Intermodal Group Seeks to Block Clean Air Plan at SoCal Ports

By Eric Miller, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Oct. 15 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

The Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference said it strongly opposes an “abhorrent” clean-air plan proposed by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif. and will sue to block the program if the ports try to implement it, the IMCC told the Federal Maritime Commission.

The carriers’ group, a division of American Trucking Associations, said the ports are “inviting litigation” and that their Clean Air Action Plan “amounts to a mandated restructuring of the port dray-age business under the guise of environmental improvements.”

The trouble with the plan is that it would eliminate small- and medium-size owner-operator carriers and force them to go to work for larger carriers, the IMCC said.

“CAAP implementation will permit only a handful of larger motor carrier companies to remain in the L.A.-Long Beach port dray business, and they must do so using no independent owner-operators — only employee drivers,” Curtis Whalen, the IMCC’s executive director, said in a letter to the FMC. Whalen said port trucking in the area now includes 1,300 small- and medium-size motor carriers and 16,000 owner-operators.

The IMCC’s Oct. 2 letter also supported a Sept. 26 letter to the FMC by the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association and the Na-tional Industrial Transportation League. The shippers’ letter said the plan not only would fail to reduce truck emissions, but also was likely to “cause major disruptions in cargo flows through” the two ports.

The two facilities combined are the largest port in North America and handle about 40% of all containers entering the United States, Whalen said.

In a Sept. 27 response to the letters from PMSA and NITL, the ports told FMC that any final plan they implement will comply with all state and federal laws and regulatory requirements. The ports’ letter also said that, because the final plan has not yet been formulated, it would be premature for anyone to consider a lawsuit.

“PMSA and the NIT League appear to be eager to litigate by correspondence against an abstraction,” the ports’ said in their letter.

The issue is not clean air, Whalen told Transport Topics. “The air out there certainly needs to be addressed,” he said.

However, Whalen said the California Air Resources Board also is in the process of developing its own emission standards for trucks, a plan that does not attempt to restructure the industry. The IMCC already supports the CARB plan and said there is no need for the ports to come up with a separate plan of their own.

Julie Sauls, a spokeswoman for the California Trucking Association, said her group opposed the ports’ plan because it discriminated against smaller independent operators by allowing someone with an older truck to enter and pay a fee, as long as they were an employee of a large company. Independent operators would not be permitted to do that, she said. 

“Are you truly cleaning up the air or are you limiting access?” Sauls asked. “If they can meet the standards, why should they be denied access just because they don’t work for a large company?”

An economic impact study of the plan commissioned by the ports, released last month, predicted that more than 30% of licensed motor carriers now serving the ports could go out of business if the plan was implemented. The report, by consultant John Husing, also concluded that the program could “significantly reduce competition in the port drayage sector” and that drayage firms might need to increase their prices by up to 80% to cover increased costs.

Whalen said the CAAP could be challenged both in federal court and with the FMC, which has jurisdiction over port-related activities.

Bryant VanBrakle, secretary of the FMC, declined to comment on the specifics of the plan.

He said his agency generally does not review agreements that ports make with municipalities or between themselves unless FMC determines that an agreement is likely to “produce an unreasonable reduction in transportation service or an unreasonable increase in transportation cost.”

If the agreement does not pass that test, then the commission could file a lawsuit against the ports to block implementation, VanBrakle told TT.

Although the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbor commissions approved the CAAP in November 2006, they have yet to take a formal vote on whether to implement it. At press time, the ports’ two boards had scheduled an Oct. 12 joint meeting to discuss the plan, and they hope to take a final vote by the end of this year, said Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach.

Wong said it was “unlikely” that the plan could go into effect by Jan. 1, as originally planned. “The full roll-out of the plan would probably not be until many months after it is adopted,” he said.