Meeting_Body
PLANNING AND PROGRAMMING COMMITTEE
JANUARY 15, 2020
Subject
SUBJECT: LOS ANGELES COUNTY GOODS MOVEMENT STRATEGIC PLAN DEVELOPMENT STATUS UPDATE
Action
ACTION: RECEIVE AND FILE
Heading
RECOMMENDATION
Title
RECEIVE AND FILE status update on the development of the Los Angeles County Goods Movement Strategic Plan.
Issue
ISSUE
In November 2018, Metro awarded a contract to develop the Los Angeles County (County) Goods Movement Strategic Plan (Plan). The intent of the Plan is to develop a strategic vision for the Metro Board, in collaboration with the many goods movement stakeholders in the County, to address the many challenges and capture the tremendous number of opportunities presented by Los Angeles County’s status as the nation’s leading freight gateway. The Plan will also inventory existing conditions surrounding goods movement activities in Los Angeles County-including economic benefits, community impacts, and system performance-and develop a robust stakeholder engagement process to inform the recommendations of the Plan to allow the County to maintain its national freight competitiveness in a sustainable manner.
This report serves as an update for the Board on the current activities of the Plan development since the last update in June 2019.
Background
BACKGROUND
The County is home to over 10 million people - a population that would rank as approximately the ninth largest state - and generates a tremendous demand for goods on a daily basis. The daily activities and purchases made by the residents, visitors and businesses of the County are the main drivers of goods movement, which fuel our regional economy. The County also serves the nation as its premier global trade gateway, comprising the nation’s largest container port complex, the nation’s sixth busiest air cargo hub, nearly 35,000 warehouse sector buildings, and the extensive multimodal transportation network that connects all these important trade hubs to the populations, businesses, and markets located in the rest of the country.
While the County’s surface transportation system supports the national and regional need for efficient flow of goods through the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the communities located closest to freight facilities and major goods movement corridors disproportionately suffer localized impacts to health, equity, and quality of life associated with the movement of these goods. On a regional level, robust economic activities impact the mobility, safety, and air quality for all residents of the County because of the conflicts created by the shared use of the multimodal transportation network-most notably between passenger vehicles and commercial trucks on the highway system and between freight trains and commuter trains on rail corridors.
As the County’s and the nation’s population are expected to grow, Metro, as the regional transportation planning agency for Los Angeles County, must lead and develop a strategic planning vision that is well-informed through robust stakeholder engagement. The vision must be effective in supporting the County’s economic competitiveness, delivering solutions for our sustainability needs, and advancing equity goals. The vision must support a collaborative framework among our many goods movement stakeholders that guides development of strategies and programs that address goods movement challenges in a comprehensive manner.
The Plan will develop a cohesive narrative for the County’s goods movement system that identifies the benefits and impacts associated with goods movement projects, programs, and policies; articulates the need to invest in our multimodal freight system; and supports the acquisition of state and federal discretionary funding to leverage local investment in goods movement related projects and programs.
Discussion
DISCUSSION
At the June 2019 Planning & Programming Committee, staff presented on the status of the Plan’s development. This presentation included the following:
• A brief profile of the County’s goods movement system and how the goods movement sectors contribute to the economy
• The relationship of the Plan to Metro’s Vision 2028 and Long Range Transportation Plan
• A draft vision statement
• The structure of the Plan development
• How stakeholders would shape the Plan development.
Metro invited regional stakeholders from public, private, and community organizations representing various logistics modes, regulatory agencies, academia, subject matter expert organizations, equity and public health advocacy groups, and local and state partner agencies to participate in a Freight Working Group that served to provide input into and guide the development of the Plan’s purpose, priorities, and content. Metro convened the Freight Working Group and subject matter focus groups to capture expert insight into and guidance on the most critical challenges facing the County; strategies to address these challenges; development of evaluation criteria for strategies that lead towards sustainable competitiveness; early action items; and the clarification of Metro’s role in advancing such strategies and early action items.
Through the guidance of our stakeholders, the Plan’s project team has finalized the vision statement for the Los Angeles County Goods Movement Strategic Plan and identified five elements of sustainable freight competitiveness to be the focus of our Plan.
The five sustainable freight competitiveness elements identified through our stakeholder engagement and endorsed by the Freight Working Group are as follows:
• Equity and Sustainability
• A Safe and Efficient Multimodal System
• A Culture of Investment and Innovation
• Strong Markets and Reliable Supply Chains
• A Strong Labor Force
The project team then embarked on focus group meetings around each of the sustainable competitiveness elements to garner in-depth understanding from subject matter experts and stakeholders. Discussions during these meetings highlighted the need for equity and sustainability to be a foundation of the Plan infused into and predicating the other four elements. Further, through these discussions, the project team identified early action items that call for Metro’s immediate leadership as the Plan is being developed. These early action items are as follows:
• Define what equity means for goods movement in the County through a creation of a recurrent goods movement-focused task force involving equity-focused stakeholders;
• Develop a Clean Truck Initiative to accelerate the deployment of near-zero and zero emission trucks in the region to address air quality and public health concerns, particularly for our most vulnerable communities;
• Craft a framework for a freight rail investment partnership for the region’s shared use rail corridors;
• Foster a regional forum for urban delivery and curbside demand management needs in the County to mainstream this policy issue across other planning efforts;
• Identify opportunities to create programs for and conduct research on countywide workforce development in logistics.
Staff intends to continue preliminary research and further discussions with the key stakeholders on these items. However, staff anticipates that these action items will require further resources and intends to develop them into full workplans in the coming months.
Additionally, staff considers close coordination with our State partners to be an important hallmark of a successfully developed Plan, specifically in working through the implications of the implementation of the Governor’s Executive Order N-19-19 and the State’s development of the California Freight Mobility Plan 2020 (CFMP 2020). At the third Freight Working Group meeting in October 2019, staff invited Deputy Secretary for Transportation Planning at the California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA) Avital Barnea, and Office Chief for Caltrans Freight Planning Yatman Kwan, to share their insights on the Governor’s Executive Order, the status of the CFMP 2020 and how Metro can best continue coordinating closely with CalSTA, Caltrans and other state departments.
Through our stakeholder discussions and Freight Working Group meetings, the project team identified several research topics and implementation topics that merit further effort beyond the Plan development and adoption. These topics include but are not limited to the following:
• Robust economic impacts analysis of goods movement activities;
• A strategy for logistics planning and coordination in support of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games;
• Development of a countywide legislative platform to articulate the County’s freight needs for the next federal surface transportation reauthorization bill and future state funding programs and policies; and
• Broader deployment of technology-based operational efficiency improvements and cleaner freight rail technology.
Equity Platform
The LA County Goods Movement Strategic Plan supports three of the four Equity Platform Pillars I (Define and Measure), II (Listen and Learn) and III (Focus and Deliver).
Pillar I (Define and Measure): By focusing on Equity and Sustainability as the core element of the Plan and working with stakeholders to receive input on equity concerns and creating inclusive conversations on goods movement issues, the Plan seeks to define measurable objectives that will help advance equity goals for the County.
Pillar II (Listen and Learn): To develop the Plan staff will hold focused meetings with key equity-focused communities and representatives to gain an understanding of equity needs for the region. Staff also will develop an ongoing working group tailored specifically to goods movement equity-focused organizations to facilitate a forum that will continuously inform Metro’s goods movement planning.
Pillar III (Focus and Deliver): The Plan, through input with our stakeholders, will help determine where Metro can lead and where Metro can partner in implementing equity-conscious policies and programs to improve health, economic opportunity, accessibility and quality of life for those most impacted by freight externalities in the County.
Determination_Of_Safety_Impact
DETERMINATION OF SAFETY IMPACT
The LA County Goods Movement Strategic Plan supports a number of projects that have considerable safety improvements associated with movement of goods, including at-grade separation projects, intelligent transportation system projects, advanced vehicle technologies and transportation facility operational improvements. As such, the Plan supports Metro’s agency safety standards.
Financial_Impact
FINANCIAL IMPACT
There is no financial impact associated with this report.
Implementation_of_Strategic_Plan_Goals
IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIC PLAN GOALS
The Los Angeles County Goods Movement Strategic Plan supports implementation of the following Strategic Plan Goals, 1. Provide high-quality mobility options that enable people to spend less time traveling; 3. Enhance communities and lives through mobility and access to opportunity; and 4. Transform LA County through regional collaboration and national leadership.
Alternatives_Considered
ALTERNATIVES CONSIDERED
No decisions are required at this time.
Next_Steps
NEXT STEPS
Staff will initiate Board office outreach on the Plan through January and February 2020, develop a draft plan and present in spring 2020, with a Board consideration of the Final Plan to be presented in summer 2020.
Attachments
ATTACHMENTS
Attachment A - LA County Goods Movement Strategic Plan Update
Attachment B - Freight Working Group Member Organization List
Attachment C - Why Los Angeles County’s Goods Movement Matters
Prepared_by
Prepared by: Akiko Yamagami, Manager, Countywide Planning & Development, (213) 418-3114
Michael Cano, DEO, Countywide Planning & Development, (213) 418-3010
Wil Ridder, EO, Countywide Planning & Development, (213) 922-2887
Laurie Lombardi, SEO, Countywide Planning & Development, (213) 418-3251
Reviewed_By
Reviewed by: James de la Loza, Chief Planning Officer, (213) 922-2920
