The following linked article CONFIRMS what I’ve theorized ever since I heard about BNSF’s efforts to build the ‘Barstow International Gateway’ in the High Desert of Southern California!
LINK JUST BELOW ... Malfunction Central as usual ... Copy and paste in seperate browser ...
State could derail BNSF’s $1.5 billion Barstow International Gateway, potential benefits (msn.com)
(SEARCH FOR JUST ABOVE WORDS AND COPY AND PASTE LINK IN YOUR BROWSER)
The article tells of taking containers FROM the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports DIRECTLY to Barstow by TRUCK, then Intermodaling them by train east. Taking them by train over Cajon Pass is very slow and cumbersome, and if Cajon Pass is log jammed with trains, hours and hours and hours are wasted! By truck, only two or three hours are consumed.
I live in the High Desert and personally know the train log jamming of the Pass.
Does the above question have something to do with the east slope of Cajon Pass never being triple-tracked?
SHEESH! W/O The linked article it is just so much hogwash....
After all, California is politically,so anti-truck, what with their move to get interstate and intra-state transport moving with E.V.'s; the 'Greenies' must be jerking and quivering at the very thought of those increased numbers of trucks moving all those cans from the Ports, to Barstow on their roads(?)
Not to mention the Federal Governement is now +$37 Billion in the red....
https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/news/2024/03/15/state-could-derail-bnsfs-1-5-billion-barstow-international-gateway/72983033007/
Almost as much click-bait as the title of this thread.
A NEW TWIST
The original news item specifically stated trucks would bring the containers to Barstow and the new, future facility thereat. Now THAT wording has been removed! I knew I should have copied the article, ads, and all! Trucks are simply more logical in this case, BUT doesn’t jive on a public relations slant. If you have ever driven I-15 through Cajon Pass, you’ll know exactly what is meant.
Even so, it is believed that all this is just an added step that will add time to shipments, and very, very lower High Desert taxes may be the underlying motive! Plus, land is cheap in the wide open desert! It is difficult to imagine cargo would be arranged on ships all in order to be unloaded for one destination – Barstow.
croteaudd The following linked article CONFIRMS what I’ve theorized ever since I heard about BNSF’s efforts to build the ‘Barstow International Gateway’ in the High Desert of Southern California! LINK JUST BELOW ... Malfunction Central as usual ... Copy and paste in seperate browser ... State could derail BNSF’s $1.5 billion Barstow International Gateway, potential benefits (msn.com) (SEARCH FOR JUST ABOVE WORDS AND COPY AND PASTE LINK IN YOUR BROWSER) The article tells of taking containers FROM the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports DIRECTLY to Barstow by TRUCK, then Intermodaling them by train east. Taking them by train over Cajon Pass is very slow and cumbersome, and if Cajon Pass is log jammed with trains, hours and hours and hours are wasted! By truck, only two or three hours are consumed. I live in the High Desert and personally know the train log jamming of the Pass. Does the above question have something to do with the east slope of Cajon Pass never being triple-tracked?
I did not see ANYTHING in the article linked by rdamon saying containers would be handled by truck from the ports to Barstow.
RailfanJohn:
See the post just above yours ... Ironically, what timing!
The two ports, Long Beach and Los Angeles, are all really one complex. Long Beach is planning on tripling the ondock rail capacity through the Pier B expansion project. Second, the Union Pacific has already installed an intermodal ramp at their Colton yard which is closer to the city and harbor. Third, the planned but never excecuted SCIG (Southern California International Gateway), which is in the port area, could be revived. Finally, Pier S, which is basically a large parking lot for containers, could be turned into an intermodal ramp.
Frankly, I think most of the "idea" of draying to Barstow is a kind of code-worded message about 'how to get around the increasing pillage and vandalism of containers leaving the Port by rail' without having to get into the politics of enforcement vs. perceived discrimination against protected groups.
It is rather obvious to me that conducting rail-bridge service out of the Port, even with many relatively short consists over the triple-track ROW, is a better 'answer to this question' than individual drays -- the only question becoming 'how far you can run a bridge consist without stopping to be out of 'trouble', and the extended question adding "before the trouble follows you and you have to go farther".
Expedience says the answer ia that someone figures Barstow is optimal for dray consolidation, but but how this excludes rail-bridge to Barstow will have to be explained to me. If you wanted the ideal testbed for CBTC it would be accommodating bidirectional bridge traffic in addition to loaded/empty revenue moves over every available Cajon track...
BNSF is threating to cancel the Barstow project if USEPA allows CARB to proceed with its "In-Use Locomotive Regulation". Given USEPA's recent promulgation of the excessively stringent 9.0 ug/m3 annual PM2.5 air quality standard, I don't think its a given that it will try to rein CARB in.
Here's a link to the News Wire story: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/epa-schedules-public-hearing-on-california-zero-emissions-locomotive-regulation/
For Ms. Kent … Welcome to the Impossible!
This forumist believes that BNSF’s Lena Kent has been caught in an impossible situation. Unless all this is a ruse for some reason, BNSF was unprepared for the impossibility of the Barstow International Gateway situation that has resulted. It makes so much sense to truck containers from the seaports to Barstow, but that would clog the Cajon Pass area freeways! Why does California continue to have inept highway designers?
Some here have pointed to new government regulations as an impossible thorn. I lived through something like it in the 1970’s with transit, i.e., buses. The government came up with a super wonderous bus called the transbus! Manufactures hated it! The government put out bid requests. Then, the glorious day arrived to open the bids! NO bids were submitted! The government was humiliated and dropped the transbus concept. Such may happen with unreasonable timeframe train regulations! Can you imagine BNSF and UP out west laying off most employes and parking all trains because the government made it illegal to operate them! As with the transbus, the railroads ultimately may win!
(VERY OFF TOPIC but somewhat related, in case anyone is interested … Cajon Pass … A locking horns situation has been in the works for a few years now. It is one of those things that HAS to be resolved! And it is very, very possible “a” railroad may end up paying $20-50 million or more to resolve it. Other than that, I have absolutely nothing further to say …)
I expected some pushback or organized resistance from the OTR industry when California started with the ridiculous-to-me aero requirements thet don't really work, and the blanket ban by year on tractors that could and should be made compliant with best-practice abatement rather than merely rejected. Perhaps when railroads impose a surcharge for cost-plus-ten on all the electrification and motive-power costs, including design-build and maintenance, and impose it on any traffic originating or terminating in California, we'll start to see voters getting the picture...
Cajon could easily support slight widening to open a truck-only lane on both sides, with electrified boosters for both up and downgrade operation if the 'electric' or more likely hybrid trucks require it. When they redesign the trucks they can easily provide the interface and hard points to make that "practical" (or anyway far more practical than CAHSR...)
The real secret to road congestion elsewhere between the port and the Barstow dedicated exit is likely some form of platooning into intermediate groups, with space in between to allow other traffic to exit or merge with advance warning. We had systems that would do that in 1949. The ones we have now can do better.
Incidentally, I am very much in favor of very stringent restrictions on <2.5PM, as the health risks are very real and existing pollution control excuses either do nothing or actually make the problem worse. No practical dpf, for example, captures anything in the bioactive size range (they're feel-good for soot smoke opacity, though) and providing the combustion-engine power as a genset removes most of the operating conditions that produce visible unburnt carbon. In particular, it is easily worth quite a bit of 'ultra low NO emissions' to raise the combustion ratio to where more of the nanoparticulates oxidize in combustion...
Overmod the blanket ban by year on tractors that could and should be made compliant with best-practice abatement rather than merely rejected.
the blanket ban by year on tractors that could and should be made compliant with best-practice abatement rather than merely rejected.
OvermodIncidentally, I am very much in favor of very stringent restrictions on <2.5PM, as the health risks are very real and existing pollution control excuses either do nothing or actually make the problem worse.
I can recall driving through the LA area when the atmosphere was pretty much clear (ie, no fog-like smog) but my eyes still watered.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Friends of BNSF sent out an email with this somewhat suspicious link to sign up to help.
https://p2a.co/ggogLxB
AAR's page on CARB
https://www.aar.org/issue/carb/
"Suspicious" ??
Looks straightforward to me.
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