Hearty press cheers today to the Sierra Club's Tom Politeo and Teamsters VP Chuck Mack, whose op-ed titled "LA program catapults port trucking into the green economic revolution" ran in this week's Pacific Shipper magazine. You'll need a subscription to access the article on line, but it's well worth taking a quick look here, considering Mack and Politeo have decades of experience closely watching the economic and environmental consequences of port trucking. Here's an excerpt:

We encourage those in the industry who have railed against the L.A. program’s requirement that trucking companies maintain a dedicated fleet and employ their work force to take a deep, clean breath and embrace the opportunities in the new economy. We all know that the financial burdens of green investment cannot be placed on the weakest actors in the market; the stakes are just too high, and we cannot afford to fail.

Not to be outdone, Port of LA Exec Director Dr. Geraldine Knatz published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Business Journal on the "Diverging Truck Routes" taken by LA and Long Beach. Dr. Knatz argues the LA plan will deliver "a sustainable foundation for cleaner air, safe and secure transport of goods, and improved community living," while suggesting her counterparts in Long Beach will be forced to "spend billions of dollars in the future to once again subsidize a broken system." For those of you that still have doubts, here's some food for thought from the good doctor:

...we are resolved to leave the "caveman economics" of the existing trucking system behind. It's not the easy thing to do, but it's the right thing to do.