Pacific Harbor Line continues to lead rail industry safety, sustainability and efficiency

Anacostia Rail Holdings (ARH) has announced that its Pacific Harbor Line (PHL) has again been recognized for safety and industry leadership.

The railroad, which has provided neutral transportation, maintenance, and dispatching services to the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles for over a quarter century, has once again received the prestigious Presidents Award for safety in 2023 from the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association (ASLRRA). On June 17–18 PHL hosted a fact-finding tour of the global port complex by incoming United States Surface Transportation Board Chairman, Robert E. Primus.

The tour was led by ARH VP and Chief Commercial Officer Eric T. Jakubowski, who also chairs the STB’s Railroad-Shipper Transportation Advisory Council (RSTAC).

“We were honored that Chairman Primus selected PHL for one of the first rail industry fact-finding tours in his new role,” Jakubowski says. “His visit was one of several from high-level industry leaders in the past year. PHL’s role at the port complex that sustains the nation’s supply chain has made our railroad a place where industry leaders come to view and learn about rail service best practices.”

In addition to the June tour by Primus, leaders of ports, labor, and regulatory interests met at PHL in March. Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose honored PHL’s role in providing essential pandemic service and workforce development as well as for its cooperative relationship with labor and environmental leadership during a ceremony at the ports last year.

The purpose of the tour by Primus was to develop a deeper understanding of operations at the largest U.S. ports complex, by container volume. Since PHL took over port rail operations it has served nine on-dock terminals plus numerous commodity transload facilities. The railroad has become a leader in safety, sustainability, and efficiency, while handling some 30 intermodal trains daily and more than 35,000 annual rail carloads.

Of the ASLRRA President’s Award, PHL President Otis L. Cliatt II says, “We are proud of our proven culture of safety.”

The railroad has been an ASLRRA safety award winner in nine of the past 11 years. The President’s Award is given to railroads that post the lowest reportable injury frequency rate per Federal Railroad Administration regulations as measured within industry per-hour categories. PHL had the best rate among Pacific Region railroads with 250,000–500,000 annual hours worked.

In addition to its safety leadership, PHL has also been a sustainability pioneer. It was the first railroad to upgrade its entire fleet to EPA Tier 3+ locomotives. The company has since added a Tier 4 locomotive and, last year, put into service a zero-exhaust emission EMD® Joule battery-electric locomotive from Progress Rail, a Caterpillar company.