The Alameda Corridor is a 20 mile (32 km) freight rail "expressway"[1] owned by the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (reporting mark ATAX), connecting the national rail system near downtown Los Angeles, California to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, running parallel to Alameda Street. The corridor is considered to be one of the main transportation projects in the past 20 years.[1]
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The project is notable for its "Mid-Corridor Trench", a below-ground, triple-tracked rail line that is 10 miles (16 km) long, 33 feet (10 m) deep and 50 feet wide (15 m),[2] shared by the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad[1] via trackage rights. The Alameda Corridor allows trains to bypass 90 miles (145 km) of early 20th century branch lines and the Santa Fe's historic Harbor Subdivision along a high-speed grade-separated corridor (mainly built on the alignment of a former SP line), avoiding more than 200 at-grade railroad crossings where cars and trucks previously had to wait for long freight trains to slowly pass.[3] Many of those same rail lines were inadequately protected with little more than "wigwag" crossing signals dating from the original construction of the lines. One important use of the corridor is to take cargo containers to the ports. The corridor has a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour (64 km/h).
The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles with the direction of John Rinard, PE completed the purchase of Southern Pacific's Alameda Corridor line for $235 million in December 1994.[4] The line went into operation April 15, 2002 and reached a peak of 60 train movements per day in October 2006.[5] It is credited with significantly relieving congestion on the Long Beach Freeway (I-710) and elsewhere in the region. During calendar year 2007, the line carried 17,824 trains carrying 4.7 million TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units) of containers.[5]
The Alameda Corridor East Project, currently under construction will grade separate many of the crossings along Union Pacific Railroad's Alhambra Subdivision and the Los Angeles Subdivision. Many of these crossings, which are currently at grade, tie up traffic on north-south streets for long periods multiple times a day as the long freight trains pass on their way to and from the massive UP yards in Vernon and Commerce.
Included as part of the Alameda Corridor East project is the half-billion dollar San Gabriel Trench, which will submerge the track between Ramona street and San Gabriel Boulevard in the city of San Gabriel.[6] This project is in the design phase with a large portion of its construction funds secured.
Along with federal fund matching, the project would also be funded in part by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority.