Stanislaus County to seek state funds for Crows Landing rail line
Stanislaus Country Supervisors on Tuesday approved a plan to seek state money to build an 80-mile short-haul rail connection between a proposed 4,500-acre Crows Landing intermodal development south of Modesto and the Port of Oakland.
The Crows Landing project is just one of 26 projects contained in an $800 million regional plan designed to improve trade corridors throughout Northern California. An application is scheduled to be submitted to the California Transportation Commission, which controls state transportation funds, within 60 days.
The supervisors, on an earlier 3-2 vote, endorsed a development plan by PCCP West Park LLC to transform the abandoned Crows Landing Naval Air Station into a business park and rail hub. Proponents and critics of the Crows Landing development all agree that funding of a short-haul rail to the Port of Oakland is a critical component of the PCCP West Park plan.
The short-haul rail project calls for freight containers to move via rail through the Altamont Pass between the Northern San Joaquin Valley and the Oakland port. Once the containers reached Crows Landing, they would be loaded onto trucks for distribution throughout the Central Valley. Valley agricultural products could be returned via the same rail line to the port for export.
An estimated $2.4 billion in bond money is available for trade-corridor improvement projects throughout the state. A recent round of $4.5 billion in highway mobility improvement projects doled out by the CTC failed to address many of the state's crowded overland freight routes.