agenda by both approving individual projects and crafting longer term master plans that affected the entire region.21 Southern California’s production as a global logistics hub was orchestrated through a series of planning studies and joint funding projects that were coordinated by SCAG. These studies brought together planners and policy makers from different jurisdictions and provided a training ground for regional governance at a time when coordinated state action was unusual. The volume of policy papers, planning studies, and joint funding proposals that SCAG sponsored became a blueprint for regional cooperation and propelled logistics-based economic development.22
Planning for port expansion began during the 1980s with the creation of The San Pedro Bay Ports 2020 Master Plan and the Alameda Corridor project.23 The 2020 Master Plan was adopted by authorities from the POLA and the Port of Long Beach. It highlighted three key project areas that would serve as focal points for future growth. First, port officials laid out plans to dredge the harbor to provide deeper channels for larger capacity ships. Second, some of the dredged material would be used to infill six hundred acres of harbor property, with the idea that this new area would provide enough space for thirty-eight additional terminals. Finally, the plan called for construction of an extensive inland distribution system that linked the ports with rail, highways, and intermodal facilities. Essentially, the 2020 Master Plan and later documents such as the MCGMAP used speculative port data to produce a commonsense or hegemonic rationale in which the region’s economic future depended on optimizing future port capacity.24
While port officials planned for growth, they were concerned that worsening traffic congestion would negatively affect the region’s capacity to absorb future trade. SCAG formed the Ports Advisory Committee (PAC) in 1981 to address some of these potential roadblocks. The PAC developed a series of proposals meant to improve traffic flows on roadways surrounding port terminals. Next, the PAC turned its attention to inland distribution, especially to the region’s rail system. Inland distribution was particularly worrisome for port authorities because future imports would have to compete with commuters as delivery trucks and trains connected incoming container goods with transcontinental road and rail systems. By 1983 the PAC had produced the basic plan for what would become the $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor rail project. The proposed project included twenty miles of rail lines and grade separations meant to improve connections between the ports and the transcontinental rail lines located near downtown Los Angeles. The crown jewel of the project included a ten-mile-long open trench that provided traffic-free passage for freight trains traveling between the city of Carson and 25th Street along the LA/Vernon/Maywood border.
Both the 2020 Master Plan and the Alameda Corridor marked a new period of regional planning cooperation among federal, state, county, and municipal agencies, an unusual occurrence in a governance landscape normally dominated by municipal fragmentation. The corridor was a public-private partnership that, according to the California State Office of Research, was meant to “produce a sustainable economic development strategy that will effectively meet the challenges of a 21st century global economy.”25 The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority (ACTA), which oversaw the project, created institutional opportunities to access public funds. This was especially important because regional trade corridors required multi-jurisdictional alliances to secure funding, gain regulatory approval, and earn stakeholder consent. ACTA had broad support from SCAG, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA), and the San Pedro Bay Ports Harbor Commissions.
The Alameda Corridor was the beginning of a neoliberal private-public logistics regime that created new governance institutions to access public funding for port-related infrastructure. Prior to ACTA, regional transportation agencies did not have a spending category for logistics funding. ACTA’s former general manager, Gill Hicks, described how the organization was locked out of public funds during a congressional hearing: “Initially, ACTA was frozen out of the competition for these funds because there was no category in which to compete. The Alameda Corridor was not a freeway project, nor a light rail project.”26 ACTA taught Alameda Corridor leaders to create new institutional mechanisms that enabled them to apply for funding from regional, state, and federal agencies. Their first move was to access funds from the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC), the organization in charge of distributing state and federal funds for Los Angeles County transportation needs.
ACTA and SCAG also asked Heinz Heckeroth, the director of Caltrans District 7, for funding. Heckeroth suggested that SCAG “coordinate a systems-level analysis of the transportation access needs of the ports.”27 Such a plan could provide an evidence-based, comprehensive initiative that state and federal officials would view more favorably. Port leaders complied, and according to Gill Hicks ACTA set out “to develop an action plan for improving traffic conditions in the port area and to raise funds for implementing that plan.”28 One result was the creation of the PAC in October 1981, which became instrumental in redirecting public transportation funds into the Alameda Corridor project. Finally, after two years of lobbying by ACTA leaders, the regional transportation agency (LACTC and later LACMTA) adopted new funding categories and went on to provide $347 million in grants during the 1990s. Regional transportation leaders agreed to fund logistics spending “on the basis that goods movement projects such as the Alameda Corridor are essential for reducing congestion and air pollution and for maintaining a healthy economy.”29
ACTA’s biggest success occurred in 1996 and 1997, when President Bill Clinton signed a federal loan for $400 million. Clinton’s decision to allocate the funds was made after regional, state, and federal actors successfully framed Southern California’s logistics network as a public good worthy of federal funding. The federal loan was only granted after the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 and the National Highway System Designation Act (NHSDA) of 1995 identified the Alameda Corridor as a high-priority corridor. Under ISTEA, those projects that were designated as high-priority corridors were eligible to receive federal financing from a special revolving loan fund. Key actors from Southern California’s private and public sector lobbied for this high-priority designation. Gill Hicks claimed, “Members of ACTA’s coalition and advocacy team successfully communicated the key message that the project was vital to the health of the nation’s economy because it would dramatically improve a critical international trade corridor, linking every other state in the union to the largest port complex in the United States.”30
Local port boosters also gained access to federal funding streams by capitalizing on concerns over national security after the assault on New York’s Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The LAEDC, for example, cited possible security threats when it solicited federal funds to support port operations. According to an LAEDC report from 2003, “the US Department of Defense (DoD) has designated more than 38,000 miles of rail lines—including those out of Southern California—as strategically important national assets.”31 The report continued, arguing that “these strategic rail corridors help connect military installations to ports and intermodal transfer facilities and to ensure that US military forces have the ability to mobilize heavy equipment, such as tanks and tracked vehicles, as needed.” Statements such as these further rationalized state involvement in transportation systems, equating commerce with military readiness and logistics. The connection was clear in the LAEDC report, which noted, “Nearly 200 military installations require access to commercial rail lines.” Logistics and the military are in fact inextricably linked; this connection can be traced back to military supply chains that stressed efficiency and speed by deploying technology and transportation systems to deliver supplies. As Deborah Cowen points out, the military roots of logistics rules out any discussion of the business of logistics without considering the role that the state has played in developing the technologies and strategies of commodity circulation.32
FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE LOGISTICS STATE
Jeff Holt, vice president of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and manager of the municipal finance division of the Fixed Income Currency and Commodities Group, served as the underwriter for the Alameda Corridor and articulated how public finance and regional planning were both central to the formation of Southern
