Excerpt from: China Supply Chain and Logistics Strategy
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| September 07, 2005 | | LA and Long Beach Say No Significant Congestion Issues Expected | The AmCham (American Chamber of Commerce) Shanghai Logistics and Transportation Services Committee recently met to discuss the LA Port congestion situation in preparation for the upcoming peak season.
Don Snyder, Director of Trade & Maritime Services at Long Beach and Jim McClellan, Director of Marketing for Port of Los Angeles attended our meeting via teleconference.
During the meeting, Long Beach and LA gave their firsthand accounts of the port situation. Shipping liner experts also joined us to share their insights.
To summarize, the ports of LA and Long Beach do not expect to see significant problems during this year’s peak season.
The ports of LA and Long Beach foresee that cargo will be moving to DCs or rail in a timely fashion and there is no indication of issues to come. The only possible bottleneck they expect could be a shortage of truckers, however capacity seems to be sufficient at present.
To ease traffic congestion, the following projects have been introduced:
- Pier Pass
- Construction of a new dock and rail facility in LA
- Virtual container yards – where you can interchange containers without going through port
- Inland shuttle trains in the LA area
Also, in order to deal with the challenges of working in collaboration with the carriers, rail companies, etc., a "harbor talking group" was formed, the first one discussed chassis issues.
Comments
There are no easy solutions for the port congestion problem in the US. It is a good thing that this year the situation in LA/Long Beach may be under control. However, the unprecedented growth in Chinese exports to the US has far reaching long term effects on the US infrastructure. It is expected that LA will experience a 35 million TEU growth over the next few years. The port of Shanghai alone should have 30 million TEUs by 2009, with growth from China overall at 20%/year.
About 43% of US imported cargo goes through the LA/Long Beach ports. Are there other options?
The staggering growth in import volume at the ports of LA and Long beach is not being dealt with in terms of adequate infrastructure improvements. Explosive Chinese port expansion means ever larger volume of imports coming into lagging US ports. How will your company adapt to the challenges in the future? Will you continue to rely on Long Beach, or will other you consider other options such as the new Prince Rupert Port development? http://www.rupertport.com/
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