McGmap

No, it's not a vile new creation from McDonald's: it's the Multi-County Goods Movement Action Plan (MCGMAP). The MCGMAP held a Stakeholders Advisory Group Meeting (SAG) at Long Beach City Hall yesterday, the project's third. For those of you not used to navigating the labyrinth of competing planning initiatives, the MCGMAP is a creation of five county transportation commissions (LA, OC, Riverside, Ventura, and the San Bernardino Association of Governments, or SANBAG), SCAG, and the local Caltrans districts. The "MC" in the name separates it from Goods Movement Action Plan (GMAP) being drafted at the state level.

The two initiatives differ in scope, as well as in their intended final use (the state plan will hopefully guide agencies in spending expected bond money after November, while the Multi-County plan will feature heavily in SCAG's Regional Transportation Plan, or RTP). The state effort is mainly staffed by CalEPA and the Business, Transportation, & Housing Agency, while the MCGMAP is mostly a consultant document (take a gander at their organization chart). In case you were wondering, the contract comes out to $975,000.

For those who ponder the efficiency of consultants vs. governments, the current state draft Plan for Action comes in at 116 pages, considerably shorter than the MC's Technical Memo #3 (Existing Conditions and Restraints) which weighs in at 153 pages.

The ostensible purpose of the meeting was to discuss Tech Memo 3. As tends to be the norm, an awkward circus ensured. Local residents and environmentalists challenged the memo, called for immediate change, accused the ports of moving too slowly on introducing cold ironing at their terminals, and repeated their clarion call that California can no longer trade human lives for trade/economic growth. This prompted SANBAG's Ty Shuiling to note that the assembled stakeholders were in complete agreement with local communities on this.

There were also the obligatory calls for Congress to wake up and start funding California's infrastructure in a way even remotely proportionate to our importance to the nation. While it would be nice if Jim Sensenbrenner, Don Young, Trent Lott, and Rick Santorum started a campaign to redistribute customs revenue and gas tax money to help California to help keep prices low at the local Walmart, I don't think that's too likely to happen.

Of course, no public meeting would be complete without a lighter side, brought out by one attendee who suggested that we "cancel Christmas" in order to highlight California's importance to the national goods movement chain. Never mind that Christmas inventory started arriving at our ports in, say, March. Once the live web camera feed was off, a member of the consulting team mused about making it a refrain. You heard it here first . . .

For those who are dying to attend the next public meeting, it will be held in Orange County (location undetermined) on July 26th. Future information should be available here.