(The following article by Rick Orlov and Kristopher Hanson was posted on the Long Beach Press-Telegram website on September 15.)
LOS ANGELES — Ending a two-year dispute with rail lines, the Los Angeles City Council has approved a settlement over cargo payments that could bring in an extra $4 million at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Burlington Northern and Union Pacific will pay the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA) additional money for cargo that is offloaded at Los Angeles and Long Beach ports and reloaded onto rail containers. The authority is a joint-powers agency of the two cities and their ports.
“This is a big deal for the authority and the Port of Los Angeles,” said L.A. Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who chairs the authority this year. “What it means is the authority will be getting some extra money. More importantly, it means we will not have to tap into the Port of Los Angeles funds to make up any losses.”
Hahn said the dispute involved payments for goods taken from ships and put into new containers for rail shipments.
It is a relatively new issue that surfaced after the Alameda Corridor was completed in 2002, authority spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said.
“In the past, the containers would be transloaded in the Midwest or in other parts of the country,” Lustgarten said. “With more and more of that work being done here, the authority was not getting what it should have been paid.”
The Alameda Corridor runs primarily along Alameda Street from the ports to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, providing a special route for shippers to move their goods across the country.
This week’s settlement provides additional funding to pay off Alameda Corridor’s roughly $2.4 billion bond debt.