May 14, 2004

Smart Grwoth or Choke Hold?
P-CAC Seeks Detailed Planning to Avoid Port Gridlock
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

     A slew of proposals from the Port Community Advisory Committee (P-CAC) went before the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) Commission on April 28, including six that implicitly question the assumptions of nearly a four-fold growth in container traffic by 2025. They were referred to POLA staff for review before returning to the Commission for action.
     But P-CAC’s concerns are almost mild in light of messages in two prestigious new reports, which highlight concerns about the sustainability and desirability of such growth. Those concerns will only sharpen as P-CAC considers POLA’s Baseline Transportation Study, prepared by consultants Meyer, Mohaddes Associates (MMA).
     “Gridlock will put 28,000 good paying trade jobs annually at risk by late 2006,” warned Jack Kyser, Chief Economist of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC), principal author of International Trade Trends & Impacts: The Southern California Region. “The Los Angeles area trade activity is bursting at the ports and rail corridors and creating local and national trade congestion problems,” he explained. 
     The second report, California’s Global Gateways: Trends and Issues, from the Public Policy Institute of California, warns that “the severity of the congestion and pollution problems in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area are sufficient to give one pause when considering the benefits to the state of handling this [international] trade.” In particular, “congestion, pollution, and wear and tear on California’s highways generated by shippers are costs for which the taxpayers and citizens of California are not compensated. In effect, California is subsidizing economic activity in other states.”
     These reports underscore local activists’ point that it’s not just local communities that suffer. Trade’s unpaid costs don’t just damage the community, they threaten the trade system itself and have spread from being local to being regional and statewide. 
     P-CAC’s recommendations were passed with no dissenting votes—only scattered abstentions. Two were related to Mayor Hahn’s “no net increase” policy—one calling for a comprehensive report on the planned implementation by POLA staff, the other asking POLA’s board to support Assemblymember Lowenthal’s bill, AB2042, which would write the policy into state law, and apply it the Port of Long Beach as well. 
     A third recommendation calls for approving Wilmington’s “Preferred Community Alternative Plan,” with a permanent non-industrial open space buffer zone between the community and the Port. Of all communities in California, none has incurred more unpaid costs than Wilmington. 
A fourth recommendation calls for support of Lowenthal’s Port Master Plan Task Force Bill, AB2043, to create a body “that will review issues such as growth, port security, environmental consequences and mitigation for growth, and improved statewide coordination of the Ports”
     A fifth recommendation calls for mitigating diesel emissions to zero in all future Port expansion, while a sixth calls for establishing baselines for traffic and air quality before releasing any further EIRs for Port expansion.
     But all these actions might be for naught, some fear, if P-CAC accepts the externally-driven growth assumptions underlying MMA’s Baseline Transportation Study. Instead, says P-CAC Traffic Subcommittee member Ken Melendez, one question needs to be asked: “What is a responsible amount of growth for the Port of L.A. that the communities and the port can handle? Is it one percent? Ten percent? Five percent per year?” The Traffic Subcommittee has prime responsibility, and on May 6, it passed a resolution recommending “that the Traffic Study NOT move forward until the impacts of its growth projections are fully evaluated and all related concerns fully addressed.” The resolution will go to P-CAC at its June meeting.
     “You want smart growth, you want intelligent growth,” Keyser told Random Lengths. That’s exactly what Melendez and the Traffic Subcommittee are asking for.

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