Port of Long Beach’s $1.8 Billion Rail Expansion Boosts Cargo Capacity

HDR’s Shiva Wooton, Andrew Stanevicius and Thomas Jacques on the Transformative Changes at the Port

The Port of Long Beach in California is one of the busiest ports in the United States, with cargo valued at $300 billion flowing through it each year. To keep the cargo flowing and increase its competitiveness, the port is making significant investments in its on-dock rail support infrastructure.

The $1.8 billion Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility Program will expand the existing Pier B rail yard from 82 acres to 171 acres, create a full-service staging area capable of assembling and breaking down 10,000-foot trains and more than triple the volume of on-dock rail cargo the port can handle annually. The Pier B Program has had a long journey requiring overcoming significant and complex challenges.

HDR’s Shiva Wooton, highway section manager, Andrew Stanevicius, operations planning senior project manager, and Thomas Jacques, principal rail transit engineer, recently co-authored an article for Railway Age about the Pier B Program. They wrote about how a robust rail modeling approach and small, well-sequenced packages are reducing risk and delivering a modern intermodal rail system capable of supporting long-train operations well into the future.

“As evidenced by the Pier B Program, a staged approach to the infrastructure project delivery enables the Port to operate without major adverse impacts during construction, while expediting key elements of the program and accelerating the operational improvements beyond what a single mega project would achieve,” the authors wrote. “As ports nationwide face growing volumes, forward-thinking strategies discussed in this article offer scalable means to reduce risk, maximize returns on investments and deliver resilient facilities that can adapt to evolving demands.”

Read the whole article, “From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs” in the June 2026 issue of Railway Age.