What’s interesting to me here is the landside issues section. Rail remains challenged. LA Port can’t get enough trains in to pick up containers. There are now 33000 containers waiting for pickup by rail. Over 20000 have been there 9 days or more. Rail has to step up and provide more equipment to get these containers out.
Congestion on the sea side is practically gone. There are fewer than 15 ships waiting right now. It seems the major congestion in the US has shifted to the East Coast.
The LA and Long Beach Ports have gone ahead by obtaining approval from Kern County Supervisors for a large inland port in Mojave CA. It will provide a place where containers can be gotten off the limited space at the port, and deployed where they can be rerouted to other destinations.
Developing inland ports is a move we’ve been recommending for years now. By ‘we’, I mean my colleague Chris Clott and me. We wrote about it years ago in this paper. Then, we were thinking much farther afield than Mojave, perhaps Chicago or a midwestern site. Those were the days of the land bridge to Europe, which has been reduced and delayed by the congestion of the last year. There is probably still a need for an inland dry port farther on, but the Mojave location should help a lot.
With a capacity of 3 million TEU and access to rail and air as well as truck transport, it should help to reduce congestion at the Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports.
Mojave is inland and to the north of Los Angeles and the ports, about 119 miles and two and a half hours away. There’s a rail connection, as well as some excellent interstate freeways to the door. It should be ideal for both Northern transport toward the Bay Area and north, and Eastward transport toward Las Vegas and beyond.
It is interesting and useful to set these inland ports in agricultural areas, where the empty containers can be filled with ag products. The easy proximity will induce a lot more loads.
Locating inland ports with prescribed connections to ports and to rail and truck should aid in reducing congestion at ports. Being able to move containers to an inland port reduces the congestion at the port itself. Many of the functions performed at the port can be carried out at the inland port.
The EU has been pioneering this approach. In the US it has been less common, though. It has been suggested for 10 years by various commentators, including me and my partner Chris Clott. Inland ports increase the flexibility of a port system as well as increasing capacity and improving service.
Supply Chain and Logistics 