January 31st - I recently returned from a trip to Washington, D.C., where I attended the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB). The meeting brings together more than 10,000 people from every part of the transportation world (and from all over the world) to share research and discuss common interests. This includes people from every segment of the freight and logistics industry, regulatory agencies and people like me in education.

It’s an important opportunity for someone from Southern California. While there is more than enough for a student of the industry to learn from what goes on in and around the nation’s largest container port complex, it’s worth being reminded that as a trade hub, we’re connected to a much larger network that stretches from the international trading bloc to the nation to the neighborhood.

The Southern California gateway is complex enough already. Our population is large, diverse and located in proximity to trade related activity at the ports, manufacturing centers, distribution centers and rail yards. But we also serve an extensive inland region, connecting the community and the region with the broader global system. Our region contains a wide array of transportation systems and is a major point of transhipment for both goods and people. We have an international orientation that contributes to a diverse economy which involves not only trade but important trade-related services – legal, finance and insurance, for example.

The somewhat disjointed yet interconnected nature of trade-related industries provides opportunities for coordination (fleet and other equipment sharing as an example) at the sub-regional or regional level. Yet the number of stakeholders involved across the various industry segments and covering wide geographic areas often makes it difficult to truly get a handle on the connections between them. Furthermore the dynamic nature of global trade means that connections are constantly in flux; and our role as a trade hub greatly influences the rest of the supply chain. Overall flow time depends in part upon infrastructure availability, throughput speed and labor availability here. What we do influences the speed and direction of global and interregional as well as local trade.

In the research world, this is called the logistical friction. Transport costs, organization of the supply chain, and the regulatory and physical environment all have an impact on the amount of trade and goods exchanged, and reflect a true interdependence that blurs the distinction between physical distribution and other aspects of the supply chain. This interdependence facilitates interregional trade with responsibility shared by manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, all in different locations. These partners depend upon a nationally (if not globally) designed network in order to secure cost reductions through economies of scale. As a hub, we provide access to both consumer markets locally and the rest of the supply chain regardless of where the action takes place.

These connections matter to us because some of the geography of logistics is changing. The large trade volumes that give a special status to gateway cities like Los Angeles and Long Beach also result in heavy social costs that include vehicle operations, congestion, increased accidents, environmental costs (including air and noise pollution), and increased infrastructure development and maintenance. As a result, there is pressure on local officials and city planners to eliminate land use conflicts; and distribution facilities, as an example, find themselves driven to the suburbs and more far flung areas, in part, because of an increase in land values in urban centers and local zoning regulations that increasingly discourage freight-related uses in cities.

That shifts some of the power to downstream partners, who might decide to welcome the business leaving the urban core. A trip to the Inland Empire or over the Grapevine, where major distribution centers and warehouses are popping up, tells you that the definition of “local” – as in the local goods movement industry – is changing. So is our understanding of the local and regional economic impact of trade, the potential for job growth and the costs of all that activity.

So spending some time with researchers, practitioners and regulators from our region, the rest of the country and across the globe is a good thing. Others are definitely interested in the Southern California experience and its cutting edge approach to – in particular – environmental policy. But in Washington I learned a lot about what’s occurring in New York as well as in Canada and Paris where “last mile” delivery is a hot topic. I also learned a lot about the policy environment in DC itself (the trip occurred during the State of the Union address) which may have a lot to say about the climate for trade in our region and the nation as a whole.

(Dr. Thomas O’Brien is the director of research for the Center for International Trade and Transportation at CSULB and associate director for Long Beach Programs for the METRANS Transportation Center, a partnership of USC and CSULB. For past articles in this series, please go to www. ccpe.csulb.edu/IndustryArticles. Janell Rothenberg is a Ph.D. candidate in the UCLA Department of Anthropology. She is currently conducting research as a Fulbright-Hays fellow on the social and cultural challenges of Morocco's emerging logistics economy. She is also a certified Global Logistics Specialist from the Center for International Trade and Transportation at CSULB.)