New Routes Just for Trucks Urged

Transportation planners are seeking to build new highways exclusively for trucks that would stretch from Southern California’s booming ports to as far away as the Inland Empire.

The focus on so-called dedicated roads for trucks is a sharp departure from long-standing plans to use trains to haul more cargo from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and is an acknowledgment that the 2-year-old Alameda Corridor rail line, built in part to alleviate truck traffic, might never attract the share of the freight it was designed to transport.

The $2.5-billion corridor, which opened in 2002 and runs 20 miles mostly in a trench from the ports to near downtown Los Angeles, was intended to carry half the cargo that comes into the ports, now the third-largest importing and exporting complex in the world.

“A very small portion -- 13% or 14% -- of what the ports handle goes purely on rail,” said John Doherty, chief executive of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority. “That’s no different from before the corridor was built.”

The authority now supports the idea of building one or more truck-ways. There are three proposals under development, which are backed in concept by Doherty; Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who is chairwoman of the corridor authority board; analysts at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; and other local officials.

The truck highways would cost tens of billions of dollars.

One would run along the Long Beach Freeway, adding four lanes for trucks traveling from the harbor area to the Santa Ana Freeway. The proposal, which could cost $4 billion, also calls for expanding the 1950s-era Long Beach Freeway to 10 lanes for use by commuters.

An earlier plan to widen the freeway was shelved last year after residents complained that it would require demolition of their homes. Planners say they would try to avoid taking many homes under the new proposal by elevating new car and truck lanes in places where the right of way is narrow.

Another proposal, estimated to cost $450 million, would make part of California Highway 47 an all-freeway route directly from the port complex to nearby Alameda Street. A third, still in the conceptual stage and estimated to cost tens of billions, would extend a truck-way as far as Barstow in the Mojave Desert.

“Even if the corridor was to increase its volume, we are still going to have a lot of containers being moved on the backs of trucks,” said Hahn, who represents L.A.’s harbor communities. “Now is the time to prepare for that.”

Community activists and environmentalists, worried about air pollution from the trucks, said they were surprised and disappointed to learn about the proposals.

“I don’t like it at all,” said Val Lerch, a Long Beach councilman who has been working on plans to upgrade the 710 Freeway. “I would much rather see more reliance on trains.”

Instead of supporting new routes for trucks, the corridor authority should find ways to entice more shipping companies to use the Alameda Corridor, said Tom Plenys, transportation policy analyst for the Coalition for Clean Air.

“I cannot understand how they can be turning to building additional highways until they have filled this excess capacity,” said Julie Masters, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney who has represented community residents in lawsuits against the ports.

The Alameda Corridor was envisioned as a way to take all the freight not destined for delivery in Southern California off local roads and freeways. By 2015, the corridor was expected to carry about 45,000 containers a day -- about half the port’s anticipated volume of 90,000.

Now, just 35 to 40 trains a day run through the corridor, which was designed to handle up to 150. At the same time, truck traffic on the Long Beach Freeway is expected to increase. In 2002, 47,285 trucks per weekday traveled on the 710. That is expected to hit 99,300 in 2020.

In the nearly two decades it took to plan and build the corridor, the shipping business changed so dramatically that the economic assumptions underpinning the project became obsolete, said Doherty and others.

Instead of taking goods off ships and putting them directly onto trains bound for points east, shippers now haul most of their imports by truck to hubs in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

There, the cargo is taken out of its original containers and repacked so recipients, such as large retail chains or automobile dealers, get exactly what they need. The products are then either loaded onto trains or put on trucks that go directly to warehouses for distribution.

Only the simplest shipping jobs -- containers that do not need to be repacked and can be loaded in precisely the order needed to set up a train bound for Kansas City or other locations east of California -- ride all the way through the corridor, Doherty said.

An additional 12% of the ports’ imports -- about 2,400 containers a day -- is eventually shipped on the Alameda Corridor after being trucked to a facility in Carson, reorganized and put on trains.

Despite lower-than-expected use, the corridor authority has been able to pay its bills in part because of increased volume overall at the ports. But the authority had a net loss of $59.5 million last year, said Chief Financial Officer Dean Martin. And although part of that was from a one-time charge associated with refinancing debt, officials are concerned that money could get tighter.

In the last year, the authority has tried to develop a plan to make the corridor more appealing to shippers by adding shuttle trains.

The idea is to run trains from the northern terminus out to San Bernardino County or Riverside County so the cargo would wind up close to those inland shipping hubs.

But the proposal has several serious drawbacks.

The tracks heading east to the Inland Empire are already crowded, so shuttle trains would encounter significant congestion unless a dedicated rail line could be built.

Moreover, it would cost $100 million to $200 million to build facilities to unload and store the cargo after it arrived inland.

And, because there are no train lines leading directly to the inland hubs, the goods would have to be loaded on trucks anyway just to get to the big container warehouses.

The corridor authority plans to begin a pilot program next year to test the shuttle train idea, Doherty said. But he said the service would have to be subsidized, because it would cost at least $100 more to send a container by rail to the inland hubs than by truck.

Meanwhile, he and others said, truck traffic will continue to increase, and the 710 is too old and too small to continue to carry it.

“The fact of the matter is: We’ve got to improve our infrastructure,” Hahn said. “Our port is going to triple in growth in 20 years, and we are not doing anything to prepare for that growth.”

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Alameda Corridor

Truck traffic, already heavy on area freeways, is expected to increase dramatically by 2025. The problem could be exacerbated because the $2.5-billion Alameda Corridor rail line has not been attractive to shippers who use trucks instead of trains to haul freight to massive inland shipping hubs.

Weekday truck volume on Southern California freeways

*--* Freeway 2002 2025* Interstate 110 18,628 39,120 Interstate 405 20,273 42,600 Interstate 10 20,400 43,300 U.S. 101 20,657 43,380 Interstate 105 26,143 54,900 Interstate 5 40,885 85,860 Interstate 710 47,285 99,300 California 60 50,400 105,840

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*Projected

Source: Southern California Assn. of Governments