The Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach provide a vital international gateway for goods serving our communities and the entire United States. The Alameda Corridor is helping the region efficiently handle cargo and relieve stress on the environment by allowing trains to move more efficiently to and from the Ports. The Alameda Corridor provides a consolidated route, which replaced three historic train routes that were circuitous, slow and ran at-grade through many more communities. The new route connecting the Ports to the transcontinental railway in downtown Los Angeles, provides increased efficiency that produces regional air quality benefits with significantly lower emissions.
The Alameda Corridor was constructed with more efficient tracks that impose a lower load on a locomotive’s engine, resulting in decreases in locomotive exhaust emissions, decreases in train travel time, and decreases in locomotive fuel consumption. Additionally, the Corridor results in operational efficiencies associated with a more direct route, and the below grade construction of the corridor trench eliminates over 200 at-grade crossings of road traffic that existed along the pre‐corridor rail lines.
Trains using the Alameda Corridor provide an eco-friendly option to trucks on the road, which means less emissions and contaminants that harm air and water quality. The project was designed with adequate capacity (trains/day) and the opportunity for diversion of cargo from truck to rail transportation and decreases in truck trips along regional surface streets and freeways thereby reducing highway congestion and emissions. Every train serving the Ports removes 750 truck trips from regional highways.
Environmental benefits of the Alameda Corridor are realized by three means: consolidation of pre-existing rail lines into a more direct route while allowing trains to operate at faster speeds; elimination of vehicular wait times and emissions caused by roadway blockages at rail crossings; and rail capacity to allow more cargo to be transported by rail rather than truck.
Air quality emissions associated with the Alameda Corridor, when compared to a pre-existing condition, have resulted in the following annual air quality benefits:
