(The CalTrade Report posted the following article on its website on April 11.)
LOS ANGELES — The continuing cargo bottleneck at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have spurred action on two major projects aimed at keeping pace with the unprecedented flood of container cargo that is expected to move through the two San Pedro Bay ports over the next two decades.
The latest reports say the parent of Los Angeles-based Marine Terminals Corp. (MTC) is proposing the construction of a container port on the Baja California peninsula, about 150 miles south of the California-Mexico border.
The Punta Colonet terminal complex would feature a network of terminals, warehouses, distribution centers, and berths capable of handling the newest generation of 8,000-plus TEU (20-foot equivalent) and larger capacity containerships connected to the California border by a dedicated rail line, the company said.
Estimates said that the MTC complex could handle about one-seventh the current volume at the Port of Los Angeles alone, or about 1 million TEUs annually when operating at full capacity by 2012.
Marine Terminals Corp. is owned by a consortium of four of the largest container carriers serving the transpacific trades – Evergreen Marine and Yang Ming, both of Taiwan; South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping; and Shanghai-headquartered China Shipping Co.
According to media reports, Marine Terminals has already begun lobbying the Mexican government for the go-ahead to proceed with the project, which will cost an estimated $1 billion and about five years to complete.
If approved by Mexico City, the facility – located on underdeveloped farmland – would be one of Mexico’s largest public works projects, requiring the construction of roads, housing, public buildings and other infrastructure where none now exists, reports said.
Mexican Sen. Hector Osuna Jaime told the media that the new port could create jobs and industry in Mexico, which has lost manufacturing jobs in recent years to China, but the project could face several hurdles including Mexican federal laws that would prohibit foreign ownership of the rail line.
At the same time, the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) – one of the two primary rail carriers linking Southern California with inland points throughout the US – has begun modifying its near-dock container transfer operation at the Port of Los Angeles to reduce truck traffic in and out of downtown Los Angeles.
The change, the Omaha-based railroad said, “will help eliminate an estimated 500,000 truck trips annually” from Los Angeles-area highways such as the chronically congested 710 (Long Beach) Freeway.
The new plans call for the UPRR’s Intermodal Container Transfer Facility (ICTF), located four miles from the port, to load and unload “nearly all” Los Angeles Basin international ocean containers not handled on dock, “eliminating the need to truck international containers to other Los Angeles-area intermodal ramps.”
“International boxes will continue to make the four-mile trip from the port to the UP’s ICTF via truck, but once at the ICTF, they will be transferred to railcars and travel through the Alameda Corridor to destinations throughout the United States,” the company said in a statement.
As the new container handling policy will consume most of the ICTF’s capacity, the UP and the port authority are “investigating expanding the facility to handle an estimated 1.6 million marine containers annually in order to accommodate anticipated growth at both San Pedro Bay ports.”
Any proposed expansion, it said, “would be consistent with phases contemplated when the ICTF was planned and constructed in the 1980s” and “will support port growth and promote increased use of the Alameda Corridor.”
In February, the BNSF Railway Company began negotiations with the Port of Los Angeles’ Board of Harbor Commissioners to construct a new near-dock intermodal container transfer facility about five miles north of the Port.
The planned facility would be developed on part of the port’s existing classification yard in a highly industrialized area with direct access to the Alameda Corridor, the railroad said.
Like its UPRR counterpart, the new BNSF intermodal facility would reduce the amount of time and distance on the road for trucks moving containers between the port and the railhead.
“The new facility would significantly increase our capacity to service the ports’ customers and to strengthen the role of international trade in the Southern California economy in an environmentally responsible manner” and “improve the efficiency and safety of cargo transfer from ports to customers and allow shippers to take advantage of more efficient truck-rail transportation,” it said.
The new projects can’t come to soon as several carriers such as Mediterranean Shipping have already begun utilizing 8,000-TEU containerships on the routes linking the US West Coast with the Far East with even larger vessels planned within the next several years.
Recently, London-based Lloyd’s Register has said it will class what will be the world’s largest containerships – four 10,000 TEU vessels to be built in Korea by Hyundai Heavy Industries – for China Ocean Shipping Co (COSCO).
The new 1,000-foot-long vessels will be delivered between late 2007 and mid-2008 and are expected to go into transpacific service shortly thereafter, according to Containerisation International magazine.