Glitches Cause Traffic Jam as Ports Collect New Fee

This story appears in the Feb. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.

Technological glitches related to the launch of a container fee program are being blamed for congestion that jammed the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., on Feb. 18.

About one of every five trucks was turned away from the terminal gates. Port officials said the problem appeared to be caused by the radio frequency identification device on board some trucks that communicates with terminal gate RFID reader systems.

The result was a backup of hundreds of trucks stretching several miles at entrances to the Terminal Island industrial area. By early afternoon on Feb. 18, police were advising motorists to avoid the bridge that links five Terminal Island terminals to the cities of Long Beach, Los Angeles and San Pedro.

Many truckers had to wait in line at a special truck tag replacement center set up by the ports to handle the RFID tag problem.

“It sounds like things are working for most of the trucks, but we’re just going to have to find out why it’s not working for the rest of them,” said Art Wong, a Port of Long Beach spokesman.

“We didn’t see this coming,” Wong said, adding that the ports had been working to resolve

any issues for many months. “This didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped.”

Bruce Wargo, secretary of the West Coast Marine Terminal Operators Agreement, said that by that evening and into the next day, about 90% of the trucks were passing through terminal gates successfully.

Now that the clean trucks fee is being collected, the only trucks allowed access to the terminals are those registered as port-approved concessionaires with the $100 per-truck registration fee paid and an activated RFID tag.

The tags also are used to verify that the owner of the container has paid the clean trucks fee.

One port carrier source said that despite months of planning, some of the problems were caused by terminals not using unified RFID readers.

“One same tag would get a green light from the APL terminal but a red light from the Cosco terminal,” said the source, who asked not to be identified.

Wargo said reader glitches occurred only at one terminal.

Arley Baker, a Port of Los Angeles spokesman, said it appeared that the ports’ drayage truck registry was successfully “interfacing with the gate system.”

Baker placed the blame mostly on drayage operators for waiting until the last minute to check out their RFID systems at a port testing center near the Terminal Island gates that open to five different terminals.

“We are finding that most of the truck traffic problems today were due to incomplete data input on the truck operator side,” Baker said.

The ports’ originally were planning to collect the $35 per 20-foot equivalent container fee when they implemented the first phase of their diesel emission reduction plans Oct. 1, banning all pre-1988 and older trucks. However, the fee collection was delayed until last week while the Federal Maritime Commission reviewed the ports’ agreement with the terminal operators.

Proceeds from the fee will be used to help drayage operators pay for newer trucks with cleaner diesel engines.

The FMC said Feb. 12 that it would not attempt to block the fee. Still, Wong said that even last week there was widespread confusion among drayage operators over whether the FMC was going to allow the fee collection.

Both port spokesmen said RFID tags were mailed to drayage operators weeks ahead of the Feb. 18 collection start date. Carriers were told to check that their RFIDs were working properly and test them at a location near the gates to make sure they were linking properly to the terminal gate systems, Wong said.

“We’ve been trying to tell them for weeks now that some of the RFID tags that have been out there for years, the batteries are dead, they don’t really work anymore, have them checked, have them replaced,” Wong said. “Obviously, a lot of people didn’t do that.”

Baker downplayed the glitches.

“You’re starting something as monumental as this, and you’re dealing with the trucking population, which is very diverse. You’re going to have some disruptions,” Baker said.

“Not to discount the traffic situation, but we’ve just implemented a major fee collection system here,” Baker added. “That’s pretty big when you’re basically connecting a truck to a piece of cargo and a gate fee transaction. In the big scheme of things, it’s been a pretty good day.”