In 1911, the city of Oakland had finally secured the rights to its own waterfront, after some 61 years of legal wrangling with Horace Carpentier and the hated Southern Pacific Railroad. The question was what to do with it? Southern Pacific (SP) had its own ideas, and offered a fully funded port plan, with SP as the lead developer. Mayor Frank Mott had other ideas and pushed for a $2.5 million Bond measure to fund the new port.
Modernized Port: a battle for the mythical town of Oakland (part II)
By W. Graham Claytor
Published: July, 2005
In 1911, the city of Oakland had finally secured the rights to its own waterfront, after some 61 years of legal wrangling with Horace Carpentier and the hated Southern Pacific Railroad. The question was what to do with it? Southern Pacific (SP) had its own ideas, and offered a fully funded port plan, with SP as the lead developer. Mayor Frank Mott had other ideas and pushed for a $2.5 million Bond measure to fund the new port.
Tempers ran high and local figures nearly came to blows over the competing ideas, but in 1910, Mayor Mott’s plan won voter approval. Construction commenced on the Livingston Street Pier, the first in Oakland to use reinforced concrete. Then a massive bulkhead was built of reinforced concrete between Myrtle and Clay Streets. Finally, a 90 by 400-foot, steel-framed transit shed was built between Jefferson and Groves Streets, known as Municipal Dock No.1.
The largest project was filling in the city-owned tidelands near the SP mole. A rock and debris seawall was built that runs from the mole to enclose 400 acres of tidelands. The city went on to build seven new docks, the largest being the Market St. Pier in 1924, but a shipping boom in the mid-20s overwhelmed these facilities.
A change in the way ports operated was in the wind, as bigger ships required bigger turning basins, larger piers and deeper drafts. The older piers were nestled directly in town, next to services and business and had no room to grow. A new vision was needed to expand where land was available and direct railroad service was easy to accomplish. An engineering study recommended more piers, a $9.96 million bond for improvements, and an independent board to oversee all of the port’s activities. The opposition preferred private development. A heated political battle ensued, much like the previous waterfront fights; and it was all about the land.
And no one had a bigger hand in this process than a young attorney, Leroy Goodrich, who was appointed to fill an unexpired term as Commissioner of Public Works. He was thought to be a safe and reliable appointee, diligent and honest. And he was so diligent that he walked along the waterfront, posing as a tourist. In his strolls, he met employees walking aimlessly around carrying tools. When asked why, the employee would explain that there was a new commissioner and they needed to look busy. He inquired why an eight-man dredge had 32 employees and two captains and was told, We do things right, here in Oakland.
Goodrich came away from these experiences convinced that the city needed an independent board, free from political pressures, to manage the port as a business. Here was a politician lobbying to reduce his own influence. He was reviled, accused of ulterior motives and generally slandered. Mayor Davie, who claimed Oakland had a beautiful harbor and plenty of capacity, opposed him. Goodrich replied that the beautiful harbor ran from a cesspool in Brooklyn Basin to a garbage dump in West Oakland and was so overburdened that some cargoes were stored in empty railroad cars. When the dust settled, the voters supported it and in 1927, the Board of Port Commissioners was created and funded.
This group went on to oversee the redesign of the port. Seven new warehouses and two transit sheds were constructed. The old Parr terminal was modernized and became the Seventh St. Unit. This modernization effort would, with few changes, keep the port competitive for the next forty years, until a shipping executive named Malcom McLain figured out how to think inside the box.
By 1941, Oakland was the second busiest port in the Bay Area, following San Francisco and leading Richmond. But thanks to Malcom McLain that was all to change. McLain sat in his truck in Hoboken, NJ, in 1937 and waited for his cotton bales to be unloaded. As he waited nearly all day, he watched the cargo hoist each bundle up and then waited some more while it was properly stowed. He thought how much easier and quicker it would be to just lift his trailer up and stow that on the ship, without any of its contents being touched.
Not far away from where McLain waited in Hoboken, there existed a company doing essentially that. It was called Seatrain and it handled loaded boxcars direct to Cuba and on to New Orleans. It was noted at the time that a Seatrain vessel could unload in 10 hours, while a break bulk ship of similar tonnage took six days. These were the central advantages of containerization, but Seatrain had avoided the cost of building special containers by using the railroad’s boxes (and wheels).
McLain did go on to offer coastwise container service in 1954, but waited until 1966 to launch his container service to Europe. SeaLand used cranes on board ships to lift the boxes from the truck chassis. A West Coast company, Matson Lines, eyed this innovation and quickly followed suit in 1956. Matson only called at a few ports and thus developed land-based cranes for handling the boxes. Unable to find space for this new system in San Francisco, its homeport and headquarters, Matson built its crane at Encinal Terminals, in Alameda. On January 27, 1959, the first high-speed inter-modal crane was placed in service.
While containerization promised many advantages, some could not translate into bottom-line savings without an agreement with the Longshoreman’s Union (ILWU). The Pacific Maritime Association reached this historic agreement in 1961, and the face of shipping was poised to change remarkably.
The Port of Oakland watched these changes carefully and was quick to change with the times. Ben Nutter had been on the engineering side and quickly saw the advantages. He worked hard to get SeaLand on board and, in 1962, they selected Oakland. Nutter encouraged Japanese executives to visit, and hired a representative in Japan. This paid off in 1968, when, despite strong competition from San Francisco, six Japanese companies selected Oakland.
While containerization was indeed a success, full inter-modalism had yet to be achieved. The railroads eyed containers somewhat skeptically, as they seemed to be designed for trucks, not trains. The railroads of this time suffered from overbuilding, the free Interstate Highway system (and its truck competition) and low rates of return fostered by out-of-touch regulations. They operated money-losing passenger trains that the Interstate Commerce Commission refused to let them discontinue. Railroads at that time were not particularly innovative and even blocked the development of D. W. Brosnan’s jumbo aluminum grain hopper. This was Southern Railway’s attempt to move grain in a special purpose car instead of box cars. Southern won in 1962, after three intense years of court battles with its fellow railroads.
Thus for the railroad, containers were merely something that could be placed on a flat car (COFC –Container on Flat Car), like truck trailers, but given the smaller volume of 20 to 40 feet, a container carried less volume and weight than a box car and the rates were low. Railroads indeed handled the business, but not with anything like enthusiasm. That would change in 1979, when SeaLand pioneered the use of double stack, where two containers are stacked upon each other on a single car. Because the doubled containers exceeded normal height clearances, the lower container was placed in a well. By doubling the volume in a single car, railroads could take advantage of their heavy haul ability and now earn enough carrying containers to generate a reasonable return.
Double stack technology spread and railroads improved their clearances to take advantage of different car designs. This innovation led to even more growth at the Port of Oakland, with its access to three railroads (The Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific and the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe). Three railroads could offer shippers competitive rates, while over in San Francisco, there was only one railroad, SP. Today, a tunnel just south of the port still lacks clearance for double stack, so San Francisco can’t compete for this business. The final disadvantage for San Francisco is that it is physically located two crew districts and 100 miles from Oakland, so any rail cargo has to bear that additional cost.
In December 1998, Oakland finally closed out its epic battle with Carpentier and Southern Pacific by inking a deal with successor Union Pacific Railroad to purchase 125 acres of land, which represented the last tract stolen by Carpentier when the town was quietly founded in 1852. In its Vision 2000 Program, that land was consolidated with 400 acres from the closing of the Naval Fleet Supply Center, giving Oakland some serious expansion room while improving its rail access facilities.
Oakland maintains its leadership as the dominant port in the Bay Area, and the third largest port on the West Coast (behind LA, Long Beach). It handles some 1.6 million TEUs (twenty-foot container equivalents), and with the merger between Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, offers stack trains to two competing railroads.
But the issue for the future is throughput. That is, how to speed the containers on their way. One thing that has not changed since Malcom McLain waited in Hoboken is that truck drivers spend too long idling while waiting to pick up containers. Double stack trains also take a long time to assemble, load and dispatch. The railroad has capacity issues due to the fact that the line over the Sierra has only one of its two tracks cleared for double stack heights. Congestion on the Union Pacific Railroad has been an issue since it merged with its competitor, Southern Pacific.
But the issues are far more severe for the ports of Long Beach and LA. They have little expansion room and the rail congestion issues on the mainline to New Orleans have been persistent and troubling. The Central Valley is becoming a larger destination for containers, as many businesses use it for distribution points and local industry and agriculture further generate return loads. With the congestion issues in the LA Basin, many shippers are looking for alternatives to move their products.
Thus the Port of Oakland is working on a project to send unit container trains to Shafter, CA in the Central Valley. Since these go mostly by truck today, the train would remove a large number of trucks, which should greatly reduce idling time at the port and ease local congestion. The rail rate to Shafter would represent a savings over the truck cost for shippers and the new terminal will provide jobs in the Central Valley. While it may not seem like a visionary project, in fact, it is.
The railroads have capacity issues and are not eager for another train. Generally, railroads like to have a longer haul, closer to 500 miles, while this service is more in the nature of a shuttle. It was a balancing act to get the economics right and required diplomacy to bring the railroad on board. But once running, this shuttle will bring another competitive edge to Port of Oakland while reducing truck congestion, idling time and improving local air quality.
There are still challenges, as restricted heights in the Sierra limit double stack moves, and while the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) has trackage rights directly east, it has failed to use them for other than merchandise trains. Therefore, competing stack trains from BNSF go south to near Los Angeles, before heading east toward Chicago, which gives the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach a competitive edge. This essentially leaves the Union Pacific, as the low-cost, stack train operator out of Oakland, without significant competition.
The Port of Oakland has a rich and colorful history, which in more recent times has been based on innovation. It is clear that this trend must continue as the port moves to address the modern problems of throughput, congestion and competitive rail access.
Eureka ferry docked at the Oakland mole, a pier where passenger trains and ferries met until 1957. Photo from the private collection of Graham Claytor.
Until the completion of the Bay and Golden Gate bridges in 1937, a ferry like Southern Pacific’s “Berkeley” (above) would’ve been the only way to cross the Bay. Photo from the private collection of Graham Claytor.
