(The following article by Nisha Gutierrez and Ben Baeder was posted on the San Gabriel Valley Tribune website on October 3.)
SAN GABRIEL, Calif. — By the year 2020, freight trains up to 1 1/2 miles long will roll through the area every nine minutes –twice as often as they do now.
Ever get stuck for 10 minutes waiting for a train as long as 26 football fields to pass?
“Personally, I hate waiting for the train,” said Clarissa Hernandez, an insurance broker at Delgado’s Insurance Services at Sunset Avenue and Valley Boulevard in La Puente. “But from a business standpoint, I love it. People get stuck on the street waiting for trains, and they turn into the parking lot to cut over to Valley. And they drive right by the office. I’ve got a lot of customers that way.”
If the economy in Asia keeps booming, Hernandez’s customer base might keep expanding.
The amount of product — much of it Chinese-made goods –moving through the Southland from ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach is expected to increase from $230 billion in 2000 to $661 billion in 2020, according to Keith Higginbotham, multimedia manager for the Port of Long Beach.
Although that means cheap DVD players, shoes and clothes for Americans, it also means that, if no major improvements are made, those in the area are going to have to suffer through maddening traffic as trains and trucks carry cargo to the rest of the country.
Gridlock in the area is expected to be so bad, the federal government has made improving traffic flow a spending priority, according to Rep. Gary Miller, R-Brea.
The San Gabriel Valley solution to the gloomy traffic forecast is the Alameda Corridor East (ACE) Construction Authority — a $950 million project to upgrade safety signals and to route trains under, over and around the area’s 20 busiest train/vehicle intersections.
That comes to about $3.25 for every person in the United States.
When the project is completed, Valley residents will spend less time waiting for trains, and more cargo will travel by rail, instead of trucks, which should ease gridlock and reduce smog, according to ACE.
“We are trying to customize the railroads and the streets to make them easier to drive through and essentially to keep people safe when the trains are going by,” said Rick Richmond, ACE chief executive officer. The project began in 1998 and ACE officials estimate they are coming close to halfway done.
The initial phases have proceeded smoothly, according to ACE officials.
ACE has completed $32 million worth of safety improvements at 39 intersections where tracks and streets cross.
The money paid for better signals, clearer signs and more traffic arms to keep people from driving cars on railroad tracks, among other improvements.
The changes seem to be working.
Even though the number of freight trains daily chugging through the Valley has increased from about 55 in 2003 to about 75, the number of train-related accidents and deaths has remained steady or declined, according to the Federal Railroad Administration.
For Union Pacific Railroad, the owner of both sets of tracks that go through the Valley, that is good news.
The railroad has been party to several high-profile train accidents the past three years, including derailments in Whittier, Commerce and Industry.
“What you’re seeing is the efforts by groups are already reducing accidents, even though more trains are riding on those lines,” said Mark Davis, a Union Pacific spokesman.
“Since rail traffic is increasing, you would expect accidents to increase proportionately, but that hasn’t been the case.”
The Union Pacific lines start at the ports and head north through Los Angeles in a 20-mile-long expressway. In East Los Angeles, the lines split, with one line heading through Montebello, Pico Rivera and Whittier and the other line heading up through San Gabriel and El Monte. The tracks almost converge in Industry and Pomona before they head out to the rest of the country.
Despite the program’s early success on improving safety measures on the two lines, the hard part is yet to come.
Routing traffic over or under train tracks — which is typically called a grade separation –is a monumental task.
An average grade separation costs $40 million to $60 million and takes two years to complete. ACE so far is wrapping up work at one of the 20 separations and has started work on four others.
But funding is not coming as quickly as officials had hoped.
ACE’s leadership had asked politicians for about $225 million to be included in a six-year federal funding bill passed in July.
But ACE was guaranteed only $42 million from the federal government. It will have to split another $125 million in federal funds with Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties, according to Sharon Neely, who handles the finances for ACE.
Neely is still unsure how much of the $125 million will be allocated to ACE.
However, ACE on Sept. 29 received $68.7 million in state transportation money, officials said.
And additional cash could come from a $30-per-container port tax proposed by Assemblyman Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach. About $10 of each $30 of the tax would go toward projects like ACE, while the other two-thirds would be allocated for environmental projects and port security.
Although ACE officials believe they will end up with enough money to keep busy for the next few years, the sluggish pace of funding will slow the project.
ACE board members had originally planned to complete the first half of the project by 2008 but that date likely will be pushed to 2010 or beyond.
Another delay could come from the desire of Union Pacific to add another set of tracks along a railroad right-of-way.
ACE officials had planned to re-route Union Pacific Railroad traffic from one line near Cal Poly Pomona to a parallel line, which eliminates two grade crossings. While ACE has agreed to add a third track to the area, Richmond said large parts of work on the project were suspended on July 15 because of a late request by the railroad to add a fourth track.
“We’ve been working with them for three years on this particular project and they just asked us for a fourth track in June, if we don’t reach an agreement we could be dead in the water,” Richmond said.
Still, the project seems to be going smoothly on most of the other separations.
For residents who have lived near tracks for years, the project means shorter commutes, less noise and less stress.
For 32 years, 62-year-old Lilia Sarosy of West Covina “had to leave my house 45 minutes early to get to work on time and it is only about 15 minutes away,” she said.
She insisted she be the very first resident to drive under a railroad bridge at Nogales Street in West Covina when it was opened last month.
It was the very first grade-separation completed by the Authority.
“Every year the traffic seems to get worse,” she said. “With the project done, I can sleep in longer and not worry about getting stuck behind a train.”