Port of Long Beach, CA has $1.57 billion to expand freight access and get trucks off the road

Most freight should not be transported by trucks. Trucking is energy-inefficient and produces enormous externalities on local communities, including more traffic, increased roadway fatalities, significantly more environmental pollution (both in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and toxic tire dust), significant negative health impacts (such as asthma and lung cancer), and higher taxes resulting from more easily damaged roads.

Rail transport is more energy-efficient, safer, requires a smaller land footprint, actively reduces traffic congestion, is much more environmentally sustainable, has far fewer health risks, and does not actively destroy infrastructure at the rate that heavy-duty trucks do. Wherever possible, the government should incentivize freight to be transported by rail instead of by truck.

The Port of Long Beach is the 6th-largest port in the US by freight tonnage, and this expansion project will allow it to ship even more cargo. The project addresses all the concerns above. It also reduces the cost of trans-shipment for freight operators by reducing the number of separate vehicles which have to move a particular item of cargo in this small area. This ultimately reduces the cost of shipping, which lowers prices for consumers.

The Port of Long Beach will receive $283M from the federal government in order to further fund its $1.57B Pier B expansion project, set to begin breaking ground next year and continue through in phases until its completion in 2032.

Mainly, this expansion of Pier B—one of the Port’s northernmost facilities that loads trucks which head west to put cargo onto trains that eventually head through the Alameda Corridor to get those containers across the nation—focuses on on-dock rail development.

In other words, rather than transferring cargo from marine terminals to trucks and then having those trucks transfer them to trains, this will allow cargo to be directly put onto trains from the dock of Pier B. And most importantly, significantly reduces truck traffic in the area.

The project is an essential cog of the Port alignment with the San Pedro Bay Ports Clean Air Action Plan that was updated in 2017, where the Port of Long Beach set a goal of moving 35% of containers onto on-dock, at-grade rail.

The drop in truck traffic won’t be tiny but hugely significant—as in 5M truck trips will be eliminated per year, according to the Port, meaning 16.7M gallons of diesel consumption will also be eradicated when the project is running at full capacity.

According to the project’s environmental impact report, sulfur oxides will drop by a dramatic 80%, nitrogen oxides by 26%, diesel particulates by 85%, and greenhouse gases by 64%.

Good work! More states should be funding projects similar to this one to get trucks out of shipping wherever possible.