On-dock rail for Miami?
The Florida East Coast Railway is making long-term plans to bring on-dock rail service to the Port of Miami, potentially eliminating 50,000 truck drayage moves a year and increasing the viability of a north/south intermodal corridor between East Coast ports, Latin America and the Caribbean.
That was one of the plans laid out Wednesday at a special Port of Miami forum on how to reduce congestion and improve access to the port.
John Lucas, the FEC's vice president-general manager intermodal marketing and sales, said the FEC and port officials have developed a preliminary plan for on-dock rail at the port. A new intermodal yard would be built on limited space near the center of the port, which is on two conjoined, man-made islands near downtown Miami in Biscayne Bay.
Lucas said the concept is still too preliminary to allow accurate cost estimates, and there is no timetable in place for the project, which could face difficult hurdles before approval. But the proposal already has considerable detail. The facility would operate between midnight and 5 a.m., and the FEC anticipates it would move roughly 875 containers a week on a Monday-through-Friday schedule.
There is existing rail track into the port, but it is little used and the FEC now drays Port of Miami traffic 12 miles to an intermodal rail yard in Hialeah.
The FEC line runs just 350 miles between Jacksonville and Miami, but Lucas noted that half of the FEC's international traffic is for markets outside of Florida, using interline connections for not only the Northeast and Midwest, but Southern California and the Pacific Northwest.
Lucas sees South Florida as an attractive gateway for all-water services between Asia and the U.S. East Coast. He noted that all-water freight moved inland from Miami could reach Chicago four days faster than if it was moved over the Port of New York and New Jersey.
He added there are growing prospects for traffic between Southeastern ports like Savannah and Charleston for Caribbean freight, as well as for parts of Latin America.