WASHINGTON – Union Pacific and BNSF Railway are contracting out dispatching of the Alameda Corridor to a neutral third party.
The 16.1 mile grade-separated corridor, which leads to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., handled an average of 31 trains per day in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority.
Union Pacific currently dispatches the corridor with BNSF oversight; BNSF previously dispatched it with UP oversight. Next month they will turn over dispatching to Alameda Belt Line, a jointly owned subsidiary, according to a regulatory filing with the Surface Transportation Board.
“ACTA, BNSF and UP have determined that subcontracting railroad operations oversight to ABL … will foster balanced and efficient train operations, and will promote traffic fluidity over the Line under an entity that would be equally accountable to both of the Line’s users,” according to the Alameda Belt Line filing.
The corridor stretches from CP East Redondo to CP West Thenard, where the Pacific Harbor Line takes over. PHL is the neutral switching railroad that handles BNSF and UP traffic within the port complex.
The corridor is owned by the ports. The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority manages the line’s infrastructure.
It’s probably just me, but I think the lighting makes that picture look like a rendering out of a train simulator. Not to mention the matched set of completely clean locomotives.
It was one of the original publicity shots for UP when their first train rolled through the corridor trench. That was the last time it was this clean…
To those of us in the Bay Area, Alameda Belt Line means something completely different:-)
Have a look at the actual filing (follow the link, page 3). It is, legally speaking, the Alameda Belt Line we NorCal types remember, reactivated for this purpose. Remarkable coincidence, I’d say!
This use of “Alameda” in this case is associated with Alameda St. which parallels the Corridor. Just fyi, the address of L.A. Union Station is 800 N. Alameda St. (located well north of the Corridor’s beginning/end).
For a much larger map of the corridor, click here:
https://railfanguides.us/gregarious/ca/comptonac/index.html
Okay…now let’s see how long it takes the various local and state government agencies here in California to completely screw this up….
Actually, might be tough to screw up considering Port of Long Beach/Port of LA are investing heavily into dockside rail services.
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The Ports are some of the biggest economic players around and they are going all in on moving as many containers out of the port to the inland empire & beyond via rail. Making sure the Alameda corridor handles trains and even finding means to expand rail corridors through the LA basin is a huge priority
Well, CARB should be able to screw up everything by just existing. A real governor would see the strategic importance of this corridor. But then, Gavin Newsom is not a real governor as a real governor would take control of an out of control agency before real damage is done…
more sub contractors
On a cell phone or a touch screen laptop or desktop you can enlarge the image to see it better. That’s what I had to do.
I really wish they would make the maps large enough to read. Or make them clickable to a larger image. Opening the image in a new tab, it is still too small to read.