Bradley Traffic Plan Faces a Roadblock by Truckers

Heavy lobbying by the state’s trucking industry is threatening to kill Mayor Tom Bradley’s long-sought plan to ban trucks from crowded city streets during peak traffic hours.

Truckers are wielding their considerable political clout in the City Council and the state Legislature in a two-front war to have the proposed ban killed outright, or to have the state preempt the city’s right to have such a law.

The proposed truck ban is the linchpin of an initiative announced by Bradley two years ago to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. The ban is the last major unadopted element of the plan, and Bradley is pulling out all the stops to make it a reality.

In the midst of his own inauguration ceremony in June, Bradley took time out for a phone call from Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) to map strategy for foiling a legislative maneuver by the truckers.

The fight is nothing less than a showdown between Bradley, one of the state’s most visible politicians, and the California Trucking Assn., one of the state’s most combative and effective lobbying groups.

And while there have been battles won by both sides in early skirmishes, the war is expected to be a lengthy and ugly confrontation in which the state’s leading politicians will have to take sides.

“This is big for Los Angeles, and this is big for the truckers and those are two very big constituencies,” said one Sacramento lobbyist.

Bradley’s plan would prohibit 70% of trucks in a fleet from operating during the peak weekday hours of 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday. Truckers would have to register with the city, pay a $60 annual permit fee and prove that their vehicles are in safe working order. The owner-operators of single trucks would be required to pick one rush period--they could drive in either the morning or evening rush hours.

The program would be limited to trucks with three axles or more and a gross weight of more than 26,000 pounds. The ban would only apply to surface streets because the city does not have jurisdiction over freeways.

Proponents say the plan would cut rush-hour traffic on city streets by an average of 5% to 10%, according to a 1988 Caltrans study. In some areas, the impact would be much greater. In downtown, for instance, trucks represent up to 9.6% of all morning rush hour traffic, and in the harbor district, trucks are estimated to account for 14% to 17% of vehicles.

Bill Bicker, Bradley’s chief aide on transportation, contends that since each truck takes as much roadway as three cars, cutting trucks by 10% could reduce overall congestion by 20% to 30%. Perhaps more important than the sheer numbers is the nature of the vehicles being reduced: Trucks are involved in 50% of all traffic-delaying incidents, according to the Caltrans study.

Truckers Respond

The truckers have a simple response to the proposal.

“I think the city’s being damned unfair,” said Tom Schumacher, executive vice president of the trucking association, a trade organization that represents an estimated 87% of the state’s truckers.

Schumacher maintains that the Los Angeles plan unfairly deprives truckers of the right to use public roadways. “The city gets the benefit of our taxes, and then they want to ban us from the streets,” complained Schumacher in a recent interview. Shifting schedules and idling trucks for hours a day will dramatically increase the cost of goods and threaten prompt deliveries of everyday commodities, said the man who is directing the lobbying effort against the ban.

One measure of the importance of the proposed ban is the priority Schumacher has assigned to it. “Every year there are 700 bills that affect us. We zero in on just four or five,” he said. And this year, the truck ban is at the top of the list.

“I’m not a nice fighter, but I am effective,” Schumacher added.

Schumacher’s strategy is to bottle up the measure in a City Council committee while he engineers a state law preemption of the proposal. He already has allies in combative Councilman Nate Holden, a Bradley foe, and state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights).

The battle on both fronts is likely to intensify later this month as the Legislature considers a bill to keep local governments from regulating truck traffic and city officials press for a hearing of the truck ban before the full City Council.

In Los Angeles, the Chamber of Commerce is “running point,” as Schumacher put it, for the truckers, and it has assembled a coalition of construction equipment firms, restaurants and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

At the state level, truckers have in recent weeks been joined by the powerful California Grocers Assn. The grocers gained the respect of many political observers last year when, in just one month’s time, they raised $20 million in a successful effort to defeat Proposition 95--a ballot measure that would have imposed fines on health and safety code violations.

But Bradley has also recruited potent allies as he pulled together Los Angeles’ sizable contingent of state representatives. In the Assembly, Bradley has lined up Waters, a respected legislative arm-twister with close ties to Speaker Willie Brown. In the Senate, the city fight is being led by President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles).

Los Angeles’ effort is being complicated by the politics of a sweeping transportation construction and fuel tax program introduced earlier this year by Gov. George Deukmejian.

In order to get the program through the Legislature, proponents had to negotiate with major transportation groups--and truckers were seated at the head of the bargaining table. Truckers agreed not to oppose the measures but--according to legislators who were at the meetings--they wanted something in return: a state law preventing Los Angeles from enacting its proposed truck ban and guaranteeing that other communities could not have similar bans.

So in July Campbell introduced a bill that would bar cities and counties from licensing or collecting fees on trucks. No truck traffic could be regulated by a city alone; any such regulation could be done only on a “regional” basis.

Proponents of the Los Angeles ban say the state measure would effectively kill their plan. “It would put it off for four years minimum,” said Bicker. “And all the while, congestion will get worse and worse.”

“It is a pure gift to the truckers,” said Dwight Stenbakken, a lobbyist for the League of California Cities, which is backing Los Angeles on the issue.

But Schumacher said, “We’re asking them to be fair.” If the Campbell bill is defeated, he added, “it’s a deal breaker” on the governor’s construction package.

Campbell said truckers “are taking a heavy hit” in taxes and fees in the transportation construction package “and all they ask in return is not to be hit with more fees locally and to have some consistency and uniformity. . . . That seems to me to be a reasonable request.”

Waters is equally adamant.

“We are all working too hard to fight traffic congestion in Los Angeles . . . to have (the efforts) preempted by the state,” Waters said. If Campbell made commitments to the truckers, she added, “then he should honor those commitments. And I will honor mine. And that is to kill this bill.”

The bill is waiting consideration by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, where the vote is expected to be close.

Closer to home, the Bradley plan is facing an equally uncertain future.

The first phase of the ban--which would establish a staff to work out details for the truck ban--unanimously cleared both the council’s Transportation and the Finance and Revenue committees earlier this year.

Headed for Debate

But, just as it headed for debate later this month by the full council, Transportation Committee chairman Holden began trying to get the measure back to his committee.

Holden, who ran against Bradley in a bitter mayoral campaign last spring, said the shower of complaints he got after the committee vote made him change his mind and decide to oppose the ban.

“The heavens and earth have opened” with protests from a broad spectrum of business interests, Holden said, while an aide displayed a stack of business cards from those who have contacted him to fight the truck ban.

Holden said he called Campbell and told him a state law would be unnecessary “because I’ll kill the (truck ban) right here.”

Holden said the Bradley proposal is unworkable, unenforceable and ultimately would be ineffective. He said he envisions scores of big rigs backed up at the city limits, waiting for rush hour to pass. And he anticipates delivery delays and shortages of goods if the plan is adopted without the cooperation of neighboring cities and counties.

At a council Transportation Committee hearing Holden arranged for on Wednesday, speakers representing businesses from restaurants to construction firms to film producers said night deliveries would be more expensive as workers are paid premium wages and could be more dangerous in poor light. A lobbyist for the motion picture producers said their shooting schedules are often dictated by the position of the sun, and cannot be delayed by rush hour traffic concerns.

Holden said he will try to keep the full council from voting on the truck ban, but it is unclear whether he can do that.

What is clear is that both Bradley forces and these business groups will step up their lobbying of council members and state legislators in the coming weeks.

As Assembly Transportation Committee chairman Richard Katz (D-Los Angeles) put it, “It’s going to be a long summer.”

BRADLEY’S TRUCK TRAFFIC PLAN

In September, 1988, Mayor Bradley announced a program to reduce by half the number of trucks on Los Angeles streets during peak traffic hours, primarily by shifting more shipping operations into the night. Under the proposed law:

1. An identification system would ban from city streets 70% of large-fleet trucks that normally operate workdays during the peak hours of 6-9 a.m. and 4-7 p.m. This would also affect 125,000 construction workers who drive their cars to job sites in Los Angeles. Owner-operators of single trucks could operate during one peak period per day but not both.

2. Trucks that deliver hot asphalt, concrete and structural steel would be exempted.

3. A rapid deployment force--consisting of helicopters and heavy-duty tow trucks, would be stationed throughout the city to quickly remove truck accidents from major traffic arteries.

4. Large shippers and receivers would be required, through regulations established with the Air Quality Management District, to operate at least four hours between the off-peak hours of 8 p.m. and 5 a.m. Strict guidelines to limit noise associated with off-hour deliveries would be imposed.

5. An arbitration, evaluation and research board would be formed under the mayor’s proposal to decide on exemptions from the truck program on a case-by-case basis. The board, consisting of representatives from the city, the AQMD, community groups, and shipping, receiving and trucking companies, would constantly evaluate the success of the program and provide regular reports to the mayor on his goal of reducing truck traffic by 50%.

6. The program would be limited to trucks with three or more axles and a gross weight of more than 26,000 pounds.