Port Hueneme is not equipped to handle coal, and the Seabee base and NAS have no such facilities. The Coast is over four hundred miles further than Stockton from the Utah, Wyoming, or Colorado mines that would most likely be the source of export coal to Asia..

Port Hueneme and the VC had a thriving RoRo auto import business developing as the POLA/POLB began running out of land side capacity for handling auto traffic. The UP takeover of the SP and the failure to provide timely service by UP had already begun to hurt the port by 2001 so badly that certain local officials that I worked with even looked at taking on UP through the STB, but thought better when they real8zed that UP would probably retaliate, making port traffic problems worse, or by delaying or creating headaches for the LOSSAN improvements.

The Port of San Diego and BNSF are the big beneficiaries of Port Hueneme's significant loss of potentially larger auto traffic volumes due to UP's rail monopoly over this port.

The problem was so bad by 2007, that we even looked at a possible plan to allow BNSF to access Port Hueneme via the restoration and reconnection of the Santa Paula Branch at RR west of the old connection at Saugus.

A connection to the BNSF could have been done using a restored branch via a newly reconstructed "levee" along the "river"(current levee need rebuilding for 100 year flood event) over the intersections (think El Monte flyover) to where it curves with connections south to LA for proposed new "Rt. 126" ML service that could allow BNSF to serve the port via publicly owned lines. Another idea was to add a leg (northbound/RR west) going to a connection to the BNSF at Mojave (which would require a new leg to create a wye connecting to BNSF there.

None of this went anywhere, though. And, ten years later UP still has a rail monopoly and still provides crappy service levels to the Port, and the Port and VC RR are still in perpetual limbo, held hostage by the UP.