“If it were up to California alone to fund this whole thing, it would never get done. California would simply have plenty of better things to do with their fuel tax revenues than to improve the flow of freight through LA/Long Beach to Midwestern rail hubs like Chicago and Kansas City.”
More B.S. Doing it is 100% in California’s interest, alone because were they not to do it the imports going to their ports would shrink, costing THEM economic benefits and jobs. Everyone else in the country WOULD get their imported goods, just not from California ports. The buyers across the country would care less about protecting California’s ports. California would compete with Texas, which, would, as a state competing with California, fund rails of its own from its ports to the midwest, and hubs for east & west routing from Oklahoma.
It’s not B.S. at all. California had done some very interesting economic studies over the years, and they determined that the jobs and economic activity at those ports simply weren’t worth the adverse impacts of all the congestion, diesel emissions, etc. In a large city, a major port facility is simply not the highest and best use of waterfront real estate at all.