US-built box crane - WorldCargo News Online

NORTH AMERICA: WEST COAST PORT DEVELOPMENT
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age area increased, a throughput of
600,000TEU/year will be possible.
The efforts of both Vancouver and
Fraser to expand capacity are being
matched by the Canadian Pacific Railway
(CPR), which is spending C$160
mill on 25 projects that will enable it to
run an additional four 100-car unit trains/
day on its transcontinental system, a 12
per cent increase over current capacity.
Boosting boxes
With nearly 1.7 mill TEU handled last
year, Vancouver, BC is pulling abreast of
cross-border rivals Seattle and Tacoma,
each with about 1.8 mill TEU in 2004.
Vancouver can also still expand Roberts
Bank. Seattle, on the other hand, has run
out of room unless it wishes to convert
its Pier 90/91 complex to containers, and
this seems unlikely given the strength of
local resident opposition.
However, capacity at Seattle has been
boosted by expansion of Terminals 18 and
46, while Terminal 25 has recently been
reopened following US$20 mill worth of
reconstruction work and the installation
of three Paceco Portainers moved up from
Long Beach. The work allows Matson
Navigation to shift its operations from T18
to T25, thus opening up room at T18
where additional post-panamax cranes are
to be delivered next year. The refinements,
as well as Southern California traffic diversion,
helped push Seattle’s container
volume up 25 per cent in the first half of
the year. It expects to match or exceed
last year’s record of 1.78 mill TEU by the
end of this year.
Tacoma moved ahead of Seattle in
BNSF cleans up
BNSF Railway is installing new technology
to provide cleaner air and more efficient
freight movement. “Rail has long
been the most efficient means humankind
has ever created for moving freight
overland,” remarked John Lanigan, EVP
and chief marketing officer. The new
generation of equipment will help improve
Southern California’s air quality
and its economy.”
On the list is Green Goat, a hybrid
switch engine that utilises a system of a
microturbine and batteries. According to
BNSF, currently there are only four LNG
locos in the US and they are all located at
its Los Angeles facility, Hobart Yard.
Lanigan says that, subject only to successful
trials and testing, BNSF’s Southern
California International Gateway
intermodal facility (SCIG) will use “only
LNG-powered locomotives for railcar
switching, only LNG-powered yard tractors
and only electrically-powered cranes.”
BNSF expects the SCIG to remove
millions of miles of truck traffic from
nearby congested freeways, with concomitant
major air quality impacts. It is
hoped the SCIG will provide direct access
to the Alameda Corridor and will
enable it to reach its potential in terms of
train capacity.
BNSF is collaborating with Parsec and
Sound Energy Solutions to acquire and
deploy LNG-powered yard tractors,
which are being built by Kalmar Industries
(Ottawa units). Using LNG yard tractors,
it says, will reduce NOx and PM
emissions by 95 per cent compared to a
standard off-road diesel tractor.
BNSF has already begun to install the
SmartStart engine idle reduction system
from ZTR Control Systems on locomotives
in Southern California. It is promoting
the key benefits of SmartStart as including
a reduction in the fuel burned by
automatically shutting down idling locomotives,
and a reduction in harmful gas,
PM and noise emissions.
Meanwhile, both BNSF and UP have
provided traffic data for a simulation study
carried out by the Washington state Port
of Vancouver to ascertain the best option
for a third rail access. The study has indicated
that the existing BNSF/ Vancouver
rail network is already experiencing congestion
during peak train volume levels.
Currently, a daily average of 27 delays
of more than 30 mins was recorded and
nearly half (45 per cent) of the delays involved
port trains even though port traffic
accounts for only 5.2 per cent of the
rail network total. ❏
container traffic last year, with over 1.8
mill TEU handled. This number may
move to 2 mill TEU now that Evergreen
and K-Line have settled into new terminals,
to be followed shortly by Yang Ming.
The port is fitting its own fleet of 30 straddle
carriers with diesel oxidation catalysts
this year using federal and local grants.
The work is expected to reduce the machines’
PM emissions by up to 50 per cent
(Ever Greener on p26).
Mostly strads
Although K-Line’s new terminal uses
RTGs in the storage yard, straddle carriers
are used to move containers between
the yard and Tacoma’s North Intermodal
rail facility. They will also be used by Yang
Ming when that carrier starts up operations,
leaving Maersk Sealand, which uses
the South Intermodal Yard, as the port’s
only non-straddle carrier operator.
Smaller ports dream big
In California the small ports of San Diego
and Hueneme have taken a number
of customers from LA/LB, principally automobile
and fruit handlers. Next year
Toyota Logistics Service will pull one
operation from Long Beach and move it
to the privately-run Port of Benicia on
San Francisco Bay.
This will open up a 30-acre facility at
Long Beach that may be merged with the
nearby SSA Terminal, used by MSC, Zim
and CMA CGM, to expand that complex
to 200 acres. Toyota will retain a 144-
acre receiving and processing facility at
Long Beach as well as a similar facility
operated at Portland, Oregon.
Moving cargo at
The initial results of the PierPass Program in LA/LB have exceeded expectations, with night
hours gate traffic reaching as much as 30 per cent of daily demand
Both San Diego and Hueneme have
been expanding their capacity to handle
additional cargo, and both have acquired
harbour mobile cranes to help move deck
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containers to and from reefer ships. Another
smaller West Coast port investing
in lifting capacity is Everett, Wa where
Boeing Company is changing the way it
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September 2005 27