Built for more: How Pier 400 doubled rail capacity to meet the demands of modern trade

When customers ship cargo through the Port of Los Angeles, the question is rarely whether their container can get off the vessel. The question is how fast it can get to Chicago, Dallas, Memphis – or any one of the 14 U.S. freight hubs that Pier 400’s on-dock rail network serves. That answer just got significantly better.

Over the past several years, APM Terminals Los Angeles has undergone one of the most consequential rail infrastructure upgrades in its history – a $73 million expansion by the Port of Los Angeles that has effectively doubled the terminal’s rail storage capacity, added 31,000 linear feet of new track, and unlocked a level of throughput the yard has never seen before. Rail moves at Pier 400 have grown 104 percent since 2023. On a weekly basis, the terminal has gone from handling 5,000 rail lifts to 11,000.

“This strategic upgrade enhances the Port of LA’s attractiveness as a gateway for cargo owners who rely on fast, efficient, and well-connected supply chains to serve their customers,” said Jon Poelma, Managing Director of APM Terminals Los Angeles.

What on-dock rail actually means

Chris Brown, Chief Harbor Engineer for Design at the Port of Los Angeles, described what makes this infrastructure distinct: “This is a storage system for an on-dock rail yard at APM – basically a place where the containers can go straight from the boat into the yard and right onto a train before they even leave the gate.”

That seamless vessel-to-rail transfer is the foundation of Pier 400’s speed advantage. Eastbound containers typically depart in under two days, compared to nearly a week at other facilities. The yard now features 12 working tracks plus 11 storage tracks, with capacity for four full import trains per day and 1,100 FEUs handled daily on Class I railroads BNSF and Union Pacific – connecting directly to the Alameda Corridor, the dedicated freight rail expressway that carries approximately 10 percent of all waterborne containers entering and exiting the United States.

The expanded rail yard also delivers benefits beyond Pier 400 itself. Terminal Island – home to multiple rail yards and accessible by only one bridge – has long faced constraints when multiple trains need to move simultaneously. The additional storage capacity at Pier 400 now provides flexibility that benefits rail operations across the entire San Pedro Bay port complex.
The project earned recognition from the Construction Management Association of America and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Thanks to the Port’s significant investment in rail infrastructure, APM Terminals will be able to handle increased volumes of intermodal cargo with greater efficiency across a wider variety of inland locations. This strategic upgrade enhances the Port of LA’s attractiveness as a gateway for cargo owners who rely on fast, efficient, and well-connected supply chains to serve their customers.

Engineering cleaner air – and a path for nature too

Every container that moves by rail is a container that doesn’t require a drayage truck. As rail demand grows, the expanded yard is projected to eliminate up to 1,200 truck trips per day by 2040.

Brown put the environmental payoff plainly: “One of the main reasons we did this project in the first place was to benefit both the community and the environment – by putting boxes on trains.”

One of the more distinctive engineering challenges of the project had nothing to do with rail. In the middle of the Pier 400 transportation corridor sits a deliberate gap – a marine passage designed to allow fish and other harbor wildlife to circulate through the harbor. The expansion had to span it.

“In the middle of this rail yard is a gap that was placed there originally to allow for circulation of water, and for fish and other wildlife to be able to make their way through the harbor,” Brown said. “Which was wonderful, except that it left us with a hole that we had to span.” A new concrete rail bridge now carries the additional tracks over that gap, with the wildlife corridor preserved intact beneath it.

Performance that speaks to trust

For Mark Dixon, Senior Rail Operations Manager at APM Terminals Los Angeles, the expansion was only part of the equation.

“We always want to look at challenging the status quo,” said Dixon. “We look at something that we’ve been doing day in, day out, and we say, how can we do this better? Customers need reliability because they need that trust. They have to feel confident that they can come to us for their needs.”

Working smarter, not just bigger

New infrastructure alone doesn’t move 11,000 containers a week. Behind Pier 400’s rail performance is a disciplined operating system built on lean manufacturing principles – the same continuous improvement methods that transformed automotive and aerospace production, now applied to one of the most complex intermodal operations in the Western Hemisphere. The rail team calculates precise equipment dispatch rates based on planned move counts, defines repeatable routes with known cycle times for every load and discharge, and conducts structured yard observations to catch bottlenecks before they ripple into delays. The result is a rail yard that runs less like a port and more like a production line.

“These aren’t theoretical exercises,” said Camron York, Director of Operations, Rail & Gate, APM Terminals Los Angeles. “They’re the operational disciplines behind our ability to consistently deliver sub-three-day dwell times. That’s the kind of reliability that lets customers plan their inland supply chain with confidence.”

For Dixon, the work is never quite finished: “Pier 400 is more than a terminal. It’s a vision. It’s a team. It’s our belief that we will continue to deliver high performance, innovation and reliability to our customers – now and into the future.”