S. Calif. ports seek to bolster truck plan with public meeting
The policy-setting boards for the Port of Long Beach and Los Angeles will hold a joint public meeting Oct. 12 to discuss the ports proposed drayage re-regulation plan.
Scheduled at 8 a.m-3 p.m. at the Doubletree Hotel in San Pedro, the ports say the meeting is a 'special information workshop' to gather input from industry, academia, labor and environmental experts on the $1.8 billion truck plan.
The plan was introduced in March and the two five-member port boards were originally scheduled to vote to approve it in July, but that date and two others slipped by without a vote being taken.
Friday's meeting will provide invited experts with 10 minutes to present comments directly to the boards about the truck plan, with questions from the boards following in Congressional testimony-style.
Due to state laws covering public meetings, members of the public attending the meeting will also be allowed to address the boards for up to three minutes each, though this portion is likely to be moved to the end of the day's agenda.
Industry anticipation that a date for a vote on the plan may be announced by the two port commissions during the meeting appears baseless, as port insiders say no such announcement is planned.
Last week S. David Freeman, president of the Los Angeles Harbor Commission, told a crowd in San Diego and repeated during a subsequent radio interview that the plan will be voted on before the end of the year.
The ports' Clean Truck Program, slated to start Jan. 1, would ban access to the ports' terminals by truckers not obtaining an access license from the ports. Trucking companies agreeing to port-defined criteria covering financial, labor and environmental status would be allowed to buy a license from the ports and continue operating. Port-licensed pre-2007 model year trucks would pay a 'truck impact fee' for each gate entry at the terminals. This money would go toward replacing or retrofitting port-licensed trucks to bring them up to 2007 emissions standard. Port contributions and potential bond revenue funds from the state were integral in the plan's funding development. The ports claim that the plan, if fully implemented, would eliminate up to 45 percent of port-generated truck emissions by 2012.
Trucking firms must also agree to hire only employees, not independent owner-operators, to obtain a port license.
While agreeing with the need to clean up the trucks involved in port drayage, the transportation industry has taken a vehement position against the plan, mainly based on the licensing model and the employee-only requirement.
In the past two weeks, letters from three major transportation organizations calling for a federal investigation of the ports' truck plan have been sent to the Federal Maritime Commission. The letters, from the Pacific Maritime Shipping Association, the National Industrial Transportation League and a branch of the American Trucking Association, also accuse the ports of violating the U.S. Shipping Act in devising the plan. During the same period, the ports' delays in voting on the plan have drawn the ire of several former prominent proponents, including the National Resources Defense Council and a group of academic, labor and environmental experts called by the ports as the began to develop the plan.
In last month's release of the ports' own economic analysis of the truck plan, economist John Husing pointed to serious problems with the way the truck plan is currently proposed.
Husing's analysis found that 376 of the current 1,300 trucking firms involved in port drayage would vanish if the ports' plan as now detailed was implemented. In addition, Husing estimated that just over 2,250 back office and support jobs would also be lost.
The Husing report also found that the plan would likely result in more than a 50 percent short-term reduction in the port truck fleet, an 80 percent increase in shipping costs for surviving truck firms and, as Husing put it, 'a slowly building crisis as lack of drivers and trucks means containers are not delivered on time.'
In a press release announcing Friday's public meeting, the ports made it clear that economic considerations are factoring into reasons behind the beleaguered plan's delayed approval.
'We just want to make sure we're taking the right steps to minimize economic disruption while maximizing reductions in air pollution,' said Long Beach Harbor Commission President Mario Cordero.