LA and Long Beach launch programme of improvements to protect their gateway role
The expansion of the Panama Canal is raising alarms in Southern California, where business, labour and public officials are warning that the project threatens to dent the region’s role in international trade.
The $5.25 billion project will make the canal wider and deeper, allowing bigger containerships from Asia to bypass west coast ports and head straight to terminals on the Gulf Coast and east coast.
The neighbouring ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which together handle about 40% of the nation’s imported Asian goods, could lose as much as a quarter of their cargo business, by some estimates, after the canal expansion is completed in 2014.
The ports have launched improvement projects aimed at keeping them competitive. One would speed the loading of cargo on to trains; others eliminate bottlenecks or increase capacity so that the ports remain attractive to importers.
However a coalition of business, labour and government contends that these efforts are being jeopardised by opposition from residents, environmental groups and others.
Two members of the Long Beach City Council, for example, sought to block the construction of a new rail freight complex near the ports, saying it would increase pollution and force small businesses to relocate.
The coalition, which calls itself the Jobs 1st Alliance, says the rail and other projects are crucial if Southern California hopes to keep its place as a centre for international trade. Directly and indirectly, economists say, cargo movement employs more than 500,000 people in the region.
Few places host a system as complex as the Southern California seaports and the vast regional network of truck routes, rail lines, bridges, freeways and warehouses that serve it. The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the biggest US port complex and the world’s sixth-busiest harbour.
The Jobs 1st Alliance fears that the ports could lose as many as 100,000 jobs when the Panama Canal overhaul allows much larger ships to bypass California.
“Worst case, there could be a 25% diversion from Los Angeles-Long Beach,” said Paul Bingham, the group’s chief economist.
“That’s upwards of three million containers – that’s a lot of dockworkers who don’t get work, truckers with less to haul and trains that don’t run.”
The biggest ships that can squeeze through the Panama Canal now carry up to 5,000 containers. But modern cargo vessels routinely hold three times as many. So importers often use west coast ports to land their products from Asia, which then go by truck or train o warehouses and retailer shelves throughout the US.
A wider Panama Canal could accommodate some of the biggest ships afloat – 12,600teu vessels – which would present a vastly improved “all water” cargo movement option for Asian goods bound for the southern and eastern US.
Source: IFW Net