10:00am | The Port of Long Beach scored a win last week when it was announced by Congresswoman Laura Richardson that the port received a $17 million grant following an uphill battle to gain funding for the $66 million Green Port Gateway Project.
The project, an effort to simultaneously increase volume and decrease pollution, will alleviate congestion at a Ocean Boulevard/710 freeway bottleneck, where three railways leaving the port converge quickly into two. By increasing rail capacity, more cargo can be put onto cleaner trains rather than being put into less environmentally-sound trucks. If the project is completed by its projected September, 2013 date, then an estimated 300,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions will be eliminated over the following two decades, thanks to the estimated 2.3 million truck trips that will also be eliminated.
There are also economic benefits to the project, specifically during its construction; it will generate 340 jobs according to Richardson. Given the city’s lackluster 12.7% unemployment rate as of last month — a full percentage point above the county’s average — the project’s supporters claim projects as such will ultimately benefit the city as well as the county.
The money from the grant comes from TIGER funding through $511 million in subsidies handed out by the U.S. Department of Transportation last Thursday. This is the third round of TIGER funding, of which the first two the Port of Long Beach failed to obtain. Out of over 800 requests totaling over $14 billion, 46 of those requests were granted.