ANNOUNCEMENTS
PHOTO: Dr. Noel Hacegaba, Deputy Executive Director of Administration and Operations with the Port of Long Beach, addresses attendees at the Pulse of the Ports Peak Season Forecast on Wednesday, March 27.
On Wednesday, the Port of Long Beach held its annual Pulse of the Ports Peak Season Forecast event at the Renaissance Long Beach Hotel with almost 500 attendees. One of the top themes at the event was moving cargo through the Port complex“faster, more reliably and more sustainably.” Keynote presentations from Dairy Farmers of America, Cushman & Wakefield, Mediterranean Shipping Co., SSA Marine, Union Pacific Railroad, and CMI Transportation Inc. covered different perspectives on freight transport using intermodal containers across multiple modes of transportation (e.g., ship, rail, and truck).
If you travel along Ocean Boulevard, there are literally thousands of these intermodal containers stacked on the south side of the road on the properties of the various Port tenants. Once containers are placed on trucks and they leave tenant yards, the current Gerald Desmond Bridge plays a vital role as they head toward their final destination, as 15 percent of the nation's imported waterborne cargo is trucked over it. However, the current bridge was not designed to accommodate the dramatic increase in truck traffic with the growth of the Port over the last few decades.
With three lanes in each direction plus safety lanes, the new bridge will be wider and better able to serve the current 68,000 vehicle trips that travel over the current bridge each day. About 35 percent of this volume is truck traffic travelling to and from the Port tenants.
To see the archived webcast of the Pulse of the Ports Peak Season Forecastpresentations, go to http://www.polb.com/economics/forecastevent.asp.