We certainly got the LA Times and the LB Press Telegram in a huff, didn't we? But for all the bluster in these editorials, they're filled with blatant internal contradictions, like the Long Beach scheme itself. The Road's favorite from the Sunday LA Times:

Under a lease-to-own program, a nonprofit or other organization could buy new trucks and lease them to truckers, charging low fees that would be subsidized by the ports. The Port of Long Beach plan calls for such a program, though how and by whom it would be run is still unclear.

If the NRDC sues the Port of Long Beach, it will be actively harming the environment by stalling a well-thought-out cleanup program.

Emphasis ours. The Road loves that a "well-thought-out," scheme can still be "unclear" about "how...it would be run." In fact, the Long Beach scheme is so poorly thought out that it sets the drivers' interests in direct conflict with the need to move to stricter clean air standards over time.

The Coalition's May 2007 comments on the initial CTP draft notes that the ultimate goal should be to go beyond the EPA 2007 standard and push to EPA 2010. But the Long Beach scheme either locks the port into the weaker standard, or puts drivers into an absurd Catch 22.

Let's say Long Beach wanted to implement an EPA 2010 standard by the year 2014, and you're a driver. You sign a seven year lease at $500-$700 a month. In 2015, your lease is up. After a $7,000 to $15,000 balloon payment you own your own truck. The American Dream!

But wait a minute. Your 2007 truck is now illegal at the Port of Long Beach. Maybe that's why the staff slid in the phrase "or buy another subsidized truck" into their presentation at the Harbor Commission.

So Long Beach must choose: either lock itself into low standards forever (or as long as trucks are grandfathered), or force thousands of truck drivers into a system where they choose between buying worthless assets or rolling over into permanent debt peonage. All this requires permanent subsidies, yet the container fee is supposed to sunset in five years – the Road wonders where the third and fourth billion dollars will come from. This is ”well-thought-out”?