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CN signs agreement with Port of New Orleans
I wish that Trains would get a highly regarded economist or logistics expert to write an article on the impact the new expanded Panama Canal will have on the present container traffic patterns. Will it really pull traffic away from Long Beach, California and bring it to New Orleans and Mobile? If the answer is yes, then how much traffic will it divert? Will the railroads get it or will the trucks get it? Will they each get some of it? Who will be the big winners? CN (over the old IC) or CSX? Enquiring minds want to know. What is going to happen?
Following on George Benson’s good comments, it occurred to me while reading this story that if Gulf and East Coast ports will, in fact, see increased shipping with the new canal, New Orleans has hardly been mentioned to date, compared to, say, Jacksonville and other East Coast points. Or have I not been paying attention?
I think you have been attentive, is that a proper word, Micheal,
and here’s something that may diminish New Orleans as a container port.
Big, I guess not the biggest container ships, are turned in the Estuary of the Port of Oakland, benches in Jack London Square are front-row center to watch the show.
But, very impressive is the fact that 85 per cent of the Estuary’ s shore to shore width gets filled when the ship is being twirled…
How wide is the Mississippi where the container cranes are?
Can river traffic be safely halted for the about a half hour turning operation?
River current…can the stability of barge “tows” delayed by the turning ship be, all but, guaranteed?
Francis, good points, but you made me curious. G-Earth shows the Mississippi is 0.5 mi. wide where the container cranes are located, so that’s probably an adequate turning basin, if tight. The Oakland estuary is roughly half that at the cranes. I don’t know much about handling river traffic (other than watching barge tows here in Pittsburgh and what little of it I’ve seen in NOLA) but I’ve seen tows stand mid-river with no trouble while waiting to tie up or lock through. As for halting traffic, that surely already happens at NOLA, but I don’t know how much more of it that port could stand. So you may have the right reasons for NOLA not being a big container player.