Anyone have any sense of the impact of the Panama Canal expansion on rail capacity out of the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma? I’m particularly curious if it will increase the possibility of hauling garbage via rail.
Garbage? From where, to where?
Seattle and Spokane garbage will continue to go to Roosevelt by rail. I can’t see how a larger Panama Canal would change this operation.
Garbage from King County, which currently goes to the county’s landfill. The landfill is thought to reach capacity in 2016 and then the 1 million tons of garbage/year will have to be exported - likely by rail - to one of several landfills in the northwest.
There has been talk that there is not enough capacity on the BNSF and UP rail lines to handle the county’s garbage. I was wondering with the canal expansion if ships will opt to go through the canal instead of coming to ports on the west coast. If that happens, perhaps there will be rail capacity for garbage leaving King County.
The Panama Canal expansiion has just begun and is expected to take 10 years or more to complete.
Yes, I understand that the canal expansion won’t be completed for about 10 years. King County’s landfill will be reaching capacity about that time too. What I’m trying to discern is if anyone on this board has a sense of whether or not alot of the cargo coming into Port of Seattle will be sent instead through the canal at that time and if that could free up rail capacity for more garbage trains from this area. Seattle’s garbage is currently exported via rail to Waste Managment’s landfill in eastern Oregon, but the garbage from unincorporated King County and 37 of the other cities in the county will need to be exported at that time.
The Panama Canal expansion, to be completed in 10 years - maybe (Panama is not a place noted for bringing projects in on time and under budget) - is designed to handle 2005-size Post-Panamax ships. If anyone is willing to wager that no shipping line anywhere won’t order a ship too big to fit the “expanded” canal, take it up with my bookie!
I rather expect that US-bound containers will still be off-loaded at West Coast ports, probably in greater volume than at present. Anyone who expects reduced intermodal requirements to make track capacity available for hauling garbage is probably hallucinating.
The only thing I see reducing intermodal traffic is a drastic reduction in traffic with China. Even though they have been making valiant attempts to shoot themselves in the toenails, such a reduction is unlikely to say the least.
Chuck
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Good grief, Chuck, with projects like “Star Wars” and Boston’s “Big Dig,” who are we Americans to carp about someone else’s country being “not a place noted for bringing projects in on time and under budget[.]” To the extent that no U.S. taxpayer money is involved in the widening (I believe there is none, correct me if I’m wrong), why don’t we just let the investors worry about Panama’s putative reputation? It may or may not help correct the myth of Latin laziness to note that the Canal-Zone citizens who trained their Panamanian replacements prior to handing the ditch over close to 25 years ago were gracious enough to say that their replacements learned quickly and were efficient. Certainly the canal works well today because its operation is top-notch, its major limitation simply that it isn’t wide enough for the past several generations of supertankers (and even upon expansion won’t fit the very biggest ones of today). Maybe we should be focusing more on the growing complacency, corruption, nepotism and “manana” thinking in this country with its fatalists and NIMBY-ists than casting aspersions at a small republic that has had the good sense to capitalize on its inheritance. - a. s.
Here’s my [2c]…
I think the panama canal expansion will affect traffic in the southland much more than the northwest…Specifically, LA and Long Beach, handleing traffic headed to the southwest and the south or south east…
Where do the trains with containers go? From Seattle, they head to chicago…and then sometimes to points east…probably not too often to points south or southeast from there. That should not change…
From LA, they hit the Transcon, and some go to CHicago…but some split (in Belen?) and head to the DFW or Houston area.
WOrking from my gross (and unsubstaniated) assumption that large ship miles per container are cheaper than train miles per container, once a Post-Panamax ship can make it from China to Houston, most of the containers will go that way…and you might even see a large container port open on the west coast of Florida, to accept containers which terminate in the south…(Atlanta? Miami? Charleston?)
How many containers enter Portland or Seattle now bound for Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, or Charleston? (or, a better question, exactly where could I find that information???)
I have seen those garbage trains along the Columbia river, and wondered where they originated…seems like they could find a much more effecient way to transport than by “Garbage Intermodal”…putting the dumpster bodies on flats. But that probably has as much to do with handling at the dump site…wouldnt take long before Rotary Dump gons would put more garbage than can be effeciently handled into the one dump site. The conveyor lines that so effeciently handle coal (a largly homogenous load) probably wouldnt be near as effective on the varying consistancy and moisture content of the average load of garbage…
I have heard about an outfit that moves garbage to a reclaimation/recycling and power plant somewhere in VIrginia…I bet they dont use the dumpsters on flat car metho