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SF had the working port until the era of containerization, and that plus inertia drove pretty much everything else.
by khuey 7y ago
SF had the working port until the era of containerization, and that plus inertia drove pretty much everything else.
- dredmorbius 7y agoSF had a working port, but because of rail access, Oakland was the preferred hub. Until the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge was built, railcars were ferried across the Bay (though yes, the Peninsula SP lines also existed, and have some interesting corporate legal landmark case history and shenanigans). Then, after the tracks were torn up for the lower-deck reverse auto flow, Oakland and Richmond served as the principle railyards on the East Bay, for the Santa Fe. I don't know what port tonnage compared across the years in SF and Oakland, but I'd be surprised if Oakland hadn't surpassed SF at least during WWII, if not before.
- wahern 7y ago> During the decade between 1921 and 1931, the ports in Oakland and San Francisco both experienced explosive growth in commercial shipping, although the pace of growth favored Oakland. Prior to 1927 (when the Port of Oakland was formally organized), shipping tonnage in San Francisco more than doubled that in Oakland. By 1921 [sic] the gap had narrowed: Oakland handled about three-quarters the tonnage of San Francisco. Oakland's port would continue to outgrow San Francisco's through World War II before overwhelming it during the 1950s and 1960s. Source: A Tale of Two Bridges, p. 20, https://books.google.com/books?id=XiyVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT20 https://books.google.com/books?id=XiyVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT20
- dredmorbius 7y agoThanks!
- muzz 7y agoPier 80 in SF is actually used today, for roll-on, roll-off cargo like cars (Teslas are shipped from there)