pitchford was posted on the Press-Enterprise website on December 6.)
LOS ANGELES — Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., which operates a rail-yard in San Bernardino and soon will need another one, is trying to become the rail provider at a new international cargo unloading facility at the Port of Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners will likely choose between BNSF and rival Union Pacific for the cargo hub. The commissioners approved the 157-acre facility last month and hope to complete it as early as mid-2007.
The new dockside facility would make BNSF more efficient and eliminate about a million truck trips from Interstate 710 near an existing BNSF loading facility, said Lena Kent, a company spokeswoman in San Bernardino.
The $130 million facility would be built by the city of Los Angeles and leased to either railroad, according to the commission. It could handle up to 600,000 container lifts a year.
The new venture would not affect BNSF’s Inland expansion needs because the dockside facility would handle international cargo, Kent said. The Inland expansion need centers around how the railroad handles domestic cargo, she said.
BNSF, which has offices in San Bernardino, has been pursuing a dockside facility for more than a year, in Los Angeles and Long Beach, Kent said.
Getting the facility would relieve pressure at BNSF’s Hobart facility in the Commerce area. That facility handles about 1.3 million containers a year, making it the busiest intermodal facility in the U.S., but it is reaching its capacity. The facility could create up to 1,000 jobs.
“We need it immediately,” Kent said. “It would allow us to handle the forecasted growth that is projected at the ports.”
Union Pacific spokesman John Bromley did not say if his company would compete for the all or part of the business there.
“I know there has been a lot of discussion about that,” he said.
BNSF would likely have an edge because it handles most of the intermodal containers in Southern California, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
The volume of containers coming into the ports is expected to skyrocket due to increased international trade, growth of the regional economy and the advent of larger cargo ships.
“This would make it (BNSF) very efficient and should speed up the traffic flow,” Kyser said.