Long Harbor Port Issues

As International trade continues to drive the growth of the United States economy, the actions of the ports to improve their throughput and efficiencies will be the key to their success. The introduction of the larger post-Panamax ships and the ability of these ships to cross through the Panama Canal will present an opportunity for older ports to make improvements and compete with new and more modern ports for this business. With increased import activities, larger ships, and the widening of the Panama Canal, ports such as the one in Long Beach California have been making improvements to maintain their position as a leader in their industry. Long Beach has an advantage over some older ports such as the ports located in Baltimore Maryland and Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Long Beach is currently the busiest port in the United States and has been working on improvements to their facilities to ensure they do not lose business to East Coast ports once the expansion of the Panama Canal
The port in Baltimore Maryland has started to address these challenges. This port has the depth required to handle the larger vessels, however the port has infrastructure issues such as their crane ability to unload the containers and issues with transferring the containers to the rail. According to Schwartz new cranes have been added, “The $40 million machines are part of this city’s gamble…that Baltimore will be one of the few East Coast ports ready…” There are issues with the inability to double stack containers on the rail out of the port due to tunnels heights, however a plan is being worked on to have a yard on the other side of the tunnel to allow for the stacking at that time. While this does present some additional handling, it does give them the opportunity to start utilizing the train capacity more efficiently and recover some of the additional