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This description is not wrong, but not the complete picture either. It is true that trucks have to ferry between LGB (~ Port of Long Beach) and ONT (~ Ontario -

This description is not wrong, but not the complete picture either. It is true that trucks have to ferry between LGB (~ Port of Long Beach) and ONT (~ Ontario - San Bernardino corridor along I-10). However, ONT is the very place you have access to cargo planes and train yards! These facilities (and of course the warehouses necessary to buffer between the modalities) take up a lot of land --- land that's not readily available in the costal areas. You can't exactly lay tracks anywhere you feel convenient either, because tracks hate elevation changes --- fat luck for you now, because there's plenty of those between LGB and ONT...

quartesixte 5y ago
Yeah it’s an unfortunate consequence of history and geography. That travel from Port of Long Beach to the San Bernardino Valley is not easy. It is constantly congested because the 10, 110, 210, 710, 5, 15, 605, 60, and 91 all connecting POLB to the inner Southern California valleys are also the main arteries for commuters, last mile delivery, and the general populace visiting friends and family. You will get miles long convoys of 18-wheelers at rush hour all trying to get out of the coast. But that is also a journey that includes two passes between two valleys that are separated by not-insignificant hills, so rail will be difficult. And because no one had the real foresight to create a direct rail connection from the ports to the inland valleys, there is now a sprawling suburban jungle that will result in the displacement of at least a million people, thousands of businesses, and a good hundred schools if you attempted to do it now. It’s damned if you do damned if you don’t. The only solution is to somehow get most commuters/passengers off of cars, into mass transit, and turn all the highways into basically trucking arteries.
quartesixte 5y ago
> These facilities (and of course the warehouses necessary to buffer between the modalities) take up a lot of land For those who have never been out there, the industrial parks of the inland SoCal valleys span miles in width and length. This is not just a few city blocks of warehouses. These are practically entire towns who only exist for these warehouses.

quartesixte 5y ago

Yeah it’s an unfortunate consequence of history and geography. That travel from Port of Long Beach to the San Bernardino Valley is not easy. It is constantly congested because the 10, 110, 210, 710, 5, 15, 605, 60, and 91 all connecting POLB to the inner Southern California valleys are also the main arteries for commuters, last mile delivery, and the general populace visiting friends and family. You will get miles long convoys of 18-wheelers at rush hour all trying to get out of the coast. But that is also a journey that includes two passes between two valleys that are separated by not-insignificant hills, so rail will be difficult. And because no one had the real foresight to create a direct rail connection from the ports to the inland valleys, there is now a sprawling suburban jungle that will result in the displacement of at least a million people, thousands of businesses, and a good hundred schools if you attempted to do it now. It’s damned if you do damned if you don’t. The only solution is to somehow get most commuters/passengers off of cars, into mass transit, and turn all the highways into basically trucking arteries.

quartesixte 5y ago

> These facilities (and of course the warehouses necessary to buffer between the modalities) take up a lot of land For those who have never been out there, the industrial parks of the inland SoCal valleys span miles in width and length. This is not just a few city blocks of warehouses. These are practically entire towns who only exist for these warehouses.