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How Northwest Ports are Doing
While the Port of Tacoma lagged behind Seattle for years, the
"Wired City" port is forging ahead. The latest figure for 2002 put its
container count at 1.471 million containers, with Seattle at 1.447 million.
Vancouver comes into the northwest picture at 1.458, also ahead of Seattle.
While those are small differences, it puts Port of Seattle on the short end. The
reason offered for the differences is container space. Both Tacoma and Vancouver
have open tracks of land for containers. Seattle is reaching saturation.
This might cause us to wonder why the developers are getting
cooperation from the city to make pier 46 into a shopping, apartment and office
building area if Hanjin moves to pier 5. Are we following in the footsteps of
the Port of San Francisco, which developed and vacated its waterfront to the
Port of Oakland?
It seems developers are not only an urban sprawl and
environmental problem; they are also a threat to commerce in this case.
This is especially troublesome because economic forecasts
show Pacific Rim cargo movement doubling by 2020. If that happens all ports will
require increased container capability. Not even Southern California could
handle all of it. Shipping will have to increase in all pacific ports.
This was demonstrated after the lockout when L.A. could not
handle all the jammed cargo. A good deal of it had to be diverted to Seattle,
Tacoma and Vancouver.
What would help the Port of Seattle, points out Seattle Times
economic columnist Stephen H. Dunphy, is a "fast" train corridor to
move cargo East. Seattle remains a convenient port for cargo moving to the
Midwest. If it can be speeded up lack of container space would be less a
problem. If we cannot supply a fast train corridor we will continue to fall
behind Tacoma and Vancouver.
It will take political pressure to get federal money for
Seattle port development. That is the source of money for such projects. So
think carefully about your vote in 2004. We will never get any development money
as long as most federal money now goes to war or tax cuts for the rich.
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