710 Coalition

710 Long Beach Freeway Sign

The 710 freeway was developed over six decades ago and runs north to south from the City of Long Beach to the City of Alhambra. Plans for construction of the 710 freeway to extend north to the 210 freeway were never completed.

As a result, commuters traveling north on the 710 were forced to utilize local streets to reach their destinations. Several cities continued to be impacted by severe gridlock as commuters made their way through local arterials. EKA was retained by the Coalition formed by the affected cities to advocate and engage with relevant local agencies, officials and other organizations to pursue completion of the 710 freeway.

EKA worked with the Coalition to develop a public relations outreach plan that involved key agencies and stakeholders as well as labor and other organizations impacted by and/or involved with the issue. It was critical that we understood not only the perspective of local officials and agencies but also the sentiments of the local community. Through polling and research, we were able to identify geographic support for the Coalition’s position. Forming strategic alliances and engaging with and responding to media was also a key component of the Coalition’s efforts.

Through our program we were able to find local spokespeople who agreed to sign letters to the editor and who also agreed to comment at the public hearings. Coalition cities continue to work with local agencies to minimize gridlock and severe traffic in their neighborhoods.

Restaurant Permitting

A well-known restaurant chain was in need of multiple location openings in the larger LA City and LA County areas, within a certain timeline.

EKA was retained by the restaurant chain to create and implement comprehensive outreach strategy inclusive of elected offices and community stakeholders. EKA also facilitated thorough plan check engineering and rough and final inspections to get all the restaurants approved and opened on time. This truly full-service scope is not offered by many firms.

We created a profile for each project site that included elected and relevant stakeholders and created a presentation and meeting strategy with possible restaurant layouts, operational conditions, etc. Some sites required a public hearing for a conditional-use permit dealing with drive-thrus. EKA represented those projects at all public hearings and community meetings and wrote and submitted all required documents. EKA continued to facilitate the client through various public hearing processes. Within two years, ten restaurants have been successfully opened in the larger LA City and LA County areas.

The elected and community support generated by EKA led to the approval of restaurant drive-thru requests, successful negotiation of operational conditions in the conditional-use permit and on-time opening of projects.

Ports, Commerce and Transportation

In order to meet new federal and state mandates relating to air quality, the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles proposed a progressive ban for the 16,000 drayage trucks entering the port complex every day. The progressive ban proposal barred the oldest, dirtiest trucks from entering the port first, followed by a series of annual bans that would ultimately require the truck fleet to deploy truck models no older than 2014. Although generally supportive of the ports’ environmental goals, the local trucking industry would be disadvantaged competitively if it were forced to purchase newer, more expensive trucks to meet the ports’ new requirements.

EKA was retained by a consortium of over 100 local trucking companies (eventually forming the Harbor Trucking Association) to advocate before the Port Commissions in LA and Long Beach to find a workable solution that would allow the ports to meet their stated environmental goals while allowing smaller and mid-sized trucking companies to continue doing business.

As a result of our efforts, the Ports adopted a new environmental program that allowed for older trucks to remain competitive while incentivizing those who wanted to invest and deploy newer, cleaner truck models. As a result, the trucking industry remained strong and the Ports were able to reduce harmful air emissions (NOx and SOx) by 90%—over two years ahead of schedule. In addition, the formation of the HTA has solidified the political strength of the port trucking industry on dozens of issues in the last few years, including additional environmental regulations, new tariff provisions and the expansion of port terminal facilities.

Consensus Building Consulting

With the passage of the new Federal Highway Bill (FAST ACT), Congress mandated that the logistics industry identify a way to measure productivity at our ports around the country. With each segment of the supply chain—labor, terminals, shipping lines—measuring productivity differently, this new mandate presented a significant challenge.

EKA was retained by a group of terminals to lead an industry effort to determine what the metrics should be, which agency should measure them and how they should be reported.

Achieving a consensus among a disparate group of industry members was not easy. Our tactics included outreach to elected officials (members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee), several NGOs (National Retail Federation, Retail Industry Leaders Association, etc.) and importers (Home Depot, Target, etc.) to identify the top-ten productivity issues facing the supply chain and how those issues be measured. EKA then took the lead in reducing those issues to a written proposal; circulating it among stakeholders and advocating for a consensus position. EKA then determined that the DOT would be the proper agency to implement these measures and led the advocacy effort before the DOT in order to have the measures adopted.

As a result of our efforts, the FAST ACT mandate on measuring port productivity is well on its way to implementation. In the process EKA was able to facilitate an industry-wide consensus on a matter previously viewed as too sensitive or controversial to find common ground.