As head of the massive Alameda Corridor rail project, James Hankla is breaking new ground by being within budget and on schedule to deliver the critical cargo link

Since August 1998, James Hankla has been chief executive of the largest infrastructure project in Los Angeles County, the Alameda Corridor. The 20-mile rail cargo expressway will connect the seaports of San Pedro and Long Beach with the transcontinental railyards east of downtown and will cost $2.4 billion to build.

Hankla is considered one of the most efficient municipal administrators around, and under his watch the Alameda Corridor has avoided the huge cost overruns that marked the construction of the L.A. subway. The project is both on budget and on schedule to open in April 2002 considered an ambitious goal when construction started.

Aside from a five-year stint in the private sector, in Virginia and in Northern California, Hankla has spent his career in public service. Prior to being chief executive of the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, he was city manager of Long Beach for 11 years. Before that, he had been chief administrative officer of L.A. County for two years.

In the 1970s, Hankla rose through the ranks in Long Beach’s municipal government. He became director for community development and executive director of the Long Beach Redevelopment Agency in 1976. In that capacity he earned the city’s Winston Crouch Award, from the American Society of Public Administration, for his work in restructuring the city’s financial program for downtown redevelopment in the wake of Proposition 13.

Question: Compared to the subway fiascos, the Alameda Corridor has kicked up very little media dust, possibly a testament to its smooth sailing so far. What’s the status?

Answer: We’re about 60 percent complete. At this time we only have one contract left (to award), for a small cleanup construction project, which will be the last one of 17 separate contracts on this project.

Q: What do you think is the underlying reason the MTA has not been able to function as efficiently as the Alameda Corridor Trans-portation Authority?

A: The primary reason is that the MTA has multiple constituencies bus riders, labor unions, rail transit people, and those constituencies are always fighting for the financial resources that are available, and they take that fight to the board of directors, who also have multiple constituencies. So, essentially there is lots and lots of opportunity for conflict, and I don’t think that this project has that.

Q: Is that because the ACTA acquired the right of way from the railroads and prevented a potential source of conflict?

A: This project would not have happened had that not been the case. That really provided the incentive for the railways to support the project.

Q: There have been reports of problems with Union Pacific regarding rerouting train traffic, though.

A: We haven’t had any problems that I would consider insurmountable. We have created a bypass track for railroad service to continue, and I would not characterize it at this point in time as a major problem. Railroads have been here a long, long time, and they have every prospect of being here a long, long time, and they can afford to be patient and they can afford to be tough negotiators.

Q: Is there any concern that, if the eastern extension of the corridor is delayed, partly because of lack of cooperation from the railroads, that the main corridor would function less efficiently?

A: No, this part will be able to do for rail traffic what it set out to do. To the extent that there will be an eastern extension, anything that we can do to make rail transportation more efficient will have a positive impact on the region. But I’m convinced that the corridor on its completion will provide the infrastructure to satisfy the needs of the railroads without the eastern extension. The reason is that the eastern extension is more about resolving conflicts between automobiles and trains than it is about movement of cargo, whereas this project is more about moving cargo and has as a beneficial side effect improving the conflict between trains and automobiles.

Q: Isn’t that a very significant side effect?

A: The environmental benefits of the corridor have been largely underestimated. As much as we’re aware of them, I think the general public is unaware of them. Everyday life is going to be improved so much with the completion of this project, because it’s hard to imagine with the growth in cargo how we would have been able to maintain east-west vehicular transportation in Los Angeles County, certainly south of the railyards in East Los Angeles, without the corridor. We would have had massive gridlock. Particularly the six communities along the corridor are the ones that will benefit most from the corridor, and I think they would have been the ones demanding a corridor had it not been delivered to them.

Q: The volume of cargo coming in through the ports is increasing at an ever more rapid pace. Are you comfortable that the corridor will be able to handle this larger-than-anticipated growth?

A: We are confident that the basic corridor will be able to accommodate this volume. It may present the need for some improvements in the future, but the basic corridor will provide for cargo as it exists probably on April 15, 2002, probably through the next decade. But don’t forget, there are a lot of other things that can happen. The ports could go to 24-hour operation, and if that alone would take place, it would certainly improve the situation.

Q: What attracted you to being in charge of this particular project?

A: It’s a project of national significance. It’s major public works. I’ve had a long involvement with building public works projects in my capacity as city manager of Long Beach and as chief administrative officer of L.A. County, and in many ways this was the biggest. And that was very compelling to me, to have an opportunity to participate positively in what was certainly the largest public works project of our decade.

Q: How is overseeing a project of this magnitude different from any other projects you have been involved with?

A: This has been a very special project, but I have used the same kind of principles, and applied them to this project, that I have used with other projects I worked on. That is to find the best possible people available, and to work in terms of setting goals and expectations and then allowing them to do their jobs.

Q: Are there no significant differences?

A: What is different from other projects is that we have a board of directors, who don’t have outside agendas to the business of the corridor. That’s quite remarkable and quite laudable, because there are certainly politicians on the board, two city council members and a county supervisor, as well as the executive directors and two commissioners from the ports, but they have not approached this challenge in a political way.

Q: How unique is that for a public works project in L.A. County?

A: Well, I’ve been involved to a certain extent with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (builder of the L.A. subway), which is certainly well known for the problem of fixing political agendas. And as a consequence, the agenda of the agency has suffered from time to time. I don’t want to draw any comparisons, but by the same token, I think the approach that our board has taken is the right approach to take, and I would recommend it to other agencies that have fallen into the trap of political wrangling and name calling and so on.

Q: That certainly seems to be keeping the project moving forward. Is it still on schedule for completion in 2002?

A: April 15, 2002. The first trains will be going through before then, but that will be the date when we will be basically completed with the trench portion of the corridor. There will be some other final construction work on the corridor still to be completed, but the trench and the main line between the ports and railyards will be finished by then.

Q: What are you plans when work on the corridor is completed?

A: I haven’t given it too much thought. I retired once before, and I just want to see what opportunities present themselves at that time and make that decision then. But I have enjoyed this project tremendously and I think it has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.