ELECTRONIC CONTAINER SEALS ARE PROPOSED FOR ALAMEDA CARRIDOR

ELECTRONIC CONTAINER SEALS ARE PROPOSED FOR ALAMEDA CARRIDOR    The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, TransCore Inc., Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway and Union Pacific Railroad are testing the effectiveness of electronic seals on rail cars traversing the Alameda Corridor.
   The initiative is designed to improve cargo security.
   The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, which opened the corridor in April, said that preliminary tests have proved positive. The authority and other backers are preparing a proposal for a $1.2 million federal grant to conduct field operations tests.
   The system would electronically track the movement of cargo containers and their contents from the moment they arrive.
   The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle 43 percent of all maritime containers coming into the United States.
   “Tracking and tracing these containers and their contents is important to national security because the containers could be used by terrorists to carry dangerous weapons or chemicals,” the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority said.
      The use of electronic seals is one of the federal government’s high-priority concepts for tracking cargo containers into the United States.
   The new $2.4 billion Alameda Corridor is a 20-mile freight rail expressway linking the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to the national rail network at the railroad yards near downtown Los Angeles.
   The Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority already utilizes electronic scanners to track the movement of rail cars for the purpose of collecting user fees from the railroads. The potential $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation would be used to modify these scanners and develop software and hardware to read not only the tags already on all rail cars but also the electronic seals that may be placed on the cargo containers in the near future.
      TransCore is evaluating a similar tracking system for cargo containers placed on trucks at the ports of Seattle and Tacoma in Washington state.