Oakland (Special to ZennieReport.com and based on a post at OaklandNewsNowBlog.com) – The newest phase in the discussion of the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal was ignited Sunday by Carol Wyatt, a West Oakland activist. In a message to me, Zennie Abraham, Ms. Wyatt asked the following questions in this Nextdoor post:
Re: Coal in Oakland….A question from a community elder. The election has many people inquiring about past issues.
Our community health priorities in Oakland are not new; that is a quote from an 84-year old registered Democrat in the community.Her grandson showed her the post I put up, I told her that I am not fully aware of the origins of this but we do have several former council members on a thread I posted about Judge Brenda Harbin-Forte; her concerns are about how the City gets into issues and then costs us problems that go on for years.
The lawsuit is about a lease violation of a bulk commodity terminal. Here are her questions, which I told her I would post and attempt to get responses for. I’m researching questions and did find some resources.
But, since there are comments from former Councilmembers on this thread perhaps they can respond so to inform her. Here are her questions (in her own words):
Q-1 – How Did The City of Oakland Get Us Into This Coal Mess?
Q-2 Why (The City, the Council or Both) did they NOT KNOW why the (TLS) people involved in the lease were going to use the commodity terminal for?
Her grandson, who doesn’t want to engage but wants to help her find out is following. Thank you.
This ZennieReport.com post was prepared to answer the questions Ms. Wyatt posted, and provide even more information. Much of the detail shared has not been seen before, put together as if to solve a puzzle – that’s the intent here.
Where The “Oakland Coal Terminal” Monicker Came From
For too long, since 2015, the public idea that the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal or “OBOT” was a “coal terminal” have persisted, first pushed by the Oakland City Attorney’s Office that year, and then repeated by a non-profit organization called “No Coal In Oakland” and then by several non-profit organizations that published what each one called “objective journalism” but was really information paid for by public relations organizations with a specific agenda against what they insisted was the “coal terminal”.
But the dark truth is that OBOT as an idea was created by Phil Tagami of California Capital Investment Group in 2008, and that it was a “bulk terminal”, and not a coal terminal – the City of Oakland determined that OBOT should handle coal as part of a mix of commodities, not Phil Tagami, alone.
According to Port Economics, Management, and Policy: (https://porteconomicsmanagement.org/pemp/contents/part5/bulk-breakbulk-terminal-design-equipment/)
…a coal terminal is a specialized facility for handling coal, while a bulk terminal is a facility for handling large, unpackaged materials like coal, grain, and petroleum products:
Coal terminals
These terminals are used to import and export coal by loading, unloading, storing, and transshipping coal between different modes of transportation. Coal terminals may also offer additional services like washing, screening, blending, and compacting.
Bulk terminals
These terminals are designed to handle large, unpackaged materials like coal, grain, iron ore, petroleum products, and chemicals. Bulk terminals are equipped with advanced equipment like cranes, forklifts, and conveyor belts to efficiently transport cargo. Bulk terminals are often designed to specialize in handling a single commodity, such as coal, grain, or iron ore. Each commodity has unique equipment, storage, and design considerations.
City of Oakland-Commissioned “The Tioga Report” Which Determined That Coal Was A Commodity For OBOT
It was not until a City of Oakland-commissioned document referred to as “The Tioga Report” was released in 2011 that the handling of coal in containers was identified as part of the market mix of commodities that OBOT planned to use in the operation of its business model. but The City of Oakland had “The Tioga Report” put under court seal for years during the City of Oakland’s lawsuit against CCIG / Prologis. When the document and related reports were unsealed in 2019, Insight Terminal Solutions gave them to its digital consent consultant Zennie62Media, Inc. for deliberate public view for the first time. But the public still new little about OBOT or how it came to be.
Over time that would change.
How The Oakland Bulk And Oversized Terminal Became An Idea
The origin of the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal started in 1986 and 1988 with the Bay Seaport Plan. That series of documents produced primarily by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission noted that there was a need for port land expansion in several Bay Area cities, but Oakland had the largest land for growth via The Port of Oakland. The 1992 version of the plan was the first to identify military bases in the Bay Area as excellent candidates for future growth, if they were closed.
To the end of eventual conversion of American military bases after the end of The Cold War and the fall of The Berlin Wall, the Federal Government established the first Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 1988. The SF Bay Area versions of the BRAC were created in 1994, with the East Bay Conversion and Reinvestment Commission formed to represent the East Bay, including Oakland. I served on the BRAC that year at the request of of Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson.
Eventually, the BRAC as committee was reformed into a commission, and the planning for the termination of the Oakland Army Base started, then ended in 1999. Oakland took 11 years before it formed a redevelopment plan, much of that slowness due to the Federal Government and its long list of land disposition requirements. One of them was that what ever replaced the Oakland Army Base had to also have the low-skilled, well-paying jobs the Oakland Army Base offered.
Oakland Sharing Then Vision And The Birth Of Phil Tagami As Developer, And His Idea
Phil’s plan for the Oakland Army Base land came from the economic development organization called “Oakland Sharing The Vision”, or OSV, in October of 1991. 500 Oaklanders gathered at the Downtown Oakland Marriott Convention Center on two weekends to form a set of agreed to goals and objectives for Oakland’s future city development. OSV was also a dramatically successful social tool: I met most of the friends in Oakland Politics I still have today from that event in 1991.
The OSV economic area was dominated by concern for the development of The Port of Oakland, and a rail-to-train cargo handling and transportation network that eventually was selected as one of the top economic development projects listed in the 1992 OSV Strategic Plan, the foundation of what became OBOT. Phil and I were introduced to each other by the late Oakland Citizens Committee For Urban Renewal (OCCUR) Executive Director David Glover, who said “You two brothers should get to know each other” because of our similarities in how we believed Oakland should be developed.
At the time, Phil was a real estate broker for a guy named Randy Burger, and was growing a reputation as an adaptive reuse expert. He was also a 1983 Skyline High School grad known for his Lacrosse heroics and a love for rock music. What tied Phil, then Oakland lawyer and transplant John Russo, and I together was a love for the book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York. We were also fond of quoting lines from The Godfather, like “Keep your friends close, but your enemies, closer.”
Out of that friendship came the reformation of the long dormant Rotunda Project, which took up four different developers and $7 million of the City of Oakland money. With the help of Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, Interim City Manager Kofi Bonner, myself, City Manager Robert Bobb, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and a total cast of about 500 people, Phil successfully rebuilt The Oakland Rotunda into the crown jewel it is today. Then, as fee developer consultant to the City of Oakland, Phil rebuilt The Rotunda, and its grand opening night event was a celebration of our great city:
Hungry for a larger development project for Oakland, Phil turned his attention to the 2008 Request for Proposals for the Oakland Army Base. CCIG partnered with Prologis and the City of Oakland in the planning of a development project to replace the Oakland Army Base. Phil quickly adopted the OSV priority economic development bulk terminal project because it provided a better path toward meeting the government’s jobs requirements than the alternatives brought up by other developers, for example, movie studios. The CCIG / Prologis Team won the competition, and then turned to City of Oakland Economic Development Project Manager Pat Cashman.
It was Pat Cashman who hired The Tioga Group to write what Steve Nieman, the firm’s consultant on the project termed as follows:
CEDA (City of Oakland Community and Economic Development Agency) has asked The Tioga Group, Inc. (Tioga) to provide this report as its assessment of the business prospects for OBOT and OGRE, a market overview. The scope is to provide a very broad, but not deep analysis, for the purpose of isolating factors that are a threat to the success of OBOT and OGRE and which may require additional analysis. Tioga’s scope is to do this without creating new data or or analyses but with the cooperation of the CCIG team as protected by a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). analyses but with the cooperation of the CCIG team as protected by a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
The Tioga Groups Spots The Coal Market For The City of Oakland and CCIG.
The Tioga Group set the commodity mix planning for OBOT and its sister rail development “Oakland Global Rail Enterprise “ AKA “OGRE”, namely a focus only on the coal market. The The Tioga Group also evaluated the CCIG development team as being a poor in some areas, good in others. Undaunted, Phil Tagami replaced Kinder Morgan with the more environmentally-aware Insight Terminal Solutions, and its CEO John Siegel.
I sought to land ITS as a client for the then brand new startup media company Zennie62Media, Inc. Why? Because in court and with withholding documents, the City of Oakland was clearly involved in what it incorrectly calls the Coal Terminal.
I wanted to get the real news out and punish the City of Oakland in the process for the large number of lies it told.
The Tioga Report focused on coal in describing the advantages and disadvantages of certain commodities. There was no attempt to identify why coal handling would cause any political issues at all. So, The Tioga Report said as follows:
For unit trains of bulk commodities if the rail switching service to/from the OBOT wharfs were ideal it would have two characteristics. One would be that for bulk commodities the train movement would involve a large loop track over which the individual railcars (whether in a mixed train or in a unit train) could be push over the unloading/loading site and each dumped / filled in a single action. Hence, the time OGRE spent switching and spotting cars would
be minimized. Yes, this would require unloading/loading equipment on the wharf that was exceptionally efficient, too. Also, it would require a sufficiently long lead track that could hold a whole unit train while it awaits shuttle to/from the OBOT site. Instead the planned OGRE switching activity is much longer in cycle time and the lack of a tail track extending west from the OBOT shed on the wharf is a severe limitation as to the location of the dumping/filling equipment. Subject to more information it would appear that such a tail track is not contemplated and if it were to be added could be no more than ten cars in length thereby limiting the number of cars in a cut to be shuttled by OGRE between the dump site and the new rail storage yard being erected by the port to about ten in a cycle. This contrasts with coal and grain trains of up to 121-125 cars in length being handled in one move with road locomotives only (no local switching engines but with local crews. The activity of accumulating bulk inventory in an on-dock storage device (bin, silo, elevator, even a pile on the ground) prior to loading for export or after unloading for subsequent movement beyond (import) is known as dwell. Dwell is an inventory buffering technique that must be available alongside the ship. It serves to minimize the time the ship is at the wharf, hence minimize the cost of loading/unloading the ship.
If one reads that carefully, it identifies the advantages of handling coal over other commodities. At the time of the creation of The Tioga Report in 2011, there was no one like Tom Steyer around to cause any Oakland public or elected official or developer to turn away from coal as one of a number of commodities to accommodate with the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal. But it also must be understood that at no point was OBOT to be a coal terminal, handling that commodity exclusively. The “No Coal In Oakland” people were wrong from the start.
Enter Tom Steyer And The Anti-Coal Movement In California
Unknown to Oakland Economic Development Managers in 2012, Tom Steyer started his much-talked-about quasi-divestment from coal and encouraged clean energy sources and solutions. The Sacramento Bee described what was happening that would eventually politically impact OBOT in this way:
In 2012, Steyer spent $30 million and teamed with de León to pass Proposition 39, which closed a corporate tax loophole and directed the money to energy-efficient upgrades at schools and other buildings. The two share a political strategist and have developed a friendship. In 2014, de León encouraged Steyer to contribute $1 million to Democratic voter registration efforts. It was at the Steyer-hosted climate leadership forum in Oakland that de León committed to introducing a proposal requiring California’s large pension funds to divest their coal holdings. Others attending the event were Brown, Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols, Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins and University of California President Janet Napolitano. https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article27059809.html#storylink=cpy
Tom Steyer’s efforts turned the political fortunes of OBOT upside down overnight, especially since Steyer and his wife Kat had established Oakland as a political and operational base. So, in 2012, as the City of Oakland and the Oakland City Council signed a development agreement agreement that allowed a mix of commodities, including coal, Steyer was putting dollars in the pockets of local elected officials, including those in Oakland, and to the tune of $74 million by 2013. So, by 2013, and the ground-breaking of the Oakland Global development project, Oakland Economic Development Director Fred Blackwell was bending over backwards to not mention coal as part of the project’s commodity mix during the press conference held in West Oakland.
The approach of the Oakland electeds was to deny coal and cozy up to Uncle Tom Steyer for money. The Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker, eager to help her City Council clients, said that Oakland did not know coal was in the commodity mix until 2015. Moreover, Barbara Parker sought to take any City-created document evidence to the contrary out of public view. Thus, the reason The Tioga Group report was covered up and hidden from view via court order.
What’s worse is the City of Oakland is bent on maintaining the lie even to this day, even after loosing to CCIG in court – again. To what end is the answer that should be asked.
Stay tuned and here’s The Tioga Group post from Oakland News Now Blog:
Insight Terminal Solutions Bombshell: TIOGA Report Shows City Of Oakland Planned OBOT For Coal
Insight Terminal Solutions and Phil Tagami’s Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal or “OBOT“, has been the focus of City of Oakland claims that a newly surfaced report shows are completely false. The City of Oakland’s City Attorney has asserted in writing that it did not know coal was to be one of the commodities handled in the planned facility until the year 2015.
UPDATE: Insight Terminal Solutions OBOT Bulk Terminal Gets Low-Emissions Train For Climate Change
But a report called The Tioga Report (because it was written by Stephen C. Nieman Principle with The Tioga Group, an American freight and logistics transportation consulting firm still active today) disputes the Oakland City Attorney’s claims.
The Tioga Group was under contract with the City of Oakland in 2011 and 2012, and under the direction of then-Oakland Economic Development Project Manager Patrick Cashman (photo above), and hired specifically to evaluate the market potential for OBOT.
The Tioga Report shows the following:
1. That not only did the City of Oakland know the Insight Terminal Solutions Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal was to handle commodities including coal, the City of Oakland was directly involved in the pre-development planning for OBOT as far back as 2011. Indeed, The Tioga Group report mentions accommodating coal and iron ore shipments, and how that may be done at the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal.
2. That the City of Oakland was to become the owner of, but not the operator of, the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (that’s specific language in The Tioga Report).
3. That the Levin Terminals at Richmond, California, which handle coal, were seen as a competitor facility to the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal. In fact, The Tioga Report says:
Already moving through neighboring ports might be commodities/shipments that might be diverted to the OBOT alternative. Of these, and ignoring Bay Sand, the only existing movements that might be of interest are as follows, Via Port of Benicia – petroleum coke 1. Via Levin Terminals at Richmond – petroleum coke and iron ore 2. Via Richmond, Levin Terminals at Richmond: liquids such as petroleum, petroleum products, chemicals, vegetable oils 3. Project cargos via any port, such as: steel, aggregates, cement, gypsum, bauxite, bay sand.Note: Zennie62Media was hired by ITS to get out content on OBOT, like The Tioga Report, that was and has been ignored by the mainstream media
And in the Zennie62 YouTube video interview with then-Oakland Economic Development Director Fred Blackwell posted below, Mr. Blackwell takes considerable time to mention how the project will meet the demands of the “environmental justice” community.
The point in number one above ads to the Oakland News Now news of another document presented by a source and about the City of Oakland in the form of Elizabeth “Betsy” Lake signing off on a 2013 development agreement that specifically referred to coal as one of the commodities the OBOT was expected to handle.
Signs that the City of Oakland knew coal would be one of the many bulk commodities to be handled by the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal are all over. The idea that even the Oakland City Council didn’t know that coal and iron ore were part of the plan is countered by this 2012 interview this vlogger conducted with then CEDA Director Fred Blackwell. Listen to the part where Mr. Blackwell says that iron ore, which is used with coal to make steel, is one of the commodities to be shipped:
It was not until after 2014, and when now U.S. Presidential Candidate and Billionaire Hedge Fund Investor Tom Steyer (who’s also a noted coal industry and private prison investor) started spending part of his fortune on altering the California political climate (including Oakland’s starting with Mayor Libby Schaaf) to go against traditional industry, that Oakland took the stance against the Insight Terminal Solutions CCIG OBOT that was presented by the City Attorney.
What follows is the text of the actual TIOGA study. Keep in mind that it was really designed to measure CCIG’s ability to build and run OBOT. The report set the bar for Phil Tagami, and in securing Insight Terminal Solutions, Tagami surpassed the bar – much to the surprise of the City of Oakland, according to sources.
The City of Oakland, from the point it was realized that his bulk terminal would be a market game-changer, sought to take it away from Phil Tagami and CCIG, and worked to tell lies about the project once Hedge Fund Investor (later Presidential Candidate) Tom Steyer started to influence California politicians by spending money on their campaigns.
Here’s the Insight Terminal Solutions / Phil Tagami video:
And on the matter of coal itself, Insight Terminal Solutions CEO John Siegel explains why there’s no such thing as “dirty coal”:
The Tioga Report By Stephen C. Nieman of The Tioga Group For The City of Oakland
Here’s some excerpts from the actual Insight Terminal Solutions OBOT market potential report called the Tioga Report and written by Steve Nieman of The Tioga Group for the City of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA) and its project manager Pat Cashman. The entire report is a Scribd file embed here at Oakland News Now.
Here are the Tioga Report excerpts (a note that the paragraph breaks were installed by this author for better readability over the original document):
Background
The City of Oakland expects to become the owner, but not the operator, of new facilities that will occupy the space presently owned and operated by the Port of Oakland in the new, West Oakland Gateway development.In particular, the facilities that are the topic of this report are what are presently known as Wharfs 6-1/2 and 7 plus the railroad right of way currently known as the Oakland Terminal Railroad (OTR) spur between Wharfs 6-1/2 and 7 and a) its rail connection with the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) and b) to/from a proposed new rail yard (not yet named) to be constructed by the Port of Oakland (Port) as part of the site of the former Oakland Army Terminal as recently acquired by the Port.
Five parties have created a development project for the space in West Oakland. The project is known as West Oakland Gateway with Oakland Global as the trade name for the activities on the site, and the project participants are known as the CCIG Team. They include California Capital and Investment Group (CCIG), the City of Oakland through its Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA), the Port of Oakland (Port, also technically a City of Oakland department), ProLogis (formerly AMB), and Ports America (PA). Concurrent with this development in the West Gateway region of the City, the Port and PA are implementing a complimentary development at the Port.
Hence, the CCIG Team development (Oakland Global) and the Port’s development are interdependent including a proposed, new (unnamed) rail storage yard on the Port’s property. As for the portion being developed by the CCIG team, Oakland Global, the two key components that are the topic of this report are the facility at Wharf’s 6-1/2 and 7 to be known as Oakland Bulk and Oversize Terminal (OBOT) and the switching railroad to be known as Oakland Global Rail Enterprise (OGRE).
Apparently, CCIG’s business model for both OBOT and ORGE involves hiring management (as either employees or independent contractors) for both enterprises. Apparently it has already selected advisors and/or companies to provide the management of these services e.g. Stone, IRC, HDR, Kinder Morgan, etc.
Similarly, apparently CCIG and its advisors have made some inquiries and maybe some commitments to such manager/contractors. The services that might be provided by OBOT and OGRE could be import, export, or domestic. Domestic includes either to/from a) U.S. states and territories that are off-shore, accessible by a deep sea ocean carrier operating either barges or deep draft vessels, or b) states that are accessible by coastwise barge and vessel services.
The presumption here is that only international (export/import) cargos will be involved due to the OBOT facility having deep-draft, deep-sea capability. There will likely be opportunities for domestic services, too, but those are not contemplated here, at this time, because such is not the stated purpose of Oakland Global.
CEDA has asked The Tioga Group, Inc. (Tioga) to provide this report as its assessment of the business prospects for OBOT and OGRE, a market overview. The scope is to provide a very broad, but not deep analysis, for the purpose of isolating factors that are a threat to the success of OBOT and OGRE and which may require additional analysis. Tioga’s scope is to do this without creating new data or analyses but with the cooperation of the CCIG team as protected by a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
Proof that Insight Terminal Solutions Oakland OBOT was to handle commodities, including coal, far before 2015
This is a very long list, not fully enumerated here, of conditions that prevail in international trade. They run from the very political and self-serving considerations of local taxes to international relations between countries that may have a history for aggressive trade wars.
Some of these are: Dealing in worldwide commodities. So-called “place utility” is a key consideration. The availability of an alternate supply of a commodity will always create a cap on the delivered cost for fear of losing the movement to an alternative source location even if the same BCO.
It also involves the risk of “missing the market” whereby the local price/sale of the goods involved is lost. Vulnerability to international rules and regulations. Understanding and complying with multitudes of foreign (and foreign language) laws, rules, regulations, and interpretations is a special skill that requires constant, on the ground updates and advisories.
Vulnerability to international relations between countries ranging from armed conflicts to retaliatory tariffs and abusive administrative practices. The need to have a local, connected agent that will have to cope with local conditions, to and including bribery.
Awareness of the availability of capacity of the correct/best type of ships to make an international voyage. For instance, for lack of participation in bulk and oversized cargos at any port in Northern California, the lack of such ships arriving in northern California ports inhibits the availability of capacity for exports.
Similarly, prices for ship capacity can fluctuate wildly based on international conditions and to the point that the ship cannot be procured on either a long-term contract rate or a daily spot rate at a price that allows a profit on the sale by the BCO.
Participating in an industry that because of a multi-step activity chain has a history of cross-subsidizing local services with the “big money” of operating the ship. Not being able to access project financing due to international monetary controls; and/or having to rely on an agency of the U.S. government to secure competitive terms for its assistance in obtaining financing through some agency such as the U.S. Import-Export Bank.
U.S. politics, as examples: o The current emphasis on the economic benefit of exporting locally produced goods is politically popular; such is not always the case. o Conversely, federal funding for channel dredging is fraught with personalities and national budget complications much less local biases. The Jones Act that requires that transportation by the water mode between two U.S. ports must move in ships built in the U.S. and crewed by U.S. citizens is simply so costly (rates, not efficiency) that it is a protected business where entry is virtually impossible and certainly impractical.
For this report, the point is: this will be a business dependent on favorable terms which are completely out of the control of the principals involved. Economics of scope (reach, by mode) Moving to the specifics of this opportunity, the concept of geographical scope is exceptionally important. It is the most basic measure of how a given location can be competitive based on the mode of transportation involved and the local geography. It is intuitive once explained. But, it must come from an operator, not a customer or third party provider.
Size or scale can be measure in a number of metrics. For practical purposes here, the four involving the OBOT site that are most important are operating hours of the day, length of the wharf, acreage of usable backlands, and interchangeability of loading devices and storage space.
The two involving the OGRE are switching moves required and speed of dumping a railcar load. The count of switching movements gets complex. Hence, a comparison to optimal helps. For unit trains of bulk commodities if the rail switching service to/from the OBOT wharfs were ideal it would have two characteristics.
One would be that for bulk commodities the train movement would involve a large loop track over which the individual railcars (whether in a mixed train or in a unit train) could be push over the unloading/loading site and each dumped/filled in a single action. Hence, the time OGRE spent switching and spotting cars would be minimized. Yes, this would require unloading/loading equipment on the wharf that was exceptionally efficient, too. Also, it would require a sufficiently long lead track that could hold a whole unit train while it awaits shuttle to/from the OBOT site.
Instead the planned OGRE switching activity is much longer in cycle time and the lack of a tail track extending west from the OBOT shed on the wharf is a severe limitation as to the location of the dumping/filling equipment. Subject to more information it would appear that such a tail track is not contemplated and if it were to be added could be no more than ten cars in length thereby limiting the number of cars in a cut to be shuttled by OGRE between the dump site and the new rail storage yard being erected by the port to about ten in a cycle.
This contrasts with coal and grain trains of up to 121-125 cars in length being handled in one move with road locomotives only (no local switching engines but with local crews. The activity of accumulating bulk inventory in an on-dock storage device (bin, silo, elevator, even a pile on the ground) prior to loading for export or after unloading for subsequent movement beyond (import) is known as dwell.
Dwell is an inventory buffering technique that must be available alongside the ship. It serves to minimize the time the ship is at the wharf, hence minimize the cost of loading/unloading the ship. For unit trains of wheeled vehicles, the ideal configuration likely would be a set of short stub end tracks, maybe 8-10 of them that could hold 6-10 railcars each so that the wheeled vehicles on the railcars could be unloaded (export) or loading (import) from auto rack rail cars through the end of the cars off the back end of the last/first car with a set of vehicle ramps permanently in spot.
If the wheeled vehicles were oversized, then they would not be capable of moving over a bridge between cars. Hence only the first/last car could be place on the last car spot position on each of the 8-10 stud end tracks.
But, more importantly, there would be a need for considerable acreage on which to place the wheeled vehicles (of whatever type) awaiting enough for a full load for a roll-on, roll-off (RO-RO) vessel that loads/unloads by driving the vehicles onto (export) off of (import) the decks in the ship. Two points are important, there is not sufficient acreage at OBOT for this activity unless there was no other activity occurring and one land of Burma Road could be available for parking vehicles. The activity of accumulating vehicles prior to loading for export or after unloading for subsequent movement beyond (import) is known as dwell. Dwell is an inventory buffering technique that must be available alongside the ship.
Tioga Report Shows City of Oakland Was Planning Coal-Handling Bulk Terminal In 2011 – PART 2 by Zennie Abraham on Scribd
UPDATE: OBOT Wins In Court Against City of Oakland But Judge Reduces Damage Award To $318,000
Judge Noël Wise of the Alameda County Superior Court ruled that the City of Oakland did breach the contract with Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal to build the long-needed (and still not created because of Oakland’s antics) bulk terminal, but that OBOT could only claim $318,000, not the $159 million in lost profits OBOT lawyers sought.
But an analysis by Zennie62Media shows that Judge Wise’ opinion was incorrect. An analysis posted over at Zennie62Media’s ZennieReport.com, a comparable facility to OBOT was found, and generated an average annual revenue of $6.6 million, totaling lost potential revenue of $40 million.
The real question is why would Judge Wise seek to reduce the OBOT lawyers damage claim if she found that the City of Oakland did breach the contract with OBOT?