Western Railroad Discussion > Hobart Lift Capacity Question

Can anyone tell me what the present lift capacity is at BNSF's Hobart facility in LA?  Also, can Hobart expand in the future or is it locked in?

Thanks!

texchief1

 

The new ramp at Barstow suggests LA has no available space to expand. Google satellite view shows a lot of congestion.
—Mac

It's been landlocked for years and pretty much any area that could be has been paved
for ramp space. 

Out 

Hobart shows BNSF’s key urban market strategy, although I’m not sure if this has continued under Katie Farmer’s watch and the PSR-OR drive at BNSF that they keep claiming they’re not doing. Over time they have bought up industrial parcels on the south side of 26th Street (runs along the main at Hobart) and Bandini Blvd east of Downey Road and west of I-710. These have been scraped clean and paved into IM support parking yards. These have not been cheap: current prices for raw land in this area are +/- $80/sf (+/- $3.5M/acre), though I don’t think BNSF has purchased anything in this price range. At the time of the last purchase around 2018 (at least that is the latest I can find) prices were in the range of  +/- $65/sf: this is based on what some of my former (pre-retirement) clients were paying. I don’t have the number on what BNSF paid, so it could vary from that quite a bit. The most recent actual lift counts I have at Hobart are about 6 or 7 years old, and were 1.4M lifts/year. I believe this includes the Commerce facility on the east side of Eastern Avenue, about a mile east of Hobart. BNSF is also working on newer container storage/staging stacking strategies that will increase capacity without the need for additional land.
 
One of the goals of the SCIG – Southern California International Gateway – project just south of UP’s ICTF near the ports of LA and LB was to take away all international traffic (meaning marine containers) from Hobart so it would be 100% domestic. I don’t know the current mix but based on visuals seems like +/- 5% to 7.5% of Hobart is international. Any correction/update on that would be appreciated. The SCIG project (see Southern California International Gateway (SCIG) - BNSF California) has been stalled in approvals due to strong opposition from residents on the east side of the 103 freeway (see SCIG Toxic Railyard – East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice).
 
In the Central LA industrial core (between the ports and Commerce Vernon, then east to roughly a line from Azusa to Irvine), sites are mostly built out. Most of the newer construction in close involves demo’ing buildings on sites that are older developments, with a large inventory – still in use – of Class B and Class C. Generally speaking, most redevelopment of these maintains the industrial use, and changes are from manufacturing and low-cube warehousing to high-cube DCs that mainly serve the immediate central population markets, or a smaller amount of international-domestic transload nearer the ports. Quite a bit of newer in-close greenfield industrial construction of Class A high-cube facilities occurred over the years in the City of Industry area but that land is almost entirely built out now. So there is an increase in Central LA industrial freight potential, but not that much. Most of the growth has been east of the “line” I mentioned above, in the Inland Empire and more recently spilling into the Hesperia-Victorville-Adelanto-Barstow area, the Perris-Menifee area, and east of Beaumont along the I-10 corridor. With that BNSF has focused on the expansion (including acquisition of residential land) at the San Bernardino ramp for more parking, plus the Slover facility (see BNSF Colton Project), and more recently the BIG facility in Barstow (see Barstow International Gateway (BIG) - BNSF California). Drayage costs mean that those outer-core ramps will see a lot of focus.
 
Contrast this with UP: they have not purchased land at any of the ramps in the LA/Inland Empire area (save about 5 acres at LATC along Mission Road that was used as part of the renovation of the ramp). So far all of the land converted to the IM ramp at West Colton has been either former transload or Hulcher land that UP already owned. While UP continues to convert manifest yard space to IM at West Colton (with resulting impacts on the manifest service in the region), the maximum UP estimates they will ever get out of West Colton is 500,000 lifts per year. BNSF’s recent expansion at San Bernardino has added onto the previous capacity that was close to 700,000 lifts/year. The Slover site was supposed to have been much larger, but the community opposition has stopped that project.

As noted above, I'm retired now and focusing less and less on these stats: my direct contacts are a lot fewer than they were in the past, so any corrections or updates are welcome.

Bruce 
 

oh it's still going on Bruce... With the shut down and long term demo of Exide Battery Recycling completed, and now the recent 2024 closure of Rherig Pacific right across the street to the east... I can near guarantee that BNSF has already been making offers for the parcels. This would connect their storage lots #10 (to the west) and #13 (to the east). Their goal is to eventually shut down and consume 26th St west of the 710 Freeway, same as they did Sheila St. along the north side some 20+ years ago.l for vertical chassis rack storage. Then line the entire south side of the Hobart complex with their trailer storage. 

Also, keen observers of satellite images of BNSF's Hobart Yard will discover that there is still space to add trackage capacity within the existing complex... Note the long strip of diagonal parked trailers that runs the length of the yard... Create more off site storage for those trailers and the RR plans on running one more (if not two) 7,000' loading tracks over the existing space.

All it takes is money and demand.


~ Mr. MRL


StStephen Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... Over time they have bought up industrial
> parcels on the south side of 26th Street (runs
> along the main at Hobart) and Bandini Blvd east of
> Downey Road and west of I-710. These have been
> scraped clean and paved into IM support parking
> yards. These have not been cheap...
>
> Bruce 
>  

It looks like there is no more rail customers north of Bandini they could pull all the rails out for more room. Bubba

TMBubba Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It looks like there is no more rail customers
> north of Bandini they could pull all the rails out
> for more room. Bubba

I believe those are LA Junction Railroad rails.