The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, long viewed as the most fee-focused ports in the country, will not initiate their proposed infrastructure fee anytime soon.
And the ports may consider dropping their clean-trucks fee two or three years early if harbor trucking

companies continue to introduce new, compliant vehicles into their fleets at a pace far ahead of earlier predictions.
The infrastructure fee of $15 per TEU announced last year was delayed
twice and was most recently put on hold until the summer of 2010.
Revenue projected to be more than $1 billion was to be used to build
bridges, roads and intermodal rail connectors.
When the fee was announced in early 2008, cargo at the Southern
California ports was booming and port executives believed they were on
the cusp of initiating several major infrastructure projects.
However, container volume this year is down about 20 percent. Although
the ports still plan to build some infrastructure projects,
time-consuming environmental studies and a more cautious attitude
toward expansion have diminished the need for a fee right now.
Kathryn McDermott, deputy executive director of the Port of Los
Angeles, said in an interview an infrastructure fee may be required
eventually, but port executives believe it is counterproductive to keep
setting deadlines and then canceling those deadlines.
Therefore, the status of the infrastructure fee is that it will be levied when it is needed, McDermott said.
A $35 per-TEU clean-trucks fee initiated about six months ago has
generated millions of dollars to help motor carrier meet deadlines in
the clean-trucks programs for scrapping older trucks.
But the harbor trucking industry has surprised port executives by
funding most new truck purchases with private money, raised primarily
through higher drayage rates. Shippers agreed to the freight rate
increases in order to avoid paying the clean-trucks fees. Clean-diesel
trucks funded without port subsidies are exempt from the fees.
The clean-trucks programs were launched on Oct. 1, 2008, and there are
now more than 5,000 new, compliant trucks in the harbor. The clean
trucks carry more than half of the containers that are drayed in the
harbor, a much higher percentage than was anticipated for the first
year of the clean-trucks plan.
If this rapid pace of introducing new trucks is maintained, the
clean-trucks fee will die a natural death because there will be no
non-compliant trucks left to be charged the fee.

Source: Journal of Commerce

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