Port of Long Beach breaks ground on $1.6 billion ‘Green Gateway’ rail expansion

With a turn of ceremonial dirt, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson, Congressman Robert Garcia and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg broke ground on a $1.6 billion project that has been years in the making: a massive expansion of the Port of Long Beach’s railyard.

The project will double the yard’s acreage and triple its annual cargo volume to five million shipping containers a year, all while reducing the need for smog-spewing cargo trucks that inundate the local freeways with pollution and traffic.

“It is indeed a great day at the Port of Long Beach,” Richardson said to a seated audience of several hundred.

Construction will be broken up into 10 individual projects, with the first to be completed by 2027 and the last by 2032.

Once finished, the port’s new railyard site — dubbed by engineers as the Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility, by politicians as the “Green Gateway” — will handle up to 17 trains a day, with room to assemble and strip down a chain of rail cars up to 10,000 feet long. On a hamstring-shaped plot, the yard will include 36 new tracks that will be linked by regional and national rail systems to 30 major hubs nationwide, including far-flung cities like Chicago, Atlanta and Columbus, Ohio.

This will streamline the process of moving goods out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle 40% of the country’s container imports, including cars, clothing and household items. Their combined place of work, the San Pedro Bay, is the fifth-busiest harbor in the world.

“It’s a huge benefit from an efficiency standpoint,” said Managing Director Sean Gamette of the Long Beach Port’s Engineering Services.

The project has so far received $643 million in grants funds — about 40% of the estimated cost. A Port spokesperson said they will continue to apply for future grants, with port revenue to be used as needed. The lion’s share of funding came from a $283 million grant from the federal government.

The Port has in recent years made it a goal to transport 35% of its goods by rail. Speakers entered the tent from the caboose of a battery-powered train car, an on-the-nose display of the green transition they hope to spearhead.

“We should never forget the single most important piece of all of this is the health impacts,” said Rep. Garcia, D-Long Beach. “The ability for families to breathe healthier air, to be free of cancer and asthma, to know that they can raise their children in a community that is cleaner and safer.”

Behind Garcia, cargo trucks streamed across the overpass that connects the Port to the 710 Freeway. These are trucks that routinely crisscross Los Angeles freeways, contributing heavily to traffic congestion and pollution that have devastating effects on nearby neighborhoods. Officials complained that such pollution has caused an epidemic of asthma, stunted lung development in children and chronic lung disease in adults.

The state’s CalEnviroScreen 4.0, which designates communities impacted by pollution, has placed neighborhoods surrounding the Port of Long Beach in the top 30% for emissions.

In a video presentation, a narrator noted that each 10,000-foot, double-stacked train is equivalent to 750 cargo trucks that can be taken off the road.

It will also bring jobs, officials touted: 1,100 local union jobs and 13,000 more nationwide.

“Not just jobs, good paying jobs,” said Mario Cordero, CEO of the Port of Long Beach.

As the keynote speaker, Buttigieg, fresh off his visit to the defunct I-83 South Bridge in Harrisburg, Penn., said the rail upgrade is a key part of the 41 projects awarded funds nationwide through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Mega Grant Program.

In the grand scheme, Buttigieg said these projects are meant to unfold the wrinkles made in the nation’s supply chain during the pandemic but also to bolster it ahead of the next disaster to come. Against the backdrop of global disruptions — he listed Russia’s War in Ukraine, Houthi rebel attacks on shipping freighters in the Red Sea, or storms exacerbated by climate change as examples — it is paramount to bolster the route of delivered goods.

“Because even though we can’t predict what each one will be, we can predict that we will face many more,” Buttigieg said. “American supply chains have to get better prepared than they were three and a half years ago.”

As Buttigieg spoke, a page flew off the lectern and onto the floor. Buttigieg smirked.

“That page we’ll have to do without, so I’ll sum it up a little more succinctly,” he said. “More velocity. More capacity. Less congestion. Less pollution. Less delay. That is a win, win, win, win-win, and I’m delighted to celebrate it with you.”

Editor’s note: The headline of this story has been updated to say $1.6 billion instead of $1.7 billion.

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