University of California Transportation Center

The San Pedro Bay Ports (SPBP) of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California is one of the largest port container complexes in the world, and the largest one is the United States. To decrease the air pollution associated with port operations, a number of measures have been adopted, including the Clean Trucks Program, which was introduced in 2008 to clean up the fleet of drayage trucks serving the SPBP. The objective of this paper is to quantify the reduction in emissions attributable to the Clean Trucks Program, with a focus on Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) and Particulate Matter (PM2.5). Our approach is innovative as it relies on micro-simulation to capture the link between congestion and pollutant emissions. We find that the Clean Trucks Program could contribute significantly to the emissions of NOx (~27%) and PM2.5 (~25%) for all the freeway traffic in our study area. These preliminary results suggest that the Clean Trucks Program is promising, but its cost-effectiveness should be analyzed.