Center receives funds

By Chris Ledermuller
Daily Forty-Niner

Cal State Long Beach received a $3.75 million government appropriation for a program to research and develop improvements to port traffic.

The Center for Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies, a research center run by the College of Engineering for the past four years, received the funding from the United States Department of Defense, which transferred the money to the Department of Transportation.

"We are looking at new technologies to make ports more efficient," said Richard Williams, who heads the center. He works closely with Stan Wheatley of the CSULB foundation, who was exploring ports in the Pacific Northwest and will return to Long Beach and speak about the project at the International Business Association's monthly meeting on Friday.

The center is a partnership of CSULB, other universities, the federal government and private subcontractors and is assigned with the researching and developing computer models and actual products.

One project the center had already developed was the Transportation Automated Measuring System (TrAMS), which measures the size and dimensions of port containers in seconds. Presently, the measurements of containers, vital for balanced loading on ships, must be estimated while on a scale, which is time-consuming and often inaccurate.

A recent military trial run of TrAMS was successful, Williams said.

"We built one and demonstrated it at Fort Bragg in South Carolina," he said. "Now, we're trying to make it cheaper, faster and better."

Other components of the center include designing ships that can travel at faster speeds and burn less fuel, models to reduce dockings from two to three days to hours, and plans to enable emergency military access without disrupting commercial port activities.

The announcement of the appropriation thrilled CSULB President Robert Maxson.

"I was very proud of the university and the College of Engineering, but my second reaction was that I felt honored that we were asked to do this important work," he said. "It's a giant vote of confidence for our engineering department."

Successful research and development by the center may be used for both civilian and military purposes.

"Making the ports more efficient also has a military advantage," Williams said. "When they need to deploy, they need to deploy quickly."

Defense is just one facet of the center's efforts. Applications are also studies for the nation's busiest ports, including here in Long Beach.

The Port of Long Beach is a major engine for the local economy and, along with the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, handle the most cargo in the nation, according to said Art Wong, media relations manager for the Port of Long Beach.

"We handled 4.4 million container units last year," Wong said. "We are the third busiest port in the world, behind Hong Kong and Singapore."