The Clean Trucks Program is a Clean Air Action Plan initiative currently being adopted by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. This paper examines the Clean Trucks Program’s current requirements and estimates the impact on terminal operations. Using terminal operations data supplied by three terminal operating companies, we conduct a simple queuing analysis and present a regression model that allows us to consider the potential impact of the policy changes.
While this paper does not estimate the impact at a specific terminal, we consider order of magnitude effects. While the program itself does not require terminal operations changes, the program will modestly increase incentives to improve operational efficiency outside the terminal and reduce terminal gate processing time. It will also require technology that could be used for further operational changes.
We show, however, that unless gate time improvements are matched with these operational improvements in the terminal, they will only move the delay inside the terminal and not reduce total terminal time.
Our research considers the impact of the Clean Trucks Program on the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, but similar concerns are driving changes at ports around the globe.
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