The Alameda Corridor opened to much fanfare on April 15, 2002. The Alameda Corridor Transportaion Authority which began life in 1989. Had and completed most of its grand ambitions to create a high capacity mostly grade seperated line from San Pedro Bay to connecting BNSF and UP lines at Redondo Jct. The RoW was built in mind with the capcity to expand to quad track if need be, and any future electrfifcation that might occur. In 2006 train count stood at 60/day.
Fast forward to 2021 train count now stands at 28/day… A few things have worked against the Alameda Corridor and derailed plans to make it the premier route for freight from San Pedro Bay.
the economic recession that began in 2007 severly impacted imports through the port of LA, and Long Beach causing rapid decline in train movements.
Strikes over the last decade that hampered capacity at the Ports of LA, and LB drove up cost and diverted imports elsewhere on the continent.
I’m not against PSR. However the PSR operating model which aggregates as much traffic as possible into a unit of production a.k.a. a train. Has resulted in fewer trains on the corridor.
Final point. This is the core reason traffic has not materialized as predicted on the Alameda Corridor. The change in how imports are handled which no one had the foresight to see this.
Traditionally ISO boxes (containers) would travel further inland to DC’s. with a customers freight. Until shippers like Maersk, MSC, etc. wanted to reduce empty container repositioning moves. Asia creates many more loaded ISO box moves than Europe and the Americas which tend to have a surplus of empty ISO boxes. This imbalance in ISO boxes drives up cost as those who need them to load freight are delayed which inturn can harm bookings and schedules raising cost even further for all parties alike.
The character of tranportation with railroads is continuously evolving and has been since the first six barrels of flour were transported by the B&O from Ellicotts Mills to Baltimore.
So I guess you are saying the only way to recover the public monies already sunk into the project, is to spend more public money? Sure! What could go wrong? [:|]
How about we just pave over the rails and create a “high occupancy vehicle” expressway?
Spending taxpayer money to make foreign manufacturing more profitable, has just NEVER seemed like a smart idea to me. Spending even more to correct what we got wrong the first time, fails to excite me.
Especially with autonomous trucks and trains looming on the horizon, threatening to diminish even further any prospect of the “good paying logistics job opportunities” that were supposed to be part of the bargain.
Maybe we could lease the Alameda corridor to the autonomous truck people, and save them the “hardship” of having to deal with surface traffic?
Along the Atlantic ports in the southern US they have built inland “ports” a similar distance from the seaports as LA-IE, and I understand the railroads are participating. I wonder why the same thing can’t work in LA LA Land.
If the Port of LA has let its costs climb out of line, as the OP claims they have, that is the Port’s problem, not the railroads.
The only way declining traffic on the corridor becomes a railroad problem is if the railroads have a minimum volume committment and traffic is approaching it. Paying for air is bad. Does the OP know what the contract says? I do not. I am certain the carriers gave that issue a lot of thought.
Steamship companies are marketing east coast traffic to east coast ports. To the extent they succed, transcontinental containers, a major market the Corridor was built to serve, will decline. Stuff happens in a competitive market.
Running shuttle trains to the IE makes sense only if the rate is high enough. There may be an environmental arguement to be made for that, but there is the risk of bad traffic crowding out the good, both at the Port and at IE terminals. There could also be congestion issues between Redondo and the IE terminals, which would drive up costs and perhaps require what ever govt agency was pushing such a project to either pay congestion costs or fund rail capacity expansion, which could amount to real money but would get truck traffic off crowded freeways.
The whine about PSR increasing train size is irrelevant. I am 99.999% sure that the railroads are paying on a per container basis. The number and size of the trains matters not to either party.
Balt is right. Take the 28 trains per day of long haul traffic off the dock, pay your crews, buy your fuel, and pay dividends.
Mac you’ll have to go back and re-read my OP. The core of the problem is that the ACTA will have a difficult time recovering the cost of operation leading into negative cashflow. The ACTA is a seperate entity from the ports of LA, and LB. The containers are going t
Example. Port Savannah to Inland Port in Murray County GA is roughly 400 rail miles.
Ports of LA, and LB to Inland Empire roughly 60 rail miles.
The difference is length of haul. CSX, NS probably just break even on Margins. There could also be a subsidy the ports pay to CSX and NS to move this traffic…
The rates BNSF, and UP would charge for such a move would be expensive to recover cost of operation. Which at that point wouldn’t make sense to ship by rail. A shortline can make a go at this short traffic lane.
Is this anything new? I can name plenty of public monies that go wasted in other sectors… The difference here the subsidy would benefit local infrastructure and air quality.
Whenever tax money isn’t spent on some party’s ‘favorite project’, they feature that the money has been wasted. Nothing to see here, move along.
At even one train a day the benefits to the residents of the Alameda Corridor area are incalculable vs. prior routings and the surface disruption train movements caused.
I read your referenced documents and a recent credit rating by Moodys. It must have been a slow news day at Railway Age.
The names are changed: the ACTA owns the asset, which was paid for with callable bonds that mature in 2037. The ports are on the hook to each make up 20% of any cash flow short fall. The ACTA is now retiring about $200 million of debt per year, without participation by the Ports, so there is plenty of cash flow in sight to pay the debt. I did not see what the total owed is, but did not read each and every document.
The ACTA’s base agreement goes to 2062, so they have time to refinance the debt if necessary.
This is not the railroad’s problem.
Rail service to the IE is non competitive because the haul is too sort to recover the terminal costs and the ACTA’s fee which is about $60 per TEU or $120 for a 40’ box, in the few miles involved. After 60 years of reducing on train labor content, labor costs are not the big deal they once were. The minor savings in labor cost that might be gained by shortlining a container shuttle to the IE would not be worth the labor relations costs, and there are far bi
Well, let me begin with an assurance that “this” is not intended as a personal attack. I enjoy reading your posts.
But, the above is what I call “stinkin thinkin”. And we see a lot of it. “The government subsidizes airports, therefore passenger rail is “owed” a subsidy” “The government subsidizes highways, therefore freight rail is owed infrastructure subsidy”…etc etc
Sorry, but thinking like that inspires me to resist.
If the bag of goods the taxpayer was sold for the A.C. turned out to be a pie in the sky. I just don’t see more big dreamers with fancy architectural renderings as anything besides “more of the same ol same ol”.
If it was such a grande opportunity, then lazy rich people with no desire to do any real work themselves would be lining up for the chance to allow their money to work for them…
OK, let us think outside the box here. Yes, I know. It won’t work because (insert multiple reasons here).
What we’ve got is: 1) an underutilized rail asset that was unfortunately built with public money and, 2) a whole lot of trucks moving over highways also built with public money. Taxpayer dollars competing with themselves! What to do?
A 60-mile haul is way too short for rail to be efficient. Or is it?
Who was the Alameda Corridor project intended to benefit the most?
To my mind - taking trains away from disrupting all the other surface transportation means makes the public in the area served by the Corridor project the big beneficaries with every local trip they make each and every day they live. The fact the it benefits the railroad is a secondary consideration.