Southern California shippers’ perspective — L.A. roads still a nightmare
But mostly high marks for transportation industry service providers and local CBP officials
by Richard Knee
A 20-mile stretch of rail linking the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with intermodal yards and railroad main lines near downtown Los Angeles was supposed to relieve the auto traffic snarls on the nearby freeways.
Maybe it did for a while after the freight-dedicated route, called the Alameda Corridor,d in April 2002. And one could surmise that absent the corridor, the chronic traffic jams would be much worse than they are.
According to the Alameda Corridor Transportation Authority, the joint-powers agency that operates and maintains the route, traffic congestion on surface streets has lessened because the corridor’s construction included 200 grade separations, and emissions have been cut from idling vehicles by 54 percent and from locomotives by 28 percent.
Still, it’s small comfort to freight interests.
From her office in west downtown Long Beach, “I have a clear view of the congestion on [Interstate] 710,” said Maurine Cecil, regional vice president of American Shipping Co. Inc., a freight forwarder, consolidator, and customs broker based in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. “It’s a daily occurrence, and it creates pollution and other problems,” said Cecil, who is also president of the Los Angeles Customs & Freight Brokers Association (LACFBA).
“Our freeways were designed in the 1950s. They haven’t been redesigned, and the traffic has gone way beyond capacity,” said a traffic executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity. His company, based in western Los Angeles County, exports a recycle product. “I was driving back one morning at 1 a.m. from a party we had for our clients on the Queen Mary, and all I saw on the [710] freeway, all the way to the [Interstate] 405, were truck skid marks. The drivers are tired from working too many hours at a stretch,” he said.
While they complained about auto traffic and other challenges facing the freight community, shippers and freight intermediaries had mostly laudatory comments about the people with whom they deal day in and day out — ocean and land carriers, marine terminal operators, and government officials from the local to the federal level.
Cecil is worried about efforts, born of security concerns, to restrict the ports’ physical expansion. Los Angeles and Long Beach, in that order, are the nation’s busiest container load centers. Between them, they handle the equivalent of about 8 million 20-foot containers (TEUs) annually, not including empties.
The ports’ ability to grow “is a very important issue for all of us, because that’s our future,” she said.
Both Cecil and Dan Meylor, LACFBA’s import chairman, gave locally based officials with the U.S. Bureau of Customs & Border Protection high marks. CBP officials meet monthly with trade community representatives to discuss ongoing issues, and quarterly with the association’s various committees, Cecil said. The local Food & Drug Administration office is understaffed, she said. “The FDA has increased cargo examinations but has not added personnel to complete the paperwork once the exams are completed,” she said.
Meylor described Customs as “fairly responsive in dealing with our questions and complaints.” He manages the Los Angeles International Airport branch of Carmichael International Service, which offers freight forwarding, customs brokerage, warehousing, and distribution.
Since being shifted from the Department of the Treasury to the Department of Homeland Security, Customs has been able to expand its inspection force, but many of the agents are new to the job and face a learning curve, he said. “As they get more experience, we’ll have fewer problems,” he said.
Enforcement of textile import regulations has become a thorny issue over the past six months because CBP’s Los Angeles port office doesn’t have enough commodity specialists to handle problems as they arise, he said. Many shipments have been held up because of country-of-origin questions, he said.
“They’re taking weeks to review the documents after the fact,” he said.
Cold Arrow Express, a freight consolidator specializing in perishables, routes its Texas- and Southern California-originated shipments through Los Angeles and Long Beach, while cargoes from the Midwest go via Seattle/Tacoma or Oakland, according to perishables group leader Matthew Menary. Cold Arrow Express and its parent, Nippon Express, are based in South San Francisco. Most of Cold Arrow Express’s shipments go to Japan.
“My experience has been that you want to use rail to Seattle or Oakland, and stay away from [rail to] L.A.,” he said.
The railheads are near the docks at Oakland and the Puget Sound ports, while the 20-mile ride along the Alameda Corridor is too expensive, he said.
“The port facilities have always been pretty good at handling them,” he said.
Pandol Bros., a fruit grower based in Delano, Calif., moves its grapes through Los Angeles and Long Beach; they make up about 70 percent of the company’s volume, said John Kreick, vice president of export operations.
I-710, also called the Long Beach Freeway, “is just getting more and more crowded. It looks to me like it’s half trucks,” he said. Expanded gate hours would be a big help, he said. “If we could load a container at 5 or 6 in the evening, instead of at 1 in the afternoon, it’s not going to get to Long Beach until 8 or 8:30 at night. It would avoid the rush-hour traffic that way — but the [truck] gates close at 4:30 or 5 o’clock,” he said.
A member of the Assembly, California’s “lower” legislative chamber, thinks charging a fee for daytime use of the truck gates would encourage marine terminal operators to keep themlonger.
Meylor said such a plan would be expensive for small and midsize shippers, which typically can’t afford to keep their own docksfor more than a single shift.
Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), who chairs the Assembly’s Select Committee on California Ports, has introduced a measure (AB 2041) that would create a Port Congestion Management District and require the agency “to establish a charge for the privilege of transporting cargo by commercial motor vehicle into or out of the Port of Los Angeles or the Port of Long Beach during the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., inclusive, on Monday to Friday, inclusive.”
The bill would require the agency to set up and manage a “port congestion management fund” to be used for “certain projects to help alleviate congestion caused by scheduling shipments by commercial motor vehicle during the specified hours.”
“It will force a lot of businesses to stayat night. Small and midsize businesses will bear the brunt of the cost,” Meylor said. If truck gates remaininto the evening, receivers will have to keep their own docksor pay extra, he said. “Truckers are not willing to hold containers at their own facilities overnight, because we still have a cargo theft problem. A lot of companies will pay the [daytime use] fee, because it will still be less expensive than stayingat night,” he said.
Meanwhile, work stoppages by contract truck drivers, who move a major portion of the containers to and from the docks, were creating an air of uncertainty over all three California container ports as this issue of Marine Digest and Cargo Business News was in production in mid-May.
Also known as independent owner-operators, the drivers, who number in the thousands, were complaining of long-flat, non-compensatory rates amid sharply rising diesel-fuel costs. They must fuel and maintain their rigs at their own expense.
They were attempting to organize, at least on an ad hoc basis, though federal antitrust laws prohibit their setting rates collectively because they are legally classified as business owners.
At Los Angeles and Long Beach, owner-operators stayed off the job on April 30, slowing container movements on and off the docks to 15 percent of their normal pace, Cecil said.
“Everything picked right back up on Monday [May 3]. For now, all we can do is wait and see what comes next,” she said. n
