HOW MARINE HIGHWAY SHIPS CAN REDUCE CALIFORNIA TRUCK TRAFFIC AND EMISSIONS

by | Mar 14, 2018 | Uncategorized

 

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BY STAS MARGARONIS[1]

The deployment of new coastal ships, new on-dock rail facilities and new automated container terminals at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach can reduce 710 freeway truck congestion and emissions.

These initiatives could validate the March 1st decision by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board to defer widening the freeway.

New Marine 5 Highway ships might shift as many as 634,000 truck trips per year off the 710 and other California freeways.[2] The cost for the ships would be about $500 million. The ships and on-dock rail facilities can be integrated into new automated zero emission container terminals so as to adhere to the two ports’ 2017 Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP). Financing would come from a per container fee and not taxpayers.

The result will be less trucks on the 710 and related freeways.

The zero emission, automated terminal is a good investment because it increases productivity by 40%, according to port officials, and saves shippers time and money. It will also increase the competitiveness of the two ports and cut emissions.

Marine 5 Highway ships are projected to save shippers $500- $1,000 per container and 3-4 days travel time transporting freight from Los Angeles and Long Beach to end users in Northern California.[3] The I-5 coastal corridor is designated as the Marine 5 Highway by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Following adoption of the 2006 Clean Air Action Plan, pollution generated from the two ports, including harbor trucking, has declined substantially. Even so residents living along the 710 and related freeways as well as near distribution centers in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties continue to complain of serious respiratory problems created by harbor trucks going to and from warehouses.

Sadly, the environmental impact report for the 710 widening excludes ships’ potential to reduce Southern California truck traffic and emissions.

Ships Reduce Emissions Supporting LA/LB Ports’ Clean Air Action Plan

In January 2018, Trinity Consultants Inc, an air emissions analyst located at Oakland CA, and SMB Naval Architects, based in the Netherlands, produced a report estimating that one Marine Highway ship sailing between Southern California and Northern California ports could annually eliminate 123 tons of nitrogen oxide gases (NOx) and 33,295 tons of greenhouse gases (GHG).[4] The ship transports the same amount of freight along the I-5 freeway corridor as trucks and can carry as many as 505 40-foot containers per sailing. It is powered by LNG.

Nitrogen oxides are produced from the reaction of nitrogen and oxygen during fuel combustion in truck and car engines.[5] These gases contribute to respiratory illnesses. Greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

New marine batteries are being deployed on a variety of vessels and can help Marine Highway ships make the transition to renewable energy and zero emissions.

Ships that shift trucks off the 710 freeway support zero emission goals announced by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach as part of the 2017 Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP). This requires zero emissions by 2035 for harbor trucks and cargo-handling equipment.[6] The goal can be achieved by replacing older terminals with three new automated terminals. The model is the Port of Long Beach’s Long Beach Container Terminal (LBCT), which generates nearly zero emissions. New terminals can link ocean ship operations to on-dock rail and Marine Highway ships. The ports would need to assess a per container fee for a fixed period to pay for investing in three new LBCT-type terminals, on dock rail and new ships. LBCT is projected to cost $2 billion and process 3.1 million twenty-foot containers per year when fully operational.

Reducing 710 Truck Traffic

In 2015, Caltrans reported 12,045 five-axle daily truck trips occurred at the onset of the 710 freeway. Nine miles north, at the intersection of the 91 freeway, a gateway to Southern California warehouses, the 710 attracted 18,110 daily five-axle truck trips.[7]

A 2017 study, sponsored by the Southern California Association of Governments, estimates that 4.8% of imports passing through the LA/LB ports in 2015 were transloaded and trucked up to Northern California, nearly 400 miles away.[8] This percentage corresponds to approximately 634,000 truck trips factoring transloading from harbor trucks hauling mostly 40-foot containers into 53-foot trailers for final deliveries.[9]

As background, mostly 40-foot containers are unloaded off ships at the two ports, trucked on the 710 and related freeways to Southern California distribution centers where the containers are unloaded and then reloaded into 53-foot trailer trucks. The process can take from 7-8 days to deliver freight to end users, according to warehouse executives.[10] One Marine Highway container ship can annually transport 78,780 40‐foot containers between ports in Southern California and Northern California.

One major trucking company says it transports between 400-500 53-foot truckloads per day of primarily port generated imports going from Southern California distribution centers to Northern California, Oregon and Washington destinations along the I-5.

Conclusion

New ships and on-dock rail can be integrated into new zero emission automated container terminals that meet the ports’ CAAP goals, reduce 710 truck congestion and emissions and don’t need taxpayer financing. The advantage of a ship is economies of scale. This makes waterborne transportation more fuel efficient and ultimately less polluting. This is evident from the horsepower required for trucks to transport the proposed ship’s 505 40-foot containers: 505 trucks x 375 horsepower per truck = 189,375 horsepower. The ship only needs 10,728 horsepower to transport the same load as 505 trucks.

  1. Margaronis is an advocate of U.S.-built Marine Highway shipping and heads Santa Maria Shipping, LLC, which financed the Trinity Consultants emission report. ↑
  2. http://santamariashippingllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Marine-5-Highway-Fact-Sheet-62117-PDF.pdf ↑
  3. Ibid ↑
  4. Trinity Consultants, Inc. “Trucking Emission Estimates and Comparison to Proposed Shipping Emissions”, January 11, 2018 ↑
  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOx ↑
  6. Clean Air Action Plan 2017 (July, 2017), page 5 ↑
  7. California State Transportation Agency, “2015: Annual Average Daily Truck Traffic on the California State Highway System” pp 210-211 ↑
  8. http://queue.ieor.berkeley.edu/People/Faculty/leachman-pubs/RCL-LA-Basin-Initiatives-Jan_13_2017.pdf ↑
  9. http://santamariashippingllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Marine-5-Highway-Fact-Sheet-62117-PDF.pdf ↑
  10. 10 Ibid ↑