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beginning of a neoliberal private-public logistics regime that created new governance institutions to access public funding for port-related infrastructure. Prior to ACTA, regional transportation agencies did not have a spending category for logistics funding. ACTA’s former general manager, Gill Hicks, described how the organization was locked out of public funds during a congressional hearing: “Initially, ACTA was frozen out of the competition for these funds because there was no category in which to compete. The Alameda Corridor was not a freeway project, nor a light rail project.”²⁶ ACTA taught Alameda Corridor leaders to create new institutional mechanisms that enabled them to apply for funding from regional, state, and federal agencies. Their first move was to access funds from the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (LACTC), the organization in charge of distributing state and federal funds for Los Angeles County transportation needs.

      ACTA and SCAG also asked Heinz Heckeroth, the director of Caltrans District 7, for funding. Heckeroth suggested that SCAG “coordinate a systems-level analysis of the transportation access needs of the ports.”²⁷ Such a plan could provide an evidence-based, comprehensive initiative that state and federal officials would view more favorably. Port leaders complied, and according to Gill Hicks ACTA set out “to develop an action plan for improving traffic conditions in the port area and to raise funds for implementing that plan.”²⁸ One result was the creation of the PAC in October 1981, which became instrumental in redirecting public transportation funds into the Alameda Corridor project. Finally, after two years of lobbying by ACTA leaders, the regional transportation agency (LACTC and later LACMTA) adopted new funding categories and went on to provide $347 million in grants during the 1990s. Regional transportation leaders agreed to fund logistics spending “on the basis that goods movement projects such as the Alameda Corridor are essential for reducing congestion and air pollution and for maintaining a healthy economy.”²⁹

      ACTA’s biggest success occurred in 1996 and 1997, when President Bill Clinton signed a federal loan for $400 million. Clinton’s decision to allocate the funds was made after regional, state, and federal actors successfully framed Southern California’s logistics network as a public good worthy of federal funding. The federal loan was only granted after the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 and the National Highway System Designation Act (NHSDA) of 1995 identified the Alameda Corridor as a high-priority corridor. Under ISTEA, those projects that were designated as high-priority corridors were eligible to receive federal financing from a special revolving loan fund. Key actors from Southern California’s private and public sector lobbied for this high-priority designation. Gill Hicks claimed, “Members of ACTA’s coalition and advocacy team successfully communicated the key message that the project was vital to the health of the nation’s economy because it would dramatically improve a critical international trade corridor, linking every other state in the union to the largest port complex in the United States.”³⁰

      Local port boosters also gained access to federal funding streams by capitalizing on concerns over national security after the assault on New York’s Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The LAEDC, for example, cited possible security threats when it solicited federal funds to support port operations. According to an LAEDC report from 2003, “the US Department of Defense (DoD) has designated more than 38,000 miles of rail lines—including those out of Southern California—as strategically important national assets.”³¹ The report continued, arguing that “these strategic rail corridors help connect military installations to ports and intermodal transfer facilities and to ensure that US military forces have the ability to mobilize heavy equipment, such as tanks and tracked vehicles, as needed.” Statements such as these further rationalized state involvement in transportation systems, equating commerce with military readiness and logistics. The connection was clear in the LAEDC report, which noted, “Nearly 200 military installations require access to commercial rail lines.” Logistics and the military are in fact inextricably linked; this connection can be traced back to military supply chains that stressed efficiency and speed by deploying technology and transportation systems to deliver supplies. As Deborah Cowen points out, the military roots of logistics rules out any discussion of the business of logistics without considering the role that the state has played in developing the technologies and strategies of commodity circulation.³²

      FINANCE CAPITAL AND THE LOGISTICS STATE

      Jeff Holt, vice president of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and manager of the municipal finance division of the Fixed Income Currency and Commodities Group, served as the underwriter for the Alameda Corridor and articulated how public finance and regional planning were both central to the formation of Southern California’s logistics regime. He attributed the project’s success to coordinated regional planning that enabled the state to create new markets by developing the infrastructure that private interests were not willing to take on themselves. Holt touched on this dilemma when he told a congressional hearing committee that “the big question is always, how do we pay for the large public works projects that everyone needs but that no one agency, on its own, can afford.” He also claimed that “the Alameda Corridor is possibly the best example of how multiple parties in a public/private partnership can come together to fund such large projects.”³³ Again, the underlying assumption was that the state should play a key role in creating new logistics markets by funding regional infrastructure.

      This ideological conflation between the market and the public good was expressed by the executive director for the POLA, who testified, “In reality, the beneficiary of the Alameda Corridor’s successful completion and operation is the American public, to whom our domestic and global transportation efficiency is critical.”³⁴ Both of these comments exemplify the mediating role that the state has historically played in mobilizing space for the advancement of capitalism when individual capitalists cannot agree to take collective action.³⁵ Capitalists are also buttressed by the conflation between the interests of capital and an undifferentiated “American public,” a point that becomes more important when we discuss how social movement organizations contested this claim.

      Cooperation and state support were particularly important to financial underwriters because they introduced greater stability and thus made the project more feasible for long-term finance schemes. Consequently, as Holt explained, Congress set aside a “$59 million appropriation for a loan-loss reserve [which] made a $400 million loan available which, in turn, made it possible to borrow an additional $1.2 billion from the capital markets to complete the $2.4 billion total project cost [for the Alameda Corridor].”³⁶ In total, the $2.4 billion needed to complete the Alameda Corridor came from a variety of public-private sources, including, revenue bonds (51%); Federal loans (18%); The Ports (18 %); California State grants (8%) and other sources (5%), mostly from the LA MTA.³⁷

      Aside from the funding, the Alameda Corridor also taught policy makers how to act regionally and how to deploy public financing to support the region’s goods movement infrastructure, a lesson they would apply to future projects. In fact, the federal loan to ACTA served as a model for the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) of 1998, a federal program that provides direct loans and lines of credit to “projects of national and regional significance.” TIFIA provided “improved access to capital markets, flexible repayment terms, and potentially more favorable interest rates than can be found in private capital markets for similar instruments.”³⁸ In short, ACTA taught local and federal actors how to mobilize the state for private-public partnerships by rescaling the spatial politics of growth. Regional cooperation was particularly important as the cost of infrastructure projects rose and local funding sources dwindled.

      Federal programs like TIFIA encouraged regional coordination and created incentives for local actors to develop new institutions and governance networks. SCAG’s adoption of the National Freight Gateway Strategy Agreement in 2006 marked a significant move toward greater collaboration. The agreement was established through a memorandum of understanding that encouraged coordinated efforts on transportation capacity and environmental protection. Major federal and local agencies signed on, including the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Army Corps of Engineers, the California Department of Transportation (CADOT), SCAG, and transportation authorities for local counties.³⁹ The memorandum incentivized regional collaboration

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