Audited Inland Empire front is forming to deal with issues surrounding the movement of goods through the region – and that's a very good thing.
Last week supervisors, mayors and other leaders from San Bernardino and Riverside counties got together in San Bernardino to declare that they would work together to seek funding and to take on the problems arising from the rapid growth of shipping on the two counties' freeways and train tracks.
The local officials recognize that goods movement is an economic opportunity for the region, but that the opportunity is accompanied by grave dangers to quality of life – primarily health issues caused by diesel fumes and gridlock on freeways and on roads near train tracks.
"Goods movement is a two-edge sword," said economist John Hosing.
The most obvious effect is on traffic. Anyone who has used the 10, 15 or 60 Freeways lately knows that the truck traffic is frustratingly heavy. Predictions that truck traffic will double by 2025 as the shipping industry continues to grow make us wonder how local freeways could avoid gridlock by then.
And as trains grow longer and more frequent, there are more traffic interruptions on streets that cross the tracks, and other nearby streets.
Less visible but even more important than traffic are the effects of diesel emissions on residents' health. A comprehensive study of 1,700 Southern California children by USC's Keck School of Medicine found that 10 percent of the children monitored in Upland, for example, had reduced lung capacity; and that a child raised in that city was five times as likely to grow up with diminished lung capacity as a child reared in a coastal community. Particulate matter, which comes largely from diesel exhausts, appears to be the largest contributor to reduced lung function.
The Inland Empire needs to project a stronger voice on the need to mitigate those effects of the shipping industry, as the leaders who gathered last week into to do.
A case in point is the Alameda Corridor project linking the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with downtown Los Angeles. Federal, state and L.A. leaders brought that link into being without worrying much about all the additional goods traffic that would then head east from L.A. It took coordination and hard work by legislators and local leaders from San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire to bring about the Alameda Corridor East project, which separates rails from the main roads that cross them via overpasses and underpasses.
The same kind of coordinated effort is needed to bring attention and needed funding to the Inland Empire to reduce the negative impacts of truck and train traffic and pollution. Whether through fees on shipping containers or some other method, the goods movement industry has to be brought into the effort.
We urge all the leaders of both counties and their cities to sign on to this effort to maintain and improve our quality of life.
BSRanch Perspective:
Wow, that is a significant amount of lung capacity lost over the years, but what facts and what direct line does the USC's Scholar students have to directly imply that the pollution from Automobiles Specifically AUTOMOBILES, now are causing this lung loss and lung disease. I wonder what is it, My thoughts are this, we are breathing less, we run less, we move less, there for we breath less, and less exercise is not a good thing, that is what the USC study should be looking for that kind of stuff before they jump the conclusion that it is Automobiles, I know I get it we drive cars so it has to be cars. sick sick sick. The electrical generation plants in the valley cause more pollution then the engine.
I just don't Believe their findings on their study. I think that they wanted to target cars or Automobiles and they did without looking at other factors, such as the factories or electrical generation plants and the like.
BSRanch
No comments:
Post a Comment