BNSF Railway's proposed Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) reached an important milestone on Friday with the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for public review and comment. The $500-million SCIG project is designed to be the greenest intermodal facility in the United States. SCIG will allow containers to be loaded onto rail just four miles from the docks, rather than traveling 24 miles on local roads and the 710 freeway to downtown rail facilities. SCIG will allow 1.5 million more containers to move by more efficient and environmentally preferred rail through the Alameda Corridor each year, greatly reducing truck traffic congestion in Southern California.

The report concludes that SCIG reduces health risk to a far greater extent than even the port's own goals for new projects. SCIG will also create thousands of good local jobs, remove more than 1.5 million truck trips from the 710 freeway every year, providing significant benefits for local and regional air quality and congestion relief.

In building SCIG, BNSF will clean up an existing industrial site and replace it with a state of the art facility featuring wide-span all-electric cranes, ultra-low emission switching locomotives and low-emission rail yard equipment.

In addition to these innovations, BNSF has committed to initially allow only trucks meeting the Port's Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP) goal of 2007 or newer trucks to transport cargo between the marine terminals and the facility. Ultimately, by 2026, 90 percent of the truck fleet will be LNG or equivalent emissions vehicles. Trucks will be required to avoid residential areas by traveling on designated, industrial routes with GPS tracking to ensure adherence.

The draft environmental impact report, which analyzes potential impacts from the project on topics ranging from air quality to traffic, includes the following key findings:

* The Port of Los Angeles has set a health risk goal for new projects of not more than an additional 10 in a million excess cancer risks. SCIG far surpasses the Port's stated goal with a reduction of cancer risk of 160 in a million.
* SCIG will have a significant positive impact on traffic, both locally and regionally.
o SCIG will eliminate more than 1.5 million truck trips from the 710, reducing congestion and improving air quality.

BNSF looks forward to continued engagement with stakeholders at its updated website, BNSFConnects.com, on Facebook and on Twitter. As part of the environmental review process, stakeholders are also encouraged to submit their written comments for the official record to the Port of Los Angeles by December 22, 2011 to Christopher Cannon, Director of Environmental Management via mail or e-mail to ceqacomments@portla.org. They will be included in the Final Environmental Impact Report.