The Alameda Corridor is the Nation's premier trade infrastructure improvement project. This $2 billion trade corridor provides for the rail transport of international and domestic goods between a national trade distribution system the nation’s second largest seaport complex. The Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA) jointly developed the Alameda Corridor in an effort to consolidate the operations of the freight railroad carriers into one high-speed, high capacity corridor. The Corridor facilitated the elimination of all at-grade highway crossings (220), while at the same time consolidating 90 miles of branch line tracks into one 20-mile corridor. The design, finance and implementation of this program have had far-reaching impacts of national state, and local economic significance.

Planning Company Associates, Inc. was the lead firm responsible for all legislative advocacy efforts to secure over $800 million in funding from federal, state, regional, and local sources. Our firm managed a team of lobbyists, community affairs specialists and consultants in a multi-faceted effort to achieve our objective. This effort involved continual interfacing with the White House, the United States Senate and Congress, California’s Governor and his staff, the California State Senate and Assembly, the County of Los Angeles, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the Cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and business and trade leaders throughout the nation, state and region.

On January 17, 1997, only twenty months after Planning Company Associates, Inc. began work on this project, President Clinton, Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, and Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill signed a Memorandum of Understanding dictating terms of a $400 million federal loan to the Alameda Corridor, which became the precursor for TIFIA. This accompanied actions by the California Transportation Commission to forward $80 million to the project, and by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to forward over $340 million to the project. The project was delivered on-schedule and within budget and is operating daily. The federal loan has been repaid in full.