A centerpiece on-dock rail facility at the Port of Long Beach will receive $52.3 million in infrastructure grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation
The Pier B on-dock rail facility is designed to speed up cargo movements and reduce pollution.
The announcement came on Thursday, Dec. 23, from U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. No Port of Los Angeles projects were included but additional rounds of funding will be announced later.
“This is great news to hear at the end of what will be our busiest year,” said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero.
It was one of two grants designated for ports in California.
The Port of Oakland will receive $5.2 million to support a project to replace an existing electrical substation and circuit located within that port facility. The project also will construct a new on-site fuel cell facility, a solar array with battery storage, and establish a direct connection between the port’s substation and the local electric utility’s biomass-fuel generator.
The competitive grant funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration will enable Long Beach, the nation’s second-largest seaport, to move more cargo by train, with construction set to start in 2023. The first arrival, departure and storage tracks are expected to be completed in 2025 with additional tracks coming online in 2030. The project is expected to complete in 2032.
The funding also will construct a new on-site fuel cell facility, a solar array with battery storage, and establish a direct connection between the port’s substation and the local electric utility’s biomass-fuel generator.
The Pier B on-dock rail facility is the centerpiece of the port’s approximately $1 billion rail capital improvement program. By transferring containers to and from marine terminals by on-dock train, truck traffic will be eliminated at that facility.
Instead, smaller train segments will be brought to the facility and joined together into a full-sized train up to 2 miles long.
Currently, about 28% of the port’s cargo is moved out by on-dock rail, with a goal of raising that to 35%.
The Pier B project will reconfigure the Pier B Rail Yard to encompass about 100 acres in the northern area of the port’s footprint, south of Anaheim Street and the 710 Freeway.
Approved by the port’s Board of Harbor Commissioners in 2018, it will provide a central staging area for trains with a goal also of increasing traffic flow surrounding the area.
“California’s ports are the busiest in America and are the gateways for the bulk of products moving in and out of the United States,” said U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California. “The pandemic has underscored the importance – and the urgency – of modernizing our port infrastructure.”
Padilla said the grants will “help strengthen the Ports of Long Beach and Oakland for years to come.”
The Oakland port’s leader concurred.
“We’ve got an ambitious clean air goal for maritime operations at the Port of Oakland,” said Port of Oakland Executive Director Danny Wan in a written statement. “We appreciate this grant from the US Department of Transportation; it is an important step in achieving our goal of zero emissions at our seaport.”
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have lobbied the federal government for more funding, which they said has been too frequently diverted to ports in other parts of the country. The announcement on Thursday represents the first round of expanded port infrastructure grants funded through the a bipartisan infrastructure law.
Going forward, the law will provide $450 million annually in funding for the ports program for fiscal years 2022 through 2026, or a total of $2.25 billion.
With the twin ports bringing in about 40% of all of the nation’s imported goods — and in light of the heavy toll the cargo surge has taken in backed up ships during much of the pandemic — port directors on the West Coast argued that additional funding should be earmarked for L.A./Long Beach.
“U.S. maritime ports play a critical role in our supply chains,” Buttigieg said. “These investments in our nation’s ports will help support American jobs, efficient and resilient operations and faster delivery of goods to the American people.”
Altogether, $241 million in discretionary grant funding for 25 projects nationwide were announced to improve port facilities in 19 states through the Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program.
Part of a commitment in the Biden-Harris Port Action Plan, the funding is designed to strengthen supply chains amid the heavy demand over the past year.
Dubbed America’s Green Gateway Phase 1, the Pier B project at the Port of Long Beach consists of three stand-alone components: a new locomotive facility, extension of the east rail yard and extension of the west rail yard. It will add a 10,000-foot support track within a critical freight corridor, construct a new support facility for 24 locomotives, add three new yard tracks, and extend five existing tracks.
Overall, the projects that were awarded grants include coastal seaports, Great Lakes ports and inland river ports.
“These investments will support the shift to cleaner transportation, which will create more economic activity and good paying jobs,” said Acting Maritime Administrator Lucinda Lessley in a news release.