INVESTING IN AMERICA: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg Joins Leaders to Break Ground on $1.5B Port of Long Beach On-Dock Rail Support Facility Project in California

LONG BEACH, CA – As part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic actions to strengthen America’s supply chains, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg joined Southern California elected officials and local leaders at the Port of Long Beach to break ground on “America’s Green Gateway,” the Pier B On-Dock Rail Support Facility. The $1.5 billion project is one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country and will link the Port of Long Beach’s existing on-dock rail to the regional and national rail system that will make the movement of cargo quicker and more efficient, while creating less pollution for local communities. 

The historic project, which will create good-paying jobs and lower costs for consumers, would not be possible without support from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. To date, the Port of Long Beach has already received a $283 million Mega grant and a $52.6 million Port Infrastructure Development Program grant funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law from the U.S. Department of Transportation. 

The Port of Long Beach handles $200 billion of trade annually, including American-made manufacturing exports that are being boosted by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The port alsoand supports 2.6 million jobs across U.S. including 575,000 in Southern California making it one of the most significant nodes in America’s supply chains, having just recorded its busiest June on record. 

Today’s groundbreaking builds on President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg’s progress strengthening supply chains for the long-term. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, DOT has created a first-of-its-kind data-sharing partnership with ports, railroads, ocean carriers, and other industry partners to prevent bottlenecks at the busiest container ports, including the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In addition, DOT continues to make historic investments through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including over $5 billion announced earlier this week to repair and rebuild some of the country’s most economically significant bridges that are critical to truck drivers moving goods across America. 

The full transcript of Secretary Buttigieg’s remarks at the groundbreaking below:      

Thank you. Thank you so much. 

I am Pete Buttigieg. I have the best job in the federal government, and the best part of that job is celebrating days like today, so thank you for the chance to join you. 

Thank you, Patricia, to you and to all of the workers you represent—the ILWU and other port workers who didn’t have the option of coming in by Zoom during the dark days of the pandemic, who did so much to keep America’s economy moving. And to all of the workers you represent, including those building trades workers, we’re so excited about having the opportunity to work on this and every other worker involved in the construction and operation of America’s transportation systems. 

That is a big part of why this is called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—we believe in those good-paying jobs, and so do you. 

Likewise, with all of the different hats that you wear, Bobby Olvera, thanks so much for what you do here, thanks for all of the things that the Harbor Commission rightly takes great pride in, and you were right in saying that this investment represents a major vote of confidence in the excellent work and potential of this facility, and everybody associated with it. 

Likewise, I want to recognize Mario Cordero for his extraordinary work on good days and tough days for America’s supply chains, and your entire team have been terrific to work with. Congratulations on this grant. 

Mayor [Rex] Richardson, thank you for welcoming us to the city. Everything that you are rightly proud of in Long Beach, I often reflect that the job of mayor has only become more difficult and demanding since I proudly wore that title. But also, and I’m sure Robert would agree, sure would’ve been nice back when we were mayor if there were a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill providing a wind at our back in doing our job led by the President of the United States, so hopefully you find we’re making your job just a little bit easier. 

Every great day like this is a partnership, including a partnership with the state. So, thank you, Mark, and thank you to everybody in Governor Newson’s administration who teams up with us on this and so many great projects like those I’ll be with.  

And I want to recognize the extraordinary federal delegation that serves this community and this state: Senator Butler and Senator Padilla, Congressman Robert Garcia—who, likewise, I rejoiced when I learned he was coming to Congress, because we need former mayors to bring that perspective. 

To Grace Napolitano, who I admire so much—and I don’t just say that because she’s on the committee that oversees me and our work. 

And I think there are other members of the House who will be joining us later on today. You have just a formidable delegation here, and thank you for everything that you do, especially in these times. 

I’ve got twins. Two-and-a-half years old. Chasten and I have the privilege of raising them. The only thing better than my day job is the job of being a dad. And, as anybody who’s had toddlers knows, bedtime routine gets to be a real thing right about this age.  

And something new made its way into our bedtime routine a few weeks ago. After we get them out of the tub and dry them off, and then we do the pajamas, and then we do the book, and then we do the second book, and then we do the third book, and then we do the story. And then we promise to tell the neighbors to be quiet, and tell the firefighter to be quiet, and tell the helicopter to be quiet. And then we check under the bed for monsters, and we check in the closet for dinosaurs. And then we count to ten. And then we do the three kisses. And then—just at what I thought would be the moment when we were turning the lights out and closing the door—both of them, especially our daughter, has begun saying, “Tell me about your work.”  

“Well, tell me your work,” they say. 

And the first time this happened, I said, “Does hearing about my work help you go to sleep?”  

And very sweetly, our little daughter said, “Yeah.” 

And at first, I really struggled to do it. It’s hard to say to a soon-to-be-three-year-old, “Well, tomorrow we’re going to release a new MPRM and then I’m testifying in the House Committee.”  

But then I started thinking, actually, the bigger and more important and more beneficial your work, the more it’s the kind of thing you can even tell a three-year-old about. 

And it was wonderful, just a few days ago to be able to say, when this moment came around in the bedtime routine, “Well, I’m gonna get on an airplane, I’m gonna go to Pennsylvania and help fix a bridge.” And here she asked if I was bringing tape. I explained that it’s probably going to take more than tape. And then I was going to get on another plane and get to go to a place called California, where we’re working together to help make trains better able to go up to the ships to get the things that come on the ships and bring them to all the houses, including ours. 

And it really is that simple. And it’s that complicated, of course. An extraordinary effort that also is an extraordinary moment in the before and after picture of what has happened to America’s supply chains in just a few, short, disorienting years. 

Because so many of America’s mental images, and certainly so many of the images in my own mind’s eye, of what happened to America, especially in the immediate wake of COVID, comes from this port and this port complex. 

The images of the extraordinary people who rose to the occasion as our transportation systems and supply chains faced their most profound and widespread set of disruptions since 9/11. We all remember those images from that time when grocery store shelves were short of everything from ground beef to toilet paper. 

And then, when the administration began and then our economy came roaring back, that image of those 100 massive container ships bearing down on the coast in San Pedro Bay here. 

Then I think about a very different memory or image, a setting about as different as it gets, which is the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, when President Biden gathered together Mario, and Gene Seroka from the Port of LA, and Willie Adams from ILWU, and we sat at that historic conference table, still wearing our masks back then, talking piece by piece about how to work through this big bottlenecks in the supply chain, how to act together to do something about them. And then I think about all the meetings—dozens, maybe hundreds of meetings—that followed over the years in much less storied conference rooms and Zoom rooms that sustained the extraordinary coordination that kept America’s economy afloat. 

And I picture the aerial view looking down at Terminal Island, first on a PowerPoint slide and then a little bit further up close, where an 80-acre yard near here was being repurposed to store chassis and empty containers to creatively address a chokepoint in the system. 

And I remember the images of the TV commentators on cable behind their news desks, right around this time three years ago, beginning breathlessly to predict that Christmas 2021 was going to be pretty much canceled. 

Then I think about how that Christmas happened to be our kids’ first Christmas. It was very much not canceled, because the men and women at places like the Ports of LA and Long Beach moved record levels of goods that year and saw to it that people got more than 99 percent of their packages on time or with minimal delay. 

And of course, the goods that came through this port at that time didn’t just mean presents under the tree, it meant essential medical goods and countless products and parts that American jobs depended on. 

And I do remember the sacrifice and the pride of the ILWU workers who took on weekend work and late shifts to keep those goods moving into and out of the port to get to where they needed to go. 

And then there’s an image I’ve held in my mind for a long time but didn’t come around just yet, which is the day we would start to move some dirt—or as my boss would say, “turn a spade”—on the improvements that we’ve been talking about working on funding to move more rail capacity onto the docks here and make it possible for this critical American container port to move even more for the American people. 

Just as we admire and depend on the port workers who move goods here very day, I’m excited to be with the construction workers from multiple unions about to start physically delivering on the construction to bring about that vision that people here have had for more than 20 years, a vision President Biden was determined to make a reality, which we are now so very proud to support with more than $330 million available through the Biden infrastructure package. 

So, that’s why, while I don’t get to physically see most or even many of the 54,000 [60,000] projects and counting that we have going on around the country getting support through this package, I am delighted, on behalf of the Biden-Harris Administration, to join you all to break ground on America’s Green Gateway! 

What a good day for Long Beach and for the American economy. This work builds a rail network on the port that more than triples the volume of cargo that can move by rail to nearly 5 million containers a year. 

That’s the type of throughput that will keep America’s economy humming and keep costs down with benefits in every part of this country—as far away from here as our house in Michigan and the house I grew up in in South Bend, Indiana—because as we saw during the pandemic, what happens at the biggest port complex in the country affects the whole country. 

It matters to U.S. producers moving their American products out, especially as this administration doubles down on its investment in the American manufacturing renaissance being powered by American workers today. 

And it’s not just the increased volume, it’s how goods move. As Mario mentioned, one trip by train is the equivalent of 750 trips by truck. It means that those scarce truck chassis and drivers can concentrate on getting goods to those areas that could not be efficiently served by rail. 

And the shift to rail in this context can reduce greenhouse gas pollution by as much as 75 percent, meaning less exhaust breathed in by people—including kids—who live near the port, not to mention the workers at the port. 

Through this project, and the hundreds of other supply chain improvements we’re funding across the country, we’re not just fixing supply chains that were upended by the pandemic, we’re making our supply chains more resilient against other disruptions, because even though we can’t predict what each one will be, we can predict that we will face many more. It could be a geopolitical conflicts like Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine. It could be the Houthi attacks against shipping in the Red Sea. It could be increasingly extreme weather events from climate change, which are causing global shipping disruptions as we speak. 

America’s supply chains have to get better prepared than they were three-and-a-half years ago, and thanks to this group here, and the leadership of President Biden, they are better prepared for those threats and challenges in the future. 

We’re better positioned because of the investments, and because of the new freight office that we stood up, the partnerships that we developed, the unprecedented data-sharing that we have initiated—all with your support—and because of that new infrastructure. 

This is a summer of construction. I’ve been seeing it all over the country: thousands of miles of road being repaired; over 10,000 bridge repairs underway; over 800 airports being modernized. It is an extraordinary moment. 

I know we have some Spanish-language attendees and media, so I’m going to hope that my Spanish teacher from high school is looking over my shoulder from somewhere as I do my best. 

Ahora quiero decir unas palabras en español.  

Me complace estar una vez más en el Puerto de Long Beach, en esta ocasión para celebrar con ustedes el inicio de la construcción de America’s Green Gateway. Gracias a la Administración Biden-Harris el puerto finalmente podrá dar vida a este importante proyecto, con una inversión federal de $300 millones se construirá una red ferroviaria que triplicará el volumen de carga que se mueve en el puerto, bajando el costo de los productos para las familias y mejorando la calidad del aire que respira la comunidad que vive cerca del puerto. 

[Page flies away in the wind.] That page we’ll have to do without, so I’ll sum it up a little more succinctly. 

More velocity. More capacity. Less congestion. Less pollution. Less delay. That is a win, win, win, win-win, and I’m delighted to celebrate it with you. 

So, congratulations, and let’s go move some dirt! 

Thanks very much. 

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