California State Rail Plan 2007-08 to 2017-18

2007-08 – 2017-18 California State Rail Planlarge quantities of containers and trailers between major hubs such as seaports andmajor population centers, while truckers handle the short-haul movement to/fromthe customer’s “front door.”For example, merchandise manufactured and packed in a container in China maybe imported to the United States through the Port of Long Beach, trucked to thenearby intermodal container transfer facility, loaded onto a double-stack unit train,moved by rail to Chicago, transferred across town by truck from a western railroadto an eastern railroad, moved by rail to north Jersey, transferred to truck, taken to anearby distribution center where the contents are transferred to smaller trucks, andfinally delivered by van to a customer in Brooklyn. This type of internationalmove, where rail is used to complete a journey begun via water, is loosely called a“landbridge” move.Much of intermodal traffic is in higher-value consumer products and in importexporttraffic. This creates two distinct patterns: high demand for suitable railcarequipment leading up to and during seasonal shopping periods; and theconcentration of intermodal rail traffic along a relatively few, high-densitycorridors connecting the nation’s leading container ports and its primary consumermarkets. The most significant flows are from the west coast container ports ofLong Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle throughChicago to New York and northern New Jersey.In the year 2000, intermodal trains carried 199 million tons over 421 billion tonmiles.This is the equivalent of 16.2 billion truck miles. While not nearly as highas the figures for unit train and carload, these are significant numbers. Within thecommodity groups served by intermodal, rail handles over 16 percent of thetonnage, which is twice the figure for carload, indicating a deeper penetration byrail into this market. Intermodal has been one of the fastest-growing segments ofthe rail industry.LOGISTICS PRACTICESIn the past two decades, passenger and freight movement over the nation’stransportation system have increased dramatically. Vehicle-miles-of-travel bypassenger cars and trucks grew by 72 percent while road-lane-miles grew by onlyone percent. Over the same period, ton-miles of freight moving over the nation’srailroads increased by 55 percent while system mileage actually declined.The factors that have driven this growth in freight movement in the past twodecades are growth in population, domestic production, international trade, andtransportation-intensive production and distribution logistics.Between 1970 and 2000, the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) increased from$3.5 trillion to almost $9 trillion – an increase of 250 percent. Over the threedecades, growth in GDP averaged 3.2 percent per year. During this same period,international trade in goods and services increased from $350 billion (equivalent224