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Improving California’s strained transportation network is now an ''expressed policy''

SAN DIEGO - 03/17/05 - The Schwarzenegger Administration has tagged goods movement and the renovation of California's over-burdened transportation infrastructure as one of the highest priorities on this year's political agenda.

"The state's economy and quality of life depend on the efficient, safe delivery of goods to and from our ports and borders," said Barry Sedlik, undersecretary of the California Business, Transportation & Housing Agency, at the California Council for International Trade's recent Trade Policy Forum.

"It's the expressed policy of this Administration to improve and expand California's goods movement industry and infrastructure," he told attendees at the two-day conference, which was held on the campus of the University of California-San Diego.

According to Sedlik - who served as Executive Director of the World Trade Center Association of Los Angeles/Long Beach before assuming his current post early last year - the governor has created a Cabinet Working Group to work "collaboratively" with the state's logistics providers, local and regional governments, business, labor and environmental groups, and other interested parties "to achieve shared goals."

Those goals, he said, include job generation, an increase in mobility, a significant decrease in traffic congestion, improved air quality, enhanced public and port safety, and an overall improvement in California's quality of life.

The proclamation comes as five bills - all sponsored by State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) - wend their way through the legislative process in Sacramento aimed at easing the congestion on the over-burdened surface highway corridors serving the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland - all of which are straining under steadily increasing container volumes.
 
The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach handle approximately 40% of total US imports with the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach ranking as the busiest container ports in the nation.

Combined, they form one of the most active "load centers" in the world, having handled more than 13 million TEUs (20-foot containers) in 2004, while Oakland had a record 2 million TEUs move through its terminals last year, an increase of 6.24% over 2003.

Inbound container traffic at the Bay Area port last year rose 15.2% to 690,480 TEUs while outbound containerized exports gained slightly, increasing 1.7% to 813,451 TEUs.

The five bills - called the "Harbor Area, Air Quality Investment Initiative" - would mandate specific actions for each of the three major container ports to remediate the impact of increased truck traffic and other operations on their respective regions' environments.

 The first bill, SB 760, recommends the imposition of a $30 per TEU on any boxes moving through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The fees would be collected by marine terminal operators, who, in turn, would hand over the accumulated fees to the ports for use in air quality, transportation infrastructure, and security programs.
 
Both ports would split one-third of the fees to fund port security projects, such as screening containers, while the remaining two-thirds would be split between the California Transportation Commission (CTC) to improve the region's rail system and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) that would use the money to reduce air emissions at the ports.

SB 761 would expand existing "truck idling" legislation - laid out in Assembly bill AB 2650 that went into effect in 2002 - that that requires marine terminals to offer "first-come-first-served" appointment systems for truckers serving their facilities and mandates that motor carriers utilize those systems in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland.

The new legislation would expand existing regulations by requiring marine terminals to "insure" that trucks conduct their business in no more than 60 minutes "barring unavoidable events." Diverting idling trucks to area freeways or alternate staging areas (including inside terminal gates), or requiring drivers to turn off their engines while waiting to enter the terminal would result in $750 fines.

SB 762 would fund the creation of a port congestion and environmental quality district at the three ports aimed at reducing the number of "dirty" trucks serving port terminals and the formation of a commission to grant motor carriers renewable fee-based permits for their fleets to enter either port.
 
Issuance of permits would be based on such factors as the motor carrier's "seniority of service," and the age of its truck fleet. Port access permits would not be issued to trucking companies whose fleet contains an as-yet-unspecified percentage of truck tractors built before 1994.
 
The commission, the bill mandates, would also determine the number of trucks needed to "efficiently" move freight and make at least three round-trips daily between either port and a regional consignee or distribution facility.

The two remaining bills - SB 763 and SB 764 - would, respectively, require the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to develop a system that gives priority berthing to ships that use low-sulphur, and mandate that both ports identify "baseline levels of emissions from specific sources" and of "specified air pollutants, then determine dates - no later than January 1, 2008 - when the ports would meet their baselines.

According to Lowenthal's office, SB 764 will be referred to the Senate Environmental Quality Committee for a hearing on April 4 with the remaining four Senate bills up for a hearing before the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee the following day.

The Port of Oakland is taking independent action with the planned start-up of a new program to reimburse truckers up to $15,000 to "re-power" older trucks with cleaner, more fuel efficient engines.

Preference will be given to truck owner/operators and to vehicles that are operated primarily within the port area with a reimbursement approved only if applicants meet the minimum criteria.

Despite the efforts of Lowenthal - who calls the package of bills "the most ambitious set of bills I have ever introduced" - some industry analysts are skeptical that the legislation may be too little too late.

Even if the proposed legislation achieves the desired goals and that improvements to the region's highway infrastructure become a reality, they say the forecasted growth in trade over the next 25 years - particularly that with China - could put even more trucks on California's highways.

According to a study commissioned by the Port of Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners, containerized cargo moving through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach could reach 44.7 million TEUs by 2030.

Based on that figure, the number of truck trips made on the critical Long Beach (I-710) Freeway linking the ports with the intermodal rail yards near downtown Los Angeles during a typical 24-hour period in 2030 could reach almost 45,000.

That amounts to a 97.5% increase in truck trips on the 710 Freeway within the next 25 years.

The study factored in the creation of additional on-dock rail facilities at the ports, the development of a so-called "virtual" container yard, extended gate hours, an additional near-dock intermodal container transfer facility (ICTF), and the completion of the Port of Long Beach's SR 47 air emission control project.

But, the study said, without the measures being implemented to mitigate the current conditions, the number of truck trips on the I-710 alone would surge to more than 65,200 daily - an increase of more than 187% over the 2005 baseline.

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