On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) had issued its final guidelines and a call for $1.2 billion in funding for port and freight infrastructure projects to improve the supply chain.
The announcement comes less than a year after Newsom issued an executive order to relieve supply chain congestion by building a more efficient, sustainable, and resilient goods movement system.
“California’s ports are critical to exporting and importing goods both abroad and throughout the United States,” Newsom said. “After decades of neglect, we are finally making the critical investments needed to modernize our ports – helping us to keep up with demand in a way that is environmentally sustainable and brings our distribution process into the 21st Century.”
The port and freight infrastructure program was finalized in the state budget earlier this year to make long-term upgrades to the supply chain that will increase the capacity to move goods throughout the state while lessening its environmental impact.
“Thanks to Governor Newsom’s leadership, California is investing in our nation-leading supply chain infrastructure like never before to support a cleaner and more dynamic goods movement system that will power our economy for decades,” CalSTA Secretary Toks Omishakin said. “I look forward to identifying priority projects as we look to maximize this historic one-time investment.”
More than two-thirds of the funding (70 percent) will go to projects supporting the transportation of goods through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, while the remaining 30 percent will go to ports and goods movement infrastructure in the rest of the state.
Project applications are due Jan. 13, 2023, with awards expected to be announced in March 2023.