The brief meeting at the Port of Long Beach office also focused on the project's EIR status

A public meeting on Dec. 6 at the Port of Long Beach’s Interim Administrative Offices primarily featured discussion about the status of the LA ports’ on-dock rail study— which has not been updated since 2006— and the subsequent draft environmental-impact report (EIR), both of which, up until now, had been in “limbo,” according to Richard Cameron, managing director of planning and environmental affairs for the Port of Long Beach.
The Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF) Joint Powers Authority (JPA) governing board— a public entity consisting of personnel from both ports that serves to enhance the flow of truck and rail cargo through both terminals— discussed a rail-study update for next year in San Pedro Bay that would look at infrastructure improvements necessary within the port complexes to reach an optimized percentage of on-dock rail, which was originally set at 30 percent in 2006, Cameron said in a phone interview with the Signal Tribune on Thursday.
“We’re updating because there have been a lot of changes,” Cameron said. “There’s been a shift in our policy to increase […] to 50 percent. So, what we’re going to be doing in this rail study is seeing what changes are necessary for us to be able to reach 50 percent of all the cargo coming into the port complex, including the on-rail. We’re going to be looking at operational changes and other efficiencies that can help us reach our goal.”
The JPA selected a private firm in the summer to assist in the study and is currently negotiating a contract. In January, the Port of Long Beach and the Board of Harbor Commissioners will make a decision to approve the contract, to be reviewed later by the Port of Los Angeles.
During the discussion at the meeting, Cameron said the project has been put on hold for a variety of reasons. Union Pacific (UP), a railroad company based in Los Angeles, operates the ICTF and made the decision to hold off on the study with the JPA two years ago. Primarily, the delay had to do with “a lot of stops and starts” with the EIR, and the UP decided to change the schedule and some elements of the project. The JPA now has to re-evaluate those changes.
The project is broken into two phases. Cameron estimates that the first phase, which analyzes potential bottlenecks within the complex, will take eight months to complete. Phase two looks at modeling in the region, not just within the port complex, because, “when we talk about the rail and being more efficient in achieving the goals that we’ve weighed out, it also looks at other improvements and other things that need to happen within Southern California.”
David Arian, vice president of the Los Angeles Harbor Commission and JPA board member alternate, inquired about the project, adding that, “my only interest is UP and getting an understanding of where things are really at [and] the relationship between on-dock rail and this particular project between now and in the future and what it really looks like. I know Long Beach is going heavier on on-dock rail […] what’s it really mean?”
Cameron said the study itself was in a holding pattern, but the idea is to contact UP and gauge where the rail study stands.
“[The study] will look into our port-dock capacities and how the system in the future will operate based on the demand of our cargo forecasting and things of that nature,” he said at the meeting. “We definitely can bring that report back to this body, as well, because it’s relative. […] Moving forward, in the new year, is to re-engage UP and start to talk about where the project stands for them and get a better sense of how we come back to the board.”