BNSF advances
Written by William C. Vantuono, Editor-in-ChiefBNSF Railway’s planned Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) reached an important milestone with the release on Friday of a Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for public review and comment.
BNSF said the SCIG project will be the “greenest” intermodal facility in the nation. It will permit containers to be loaded onto rail just four miles from the docks, rather than traveling 24 miles on local roads and the 710 freeway to downtown rail facilities. “SCIG will allow 1.5 million more containers to move by more efficient and environmentally preferred rail through the Alameda Corridor each year, greatly reducing truck traffic congestion in Southern California,” according to the railroad.
“The report concludes that SCIG reduces health risk to a far greater extent than even the port’s own goals for new projects,” said BNSF. “SCIG will also create thousands of good local jobs and remove more than 1.5 million trucktrips from the 710 freeway every year, providing significant benefits for local and regional air quality and congestion relief.”
In building SCIG, BNSF said it will clean up an existing industrial site and replace it with a facility featuring wide-span all-electric cranes,ultra-low emission switching locomotives, and low-emission rail yard equipment.
In addition to these innovations, BNSF has committed to initially allow only trucks meeting the Port’s Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) goal of 2007 or newer trucks to transport cargo between the marine terminals and the facility.
