SoCal Ports Facing West Coast Competition
The Southern California Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are losing business to other West Coast ports, even as the Port of Long Beach approved a $750 million expansion, news services reported.
Container volume at the Port of Los Angeles fell 6% last year and plunged 32% in February from a year ago, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
AP Moeller-Maersk, one of the world’s largest ocean shipping lines, plans to move some of its container ships next month from Southern California to the Port of Seattle, the Journal said.
Other ports from Portland, Ore., to British Columbia, Canada, are adding new infrastructure in a bid to get more international container business from the L.A.-Long Beach port complex, the largest in the United States, the paper reported.
Meanwhile, the Long Beach Board of Harbor Commissioners Monday unanimously approved a 10-year, $750-million expansion project to merge two older terminals and create an estimated 14,000 jobs at the complex, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The project will lay new railroad track to shuttle cargo by train and add dockside electrical power so ships will be able to turn off their auxiliary diesel engines, the paper reported Tuesday.
