(The Press-Enterprise posted the following article by Phil Pitchford on its website on September 27.)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — As a young brakeman for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Company, Pat Morris watched boxcars of produce from the Coachella, San Joaquin and Imperial valleys leave Southern California along the railroad tracks through his hometown of Needles.
Decades later, Morris is the mayor of San Bernardino and trying to deal with the 100-plus trains per day that roll through what is now the BNSF Railway train yard. Instead of fruits and vegetables, many of the trains are full of electronics, clothing and other goods imported from Asia through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and destined for stores across the country.
Heightened noise, pollution and traffic delays at railroad crossings are commonplace.
“We’re stunned by the impact this has had on our community,” Morris said Wednesday at an event attended by more than 20 elected officials from the Inland area. “These days, the goods that leave this valley don’t come from here. They come from the ports, in massive quantities.”
Morris and several other political and business leaders spoke at a “Goods Movement Summit” at the Santa Fe Depot in San Bernardino.
The two-hour event, organized by Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge and economist John Husing, was designed to demonstrate to state and federal officials that Inland officials want the jobs generated by the logistics industry, but they also want help in dealing with the resulting problems.
The event ended with mayors, city council members, county supervisors and state legislators from Yucca Valley to Corona signing a joint statement that calls for goods movement to become “Southern California’s overriding priority.”
Organizers will mail copies of the statement to “every elected official in the region, the state and the nation who have something to do with goods movement,” Loveridge said. He and other elected officials said they are frustrated that leaders from around the state and Southern California see the issue only through the prism of how it affects residents immediately around the ports.
The surge in port traffic in the past few years “caught our region somewhat unawares and unprepared,” Riverside County Supervisor Bob Buster said.
Several speakers encouraged the passage of Prop. 1B, Gov. Schwarzenegger’s transportation bond on the November ballot. The measure calls for $20 billion to fund road and rail line improvements.
Husing called for portions of the record amounts of federal tariffs collected on imported goods to be devoted to improved railroad crossings and other projects.
“Not one dime of those tariffs are going to the infrastructure to move that stuff through here and deal with the environmental impacts,” Husing said. “That has to change.”
About a half-dozen members of the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, an advocacy group based in Glen Avon, stood in the back of the room during the event and held signs in opposition to the bond measure.
“Our communities are already inundated with diesel, warehouses and intermodal facilities,” said Rachel Lopez, the group’s healthy communities director and goods movement coordinator. “There’s a much bigger picture out there, and they are not looking at it.”