The Alameda Corridor is a freight rail "expressway" owned by the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority that connects the ports of

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

and

Long Beach Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

with the transcontinental mainlines of the

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three Transcontinental railroad, transcontine ...

and the

Union Pacific Railroad The Union Pacific Railroad is a Railroad classes, Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United Stat ...

that terminate near downtown

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

. Running largely in a trench below

Alameda Street Alameda Street is a major north-south thoroughfare in Los Angeles County, California. It is approximately 21 miles in length, running from Harry Bridges Boulevard in Wilmington; and through Carson, Compton, Lynwood, Watts, Florence-Graham, ...

, the corridor was considered one of the region's largest transportation projects when it was constructed in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Background

The railway line along

was originally laid out by Los Angeles' foundational Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad, which opened to traffic in 1869. The railroad would go on to be acquired by the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials) was an American Railroad classes#Class I, Class I Rail transport, railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was oper ...

in 1873, becoming their San Pedro Branch. A 1984 study by the Ports Advisory Committee recommended the San Pedro Branch be upgraded to meet the growing demands of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. At the time, cargo traveling by rail to or from the ports could be routed along the

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the largest Class 1 railroads in the United States between 1859 and 1996. The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport; at vario ...

's Harbor Subdivision or the Southern Pacific's tracks down Alameda Street. The Harbor Subdivision was long, traveling out to the west side of Los Angeles, before turning back east towards the ports. Meanwhile, the Southern Pacific route had more than 200 street-level railroad crossings where automobiles had to wait for lengthy freight trains to pass. These rail lines were inadequately protected with little more than "wigwag" crossing signals dating from the original construction of the lines. In response, the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority was established in August 1989 to plan for upgrades along the route. By the early 1990s, the Southern Pacific was in a difficult financial position and sold the Alameda Street corridor to the Ports of Long Beach for in December 1994 ($ in adjusted for inflation). This allowed the ACTA to begin building a freight rail "expressway" from the ports to the major rail yards near Downtown Los Angeles. The centerpiece of the new Alameda Corridor would be the "Mid-Corridor Trench" a below-ground, triple-tracked rail line that is long, deep, and wide, with a track spacing of . The trench and the larger Alameda Corridor would allow freight trains to travel without concerns about grade-crossing collisions or having to blow their horns as they traveled through neighborhoods. The corridor would be open to both

and

(UP) trains via trackage rights. The line began operation on April 15, 2002, and reached a peak of 60 train movements per day in October 2006. Trains have become much longer since: in 2006, the line carried 19,924 trains carrying 4.9 million

twenty-foot equivalent unit The twenty-foot equivalent unit (abbreviated TEU or teu) is a general unit of cargo capacity, often used for container ships and container ports.Rowlett, 2004. It is based on the volume of a intermodal container, a standard-sized metal box tha ...

s (TEUs) of containers, while in 2021, only 10,928 trains carried the same 4.9 million TEUs. The cost of the line was pegged at $2.1 billion at opening ($ in adjusted for inflation). In 2013, the railroad carried 33% of the freight traveling to and from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Fifteen percent of the nation’s container traffic travels through the corridor according to the Transit Authority. While the Mid-Corridor trench is the spine of the corridor, the Alameda Corridor Transit Authority also maintains more than of freight rail track, with 125 turnouts, ten rail bridges, signals at 48 locations, seven grade crossings, and two stormwater pump stations. Alameda Corridor map

Additional developments

Alameda Corridor–East

The Alameda Corridor–East project was established in 1998 by the

San Gabriel Valley The San Gabriel Valley (), sometimes referred to by its initials as SGV, is one of the principal valleys of Southern California, with the city of Los Angeles directly bordering it to the west and occupying the vast majority of the southeastern ...

Council of Governments to upgrade over of railroad tracks in the area east of Downtown Los Angeles. The project includes 19 grade separations and elimination of 23 grade crossings along UP's Alhambra Subdivision and the Los Angeles Subdivision. The crossings, which were previously at grade, tied up traffic on north–south streets for long periods multiple times a day as long freight trains pass en route to and from the UP yards in Vernon and

Commerce Commerce is the organized Complex system, system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered large-scale exchange (distribution through Financial transaction, transactiona ...

. As of 2023, over a dozen grade separations have been completed, with several more under construction or in design. Included as part of the Alameda Corridor–East project is the $336.9 million San Gabriel Trench, which submerged the track between Ramona Street and San Gabriel Boulevard in San Gabriel. Construction began in 2012 and was completed in 2017.

Possible electrification

The Alameda Corridor was built in a way to permit

electrification Electrification is the process of powering by electricity and, in many contexts, the introduction of such power by changing over from an earlier power source. In the context of history of technology and economic development, electrification refe ...

with the use of electric catenary wires, which would increase the environmental benefit by displacing the use of diesel fuel, but the electrification has not happened as of yet. This solution has largely been ignored due to lack of familiarity with electric freight technology in North America, although electric freight trains operate in many other parts of the world. Electrification could reduce air pollution in the region, which has been described as a "Diesel Death Zone" due to the pollution from trucks on Interstate 710.

References

External links