Immense Value in Rail Corridor

The Alameda Corridor project was recently featured in a federal report on eight of the nation’s biggest transportation efforts. The document was written by the General Accounting Office at the behest of Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the House subcommittee on transportation and related agencies and who has financial misgivings about the project. Concern was expressed in that report about the project’s ability to meet construction deadlines and raise bond money.

Of course, it makes sense to consider everything that can go wrong with a $2-billion construction project. Worries of this sort are faced by every such effort, and some of the others reviewed by the GAO seem to have far less certain financial underpinning than the Los Angeles project. The corridor is a national and regional undertaking, not solely local, and one that has the backing of President Clinton, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Gov. Pete Wilson.

The high-speed, high-volume, cargo-only rail route is designed to move goods from the nation’s two largest ports, Los Angeles and Long Beach, to the rest of the country via local and transcontinental rail routes.

Its value to Southern California is becoming ever clearer. There was Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on his Asia trip, for example, reassuring trading partners that there would be no repeat of the Christmas season snafus at the Port of Los Angeles that amounted to a waterborne SigAlert. Riordan said that expansion of L.A. International Airport and the port, along with construction of the Alameda Corridor railway, would make the city the gateway of choice for Pacific Rim trade.

Parts of the corridor’s funding must pass through the deeply troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which still owes the project about $218 million. MTA officials said Tuesday that the authority considers its agreement with the Alameda Corridor legally binding. There has been no move by the MTA to use the money to offset its budget problems, nor should there be. Alameda Corridor construction costs and timetables can be maintained through performance-based contracts, something that the MTA itself did not employ.

Concern over the project’s bond-raising ability seems premature, and Alameda Corridor officials cited the Standard & Poor’s rating institution, which they said recently indicated that the project “appears to have all of the necessary components to assure success.”

The other transportation plans cited by the GAO, including the Boston Central Artery/Tunnel ($800 million over total estimated net costs) and San Francisco’s airport transit extension (projected to have annual cash shortfalls of up to $290 million by 2001), are not designed to support international trade. The Alameda Corridor project is, and it deserves continued strong support.