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Is there anywhere else that can ease the load on existing harbour infrastructure? If the demand is this extreme, shouldn't a new eceonomic opportunity be ripe

Is there anywhere else that can ease the load on existing harbour infrastructure? If the demand is this extreme, shouldn't a new eceonomic opportunity be ripe for the picking, here?

zdragnar 5y ago
Ports for big ships have historically been constrained by geography- ideally you need a very deep, well sheltered bay. A shore with shallow waters for hundreds of feet simply make for very costly places to unload, and get treacherous in rough weather. On top of that, coastlines tend to be the most densely populated regions. Building up infrastructure for a new harbor sounds like a nightmare to get through zoning, let alone an environmental impact review.
toast0 5y ago
Building a container port to handle large vessels is a big capital expenditure. And you also need a labor pool, and trucking / rail facilities. It's not something you can come up with quickly to take advantage of an event that everyone hopes is short term. Labor shortages related to covid on the US west coast leading to delays wouldn't be significantly helped by adding another port on the US west coast. From the bottom of this article, it does look like there's some room in alternate non-US ports, although that seems expensive and time consuming.
skybrian 5y ago
Maybe some US manufacturers will benefit?
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Yes and no. There are, for example, a few ports on the Pacific coast of Mexico. They don't have the transportation infrastructure to carry large amounts of cargo to the rest of the continent, and they (probably) don't have the cranes to efficiently unload container ships. The US ports don't have the space to expand. I don't think the Canadian ones can, either. Prince Rupert might be able to, but it would take time. The problem is the sheer scale of what you are asking for. We'd need either more ports, or more berths at existing ports, with more cranes, and more transport connections from the ports to the country. If there's one thing where you could get more throughput by throwing money at it, it would be in more efficient container cranes. And even that requires someone figuring out a more efficient crane, and then probably a few years of building it out at the ports, and upgrading the dockside infrastructure to handle the increased throughput.
- briffle 5y ago
  The Port of Coos Bay in Southern Oregon has been trying to expand their port for 15 years now. https://www.portofcoosbay.com/projects https://www.portofcoosbay.com/projects But the projects take quite a bit of time (dredging the bay deeper and wider to service 1000' ships, taking over and repairing a basically abandoned railway with 100 year old tunnels and bridges, etc). Couple that with some initial resistance from state legislators that serve Portland (which lost its largest container ship terminal contracts a few years ago), and these things take years to get into place. Could be real fast, if they got a guarantee of business from somebody, but shipping companies don't want to pay to develop in only a few years, and then have their backlog clear up before then.
  - mjevans 5y ago
    It's more complicated though. Portland OR already has I5 running right through town and very near the port. Presumably it also has a number of rail lines. Coos Bay is, relatively speaking, in the middle of nowhere along the Oregon coast, in a very mountainous region. Refurbishing the rail line is a great idea, but surely they'd also want some of these to be offloaded to trucks, which is going to require an expansion in the highway infrastructure, at least with the respect of carrying heavier loads more frequently if not adding a lane in each direction so that they can accommodate the traffic increase.
  - pomian 5y ago
    Interesting idea. But Coos Bay like Astoria has a significant bar problem. Even big ships have to pay attention to the the tides. One more hindrance to being competitive with natural harbours like San Francisco and Vancouver.

Is there anywhere else that can ease the load on existing harbour infrastructure? If the demand is this extreme, shouldn't a new eceonomic opportunity be ripe for the picking, here?

zdragnar 5y ago

Ports for big ships have historically been constrained by geography- ideally you need a very deep, well sheltered bay. A shore with shallow waters for hundreds of feet simply make for very costly places to unload, and get treacherous in rough weather. On top of that, coastlines tend to be the most densely populated regions. Building up infrastructure for a new harbor sounds like a nightmare to get through zoning, let alone an environmental impact review.

toast0 5y ago

Building a container port to handle large vessels is a big capital expenditure. And you also need a labor pool, and trucking / rail facilities. It's not something you can come up with quickly to take advantage of an event that everyone hopes is short term. Labor shortages related to covid on the US west coast leading to delays wouldn't be significantly helped by adding another port on the US west coast. From the bottom of this article, it does look like there's some room in alternate non-US ports, although that seems expensive and time consuming.

skybrian 5y ago

Maybe some US manufacturers will benefit?

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Yes and no. There are, for example, a few ports on the Pacific coast of Mexico. They don't have the transportation infrastructure to carry large amounts of cargo to the rest of the continent, and they (probably) don't have the cranes to efficiently unload container ships. The US ports don't have the space to expand. I don't think the Canadian ones can, either. Prince Rupert might be able to, but it would take time. The problem is the sheer scale of what you are asking for. We'd need either more ports, or more berths at existing ports, with more cranes, and more transport connections from the ports to the country. If there's one thing where you could get more throughput by throwing money at it, it would be in more efficient container cranes. And even that requires someone figuring out a more efficient crane, and then probably a few years of building it out at the ports, and upgrading the dockside infrastructure to handle the increased throughput.

briffle 5y ago
The Port of Coos Bay in Southern Oregon has been trying to expand their port for 15 years now. https://www.portofcoosbay.com/projects https://www.portofcoosbay.com/projects But the projects take quite a bit of time (dredging the bay deeper and wider to service 1000' ships, taking over and repairing a basically abandoned railway with 100 year old tunnels and bridges, etc). Couple that with some initial resistance from state legislators that serve Portland (which lost its largest container ship terminal contracts a few years ago), and these things take years to get into place. Could be real fast, if they got a guarantee of business from somebody, but shipping companies don't want to pay to develop in only a few years, and then have their backlog clear up before then.
- mjevans 5y ago
  It's more complicated though. Portland OR already has I5 running right through town and very near the port. Presumably it also has a number of rail lines. Coos Bay is, relatively speaking, in the middle of nowhere along the Oregon coast, in a very mountainous region. Refurbishing the rail line is a great idea, but surely they'd also want some of these to be offloaded to trucks, which is going to require an expansion in the highway infrastructure, at least with the respect of carrying heavier loads more frequently if not adding a lane in each direction so that they can accommodate the traffic increase.
- pomian 5y ago
  Interesting idea. But Coos Bay like Astoria has a significant bar problem. Even big ships have to pay attention to the the tides. One more hindrance to being competitive with natural harbours like San Francisco and Vancouver.