L.A. port breaks ground on yard project, reports year-end volumes

Today, Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles city officials plan to break ground on a $137 million rail yard project in Wilmington, Calif.

The "Berth 200 Rail Yard and Roadway Project" calls for building a new storage and queuing yard to provide greater on-dock rail capacity and operational efficiencies at nearby port container terminals.

After the project is completed in summer 2014, the new yard will eliminate 2,300 daily truck trips from nearby freeways, city and port officials said in a prepared statement. The yard also will improve a critical link in the nation's freight network, they said.

The project will be built in two phases. The first phase includes construction of the new yard, support tracks for container terminals, double-track connections to the Alameda Corridor and national rail network, and access road improvements. Slated to begin later this year, the second phase involves final rail network connections and vehicle overpasses to eliminate grade crossings.

Meanwhile, the port reported volume totals for December and the full year. The port handled 588,154 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) last month, down 9.4 percent year over year, and 8,077,714 TEUs in 2012, up 1.7 percent versus 2011 volume.

In December, loaded inbound volume declined 6.8 percent to 296,874 TEUs, loaded outbound volume fell 16.5 percent to 147,417 TEUs, total loaded volume dipped 10.2 percent to 444,291 TEUs and total empty container volume decreased 6.9 percent to 143,863 TEUs.