Waterfront Coalition adds voice to box shipping gridlock concerns
The Waterfront Coalition, the Washington-based association that represents larger shippers and various transportation providers, has joined the growing public debate about container shipping congestion and the lack of transportation infrastructures by calling for action from policymakers and industry.
The industry coalition Thursday released a 49-page “white paper,” “The National Marine Container Transportation System: A Call to Action,” in which it advocates numerous government and industry measures ranging from port, rail, trucking and distribution to prevent worsening of the existing gridlock.
“Private industry and government (must) take immediate action to address congestion and infrastructure needs that could hamstring American commerce if not adequately addressed soon,” the coalition said.
“If America doesn’t address the productivity and capacity of its marine terminals, railroads and highways, the country will be in for some pretty hard economic times,” Robin Lanier, executive director of the Waterfront Coalition, warned. “These issues ought to be part of a National Goods Movement Policy. And today we’re calling on the U.S. Department of Transportation to begin drafting such a policy.”
The coalition has identified a number of key highway and rail projects it believes are essential to moving goods in the United States. The projects identified include: improving the interchanges between eastern and western railroads in Chicago and New Orleans; improving rail capacity out of the Pacific Northwest and Southwest; and key intermodal “port connector” highway projects needed to address congestion specifically around the nation’s seaports.
The group’s recommendations were developed over the last four months by a group of U.S. companies including manufacturers, brand name suppliers, retailers, farmers, and transportation providers.
The coalition’s call for action follows a similar move made earlier this week by the International Chamber of Commerce, which expressed concern over the port bottlenecks around the world and called for urgent remedial action, saying infrastructure delays harm global trade.
“The promise of continued economic prosperity depends more than ever on the ability of businesses to reach international markets while receiving finished goods and raw materials from abroad,” the Waterfront Coalition said. “The movement of international commerce depends on an efficient transportation system, yet the nation has not developed a national freight transportation policy designed to promote economic prosperity.”
Because the problems facing goods movement in the United States are so complex, the Waterfront Coalition said it has not limited its views to government policy, alone. “Through our work with shippers and stakeholders to address port congestion in Southern California that will soon give us PierPass, these problems are only going to be resolved through a concerted and timely effort by all stakeholders in both the private and public sectors,” Lanier said.
To this end, the coalition is calling for significant changes in long-held business practices that include the way intermodal chassis are managed, the practice of providing “free time” for container storage at marine terminals, and vessels operations that affect congestion.
The group called for federal attention to the infrastructure needs through expanded funding for goods-related highway projects, the provision of tax incentives for private investment in intermodal rail capacity, and assistance for short-haul truckers to enable them to improve the efficiency of their equipment.
However, it opposes federal and state “regulations designed to impose ‘efficiency’ on port terminals in the name of addressing congestion.”
The numerous recommendations of the Waterfront Coalition are:
(1) Improve the productivity, efficiency and throughput of ports
(1a) Making harbor trucking a profitable business.
(1b) Operating ports during extended hours.
(1c) Developing regional or national chassis pools.
(1d) Revising “free time” equipment practices and ending “the practice of using marine terminals as warehouses.”
(1e) Developing port-wide truck appointment systems.
(1f) Spreading out vessel sailings and arrivals in the transpacific trade to avoid vessel bunching in the United States.
(1g) Developing “best practices” for measuring capacity and productivity at U.S. ports and terminals.
(2) Encourage the development of Oakland and Pacific Northwest ports as alternative gateways for Asian trade.
(2a) Provide more sailings to alternate ports.
(2b) Improve rail service from alternate western gateways.
(2c) Addressing the issues that preclude Oakland as a transload center for large importers.
(3) Invest in intermodal rail to increase the velocity of equipment moving container cargo and to address choke points at East/West interchanges.
(4) Expend public resources on freight projects “wisely,” where they will have the biggest return, and only after consulting with shippers to understand business trends affecting the value of future capacity enhancements.
(5) Develop better trade and transportation forecasting that will allow stakeholders to minimize the impact of equipment and labor shortages.
(6) Promote and improve infrastructure to support Asian trade to the East and Gulf coasts.
Specifically, the grouping is urging carriers to expand and improve Asia to East Coast service through the Suez Canal, and wants an “immediate expansion” of the Panama Canal.
It called on the authorities to take tax and spending measures, including encouraging private-sector investment in intermodal rail capacity through tax incentives, and federal operating assistance for short-haul shuttle trains, and for short-haul truckers to improve the efficiency of their equipment.
The U.S. government “should cautiously support the short-sea alternative until more studies are conducted,” the Waterfront Coalition added, saying it is “skeptical about the ability of short-sea shipping to attract enough cargo to be an effective and sustainable option for international containerized cargo.”
Federal highway funding laws should be “rewritten” to increase funding for freight projects, the group added.
The coalition’s white paper highlighted concerns among port residents about the stress caused by container traffic on communities.
It warned: “Ports are frequently blamed for traffic congestion on roads and highways feeding marine terminals as a growing number of port truckers compete with commuters during normal business hours. As international trade continues to expand, this problem will only worsen.”
The Waterfront Coalition supports truck-only lanes feeding ports because such dedicated lanes represent a better use of limited public money needed to solve port related traffic congestion than shuttle trains and short-sea shipping.
The group’s white paper can be found at http://www.portmod.org/INDUSTRY%20INFO/NATIONAL%20MARINE%20CONTAINER%20TRANSPORTATION%20SYSTEM.pdf .