(The following article by Bradley Weaver was posted on the Press-Enterprise website on September 17.)
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Inland commuters would save the equivalent of two days of travel each year if 25 percent of the cargo that’s carried through the area on big-rig trucks was shifted to rail lines, a new study concludes.
Transportation analyst Wendell Cox’s study, released Thursday, said Inland drivers, who have among the worst commute times in the nation, would shave nearly 50 hours off their commutes each year if 25 percent of freight volumes were moved off the highways an onto rail by 2025.
The shift would remove 31,000 trucks from Inland roads during peak travel periods each day and save the average motorist 183 gallons of gas each year. It would also reduce the region’s air pollution by 11,500 tons annually and lower congestion costs for the local economy by $679 per household each year, Cox added.
“The traffic problems aren’t going away, but I don’t see a level of concern among the nation’s planning agencies to do much of anything to get more goods on the rail,” said Cox, who heads a transport and demographics firm in St. Louis and was a member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. “There’s almost a resignation among planners not to do anything, to just give up.”
More products traveled along the rails and freeways and the ports of Southern California last year than any other region in the United States, and the region’s rail system could reach capacity by 2006.
Officials say more track is needed if trains are expected to haul additional cargo. That’s why area lawmakers are requesting $900 million in federal funds to expand the Alameda Corridor east to the Inland area.
“It’s increasingly important to find ways to expand because the whole region is really at the brink of being overloaded,” said John Standiford, a spokesman for the Riverside County Transportation Commission.
Some efforts to use trains to haul more cargo have fallen short. The two-year old Alameda Corridor rail line was expected to carry half the cargo that comes into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but only 26 percent of the goods makes it onto the 20-mile rail line. Instead of loading the goods onto trains, shippers transport most of their imports to hubs by truck.
The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority and other groups want to make train use more attractive to shippers by adding shuttle trains to hubs in San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The lines heading into the Inland area are already crowded, so shuttle trains likely would need their own rail line to avoid congestion, officials said.
“It’s not a question of should we expand the usefulness of trains, it’s absolutely necessary in order to take more traffic off the road,” said Richard Paulson, spokesman for the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority.
Edward R. Hamberger, president of the Association of American Railroads, said one freight train can carry as much cargo as 500 trucks, and railroads are at least three times more fuel efficient than trucks.
The number of daily big-rig trips through the Inland area is predicted to rocket from 28,700 in 1995 to 88,900 by 2020. Caltrans reports that trucks make up about 15 percent of all vehicles along freeways that pass through Redlands and Moreno Valley.
Trucking companies are increasingly frustrated by slower travel and say cargo delays could thwart attempts to lure employers to the region. Terry Klenske, president of Dalton Trucking in Fontana, recently said that the average speed of his 200 trucks has declined steadily over the last 20 years because of traffic in the Inland area.
Meanwhile, transportation officials are considering other ways to reduce gridlock by creating lanes or entire highways for truck use only.
One such plan, which is supported by the Southern California Association of Governments, would create special truck lanes connecting Los Angeles and Long Beach seaports to Barstow. The 142-mile route would pass through the Inland area.