Barstow to have a seat on San Gabriel Valley railroad project board
Comments 0 | Recommend 0Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre appointed to Alameda Corridor East Construction Authority
BARSTOW • Barstow will have a seat at the table of a project designed to alleviate railway congestion through the San Gabriel Valley and into San Bernardino County.
Mayor Pro-Tem Julie Hackbarth-McIntyre was appointed by the San Bernardino Associated Governments in May board to serve as an alternate on the Alameda Corridor East Construction Authority.
Hackbarth-McIntyre is the alternate on the construction authority for Montclair Mayor Paul Eaton, but she says she will attend every meeting because this project will affect warehousing and jobs in Barstow. Hackbarth-McIntyre will attend her first meeting in July.
“Having that (corridor) frees up a whole lot of trains,” she said. “It means jobs.”
The Alameda Corridor East Construction Authority oversees multiple construction projects from Los Angeles to the San Bernardino County line. The projects seek to alleviate congestion by eliminating railroad crossings throughout the San Gabriel Valley through bridges or tunnels.
They would also connect San Bernardino County to the existing Alameda Corridor, a 20-mile uninterrupted railway between downtown Los Angeles and the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Hackbarth-McIntyre hopes to be instrumental in getting the Alameda Corridor extended through San Bernardino County to Barstow. This project, SANBAG’s Colton Crossing project and a BNSF spur line through the Barstow Industrial Park will allow cargo to come through Barstow, she said.
“Those containers will offload into our industrial park once that’s built,” she said. “(The cargo will) get broken down and gets put on trucks and dispersed throughout the High Desert going north and east.”
Even though the Alameda Corridor East project stops at the San Bernardino County Line, the project will affect rail coming into San Bernardino County, said Duane Baker, SANBAG’s director of management services and mountain and desert policy. Hackbarth-McIntyre expressed her interest in serving on the Alameda Corridor East Construction Authority because of the proposed Lenwood bridge over the railroad tracks near West Main Street.
“They’re building projects in LA County only, but they tie into projects that we at SANBAG are doing in our member cities,” Baker said, adding that SANBAG’s seat is an ex officio seat. “We’re there to see how things are going and to see if there’s lessons that we can learn to look at the global impact of rail traffic.”
The Alameda Corridor East Construction Authority also includes a Los Angeles County supervisor as well as a representative from the cities of Montebello, San Gabriel, Pomona, Industry, El Monte and Walnut. A member of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments — the transportation authority for the San Gabriel Valley — also has a seat on the board.
The authority meets the fourth Monday of the month in Irwindale.
Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com
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