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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
by 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 agoIt'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 agoInteresting 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.