Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
warehousing industry in the past few years'' (Bowen 2008 , p. 383). According to
his calculation, the number of jobs in the U.S. warehousing and storage industry
rose 384 % between 1998 and 2005. He shows that the growth in warehousing was
more marked in suburban counties than in central and rural counties: central city
MSA counties saw warehousing establishments grow at an annual growth rate of
10.2 %, while the increase for non-MSA counties and other MSA counties were
respectively 9.3 and 11.8 %. Bowen calculates that accessibility to air and high-
way transportation networks increasingly influences the location of warehousing
establishments, even though other factors also play a role.
Hesse ( 2004 , p. 171), using two case studies from Germany, concludes that
logistics activities favor distant locations for many reasons, some of which are
specific to this industry while others apply to many economic sectors: ''firms try to
get rid of traffic jams, the rigidities of planning requirements, or the power of trade
unions.'' He explains how these changes are embedded in a general transformation
of the logistics real estate industry, which is increasingly dominated by global
players organizing national or even larger networks of distribution centers. ''Once
the spatial scale increases, such commodification of land leads to a certain
'abstraction' from the concrete place, in favor of the network structure'' (Hesse
2004 , p. 166).
3 Freight Flows and Freight Facilities in Los Angeles
3.1 Recent Studies on Freight in the L.A. Area
Although freight data are not easily available in U.S. metropolitan areas (Giuliano
et al. 2012 ), a series of recent studies has shed light on what freight flows represent
for the Los Angeles area. A Goods Movement Truck and Rail Study (Tioga Group
and Cambridge Systematics 2003 ) carried out for the Southern California Asso-
ciation of Governments (SCAG) provided interesting data. In 2004, the Los
Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (known as ''Metro'') published a
Compendium of truck/freight information for the greater Los Angeles metropolitan
area (LACMTA 2004 ). The Multi-County Goods Movement Study (Wilbur Smith
Associates 2008 ), carried out for all region's the main transportation authorities and
California DOT, constitutes a first attempt at a comprehensive assessment of freight
flows in the region and regional level freight data collection. A study by
METRANS 3 in 2008, called Integrating Inland Ports into the Intermodal Goods
Movement System for Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (METRANS 2008)
provides a facility location model which aims to explain the operational relation-
ships between the San Pedro Bay ports and inland regional freight terminals.
3 METRANS is a joint research center from the University of Southern California and California
State University of Long Beach.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search