JaxPort considers scaled-back, cheaper dredging plan

[The_Choose_1]

NS and FEC don't have access to the Dames Point or Blount Island terminals. Dredging is only being considered for those two, not Talleyrand.

JAXPORT is what you said Lake! You didn't say Dames Point or Blount Island in your other post! Anything past the Dames Point Bridge shouldn't be dredged unless it's just general maintenance dreding. It's to bad when they built the DPB they should have thought about the Future of shipping in Jacksonville Florida. But just like one of my favorite quotes "People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. 

[thelakelander]

Forgive me. I figured we were way past that conversation locally, when it came to the issue of port expansion, dredging in hopes of more container traffic, etc. Sometimes I forget that some of us have been discussing this on the forums longer than others.  The port rail access situation was heavily debated back around 2010-2011 or so. Here's an article from 2011 about this from Norfolk Southern's perspective:

Norfolk Southern wants a bigger piece of Jacksonville

Norfolk Southern Corp. wants to grow their business in Jacksonville, but the railroad company is at a geographical disadvantage to CSX Corp., a company executive said.

Steven Evans, assistant vice president of ports and international for Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC), said the company has no plans to actively oppose a rail hub for the port at Dames Point, but Norfolk Southern is blocked out because it has no rail lines to Dames Point or to Blount Island.

"This puts us at a pretty big disadvantage," he said.

Full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2011/11/10/norfolk-southern-wants-to-grow-in.html

Since CSX is the local company, I can see how politics could play a role on some levels. However, when thinking about competition with other regions for more TEUs, ports that offer customers more options for moving freight are better off than those that don't.

[The_Choose_1]

Forgive me. I figured we were way past that conversation locally, when it came to the issue of port expansion, dredging in hopes of more container traffic, etc. Sometimes I forget that some of us have been discussing this on the forums longer than others.  The port rail access situation was heavily debated back around 2010-2011 or so. Here's an article from 2011 about this from Norfolk Southern's perspective:

Norfolk Southern wants a bigger piece of Jacksonville

Norfolk Southern Corp. wants to grow their business in Jacksonville, but the railroad company is at a geographical disadvantage to CSX Corp., a company executive said.

Steven Evans, assistant vice president of ports and international for Norfolk Southern (NYSE: NSC), said the company has no plans to actively oppose a rail hub for the port at Dames Point, but Norfolk Southern is blocked out because it has no rail lines to Dames Point or to Blount Island.

"This puts us at a pretty big disadvantage," he said.

Full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2011/11/10/norfolk-southern-wants-to-grow-in.html

Since CSX is the local company, I can see how politics could play a role on some levels. However, when thinking about competition with other regions for more TEUs, ports that offer customers more options for moving freight are better off than those that don't.

CSX one day could be bought out by BNSF, CN, or even Norfolk Southern. This I would put money on.

[Ocklawaha]

^ New York, Norfolk, and either Charleston, Savannah, or Jax.....an argument repeated by our boosters is that Jax is the most western city on the east coast, providing easy access to the midwest....sorry but Savannah and Charleston can serve that better...and honestly, shipments to the Great Lakes region are likely to come from/go to Norfolk or NYC

There are some issues in this.

Port of Charleston & Savannah has a single track supplier of rail (CSX) and all freight out of this dock has to traverse the Atlanta rail hub, where it has to be humped and sorted for its destinations.  It is not a one drop delivery. Jacksonville does not have this limitation,

NS has been improving their Norfolk transit times with their "Gateway" project which has been adding capacity between Virginia ports and their midwest yards in Ohio and Kentucky.

CSX has had an ongoing capex spend to increase capacity on their direct route between Jacksonville & Chicago. The problem is they want to route everything between the two cities via Queeensgate Yard in Cincy, which is overwhelmed. For reasons unknown they have been reluctant to use alternate routing.

This isn't quite accurate, NS has on dock rail facilities in the Port of Savannah, a new container yard just 4 miles away, a ICTF in the port, and they serve Garden City, Ocean and Port Wentworth Terminals.  Their Brampton Yard is located right down at the Port where trains can be made up or broken down according to a customers needs.

The new Jasper Ocean Terminal will be constructed on recovered dredged materials along the Georgia-South Carolina border some ten miles downstream from the Port of Savannah's Garden City Terminal. The terminal will be based on state-of-the-art green technology and will be able to accommodate new generations of cargo vessels (ships to 12.6 thousand TEUs) that need a minimum 48.2-meter (158-foot) width and a depth of 15.2 meters (50 feet). The new Jasper Ocean Terminal will have infrastructure of over 600 hectares, and it will have ten berths with road and rail access.

Absolutely no reason to hump anything in Atlanta, humping loaded COFC and TOFC cars is frowned upon anyway and most are clearly labeled 'DO NOT HUMP', this because the cars tend to lose their loads after going over the hump and into the bowl where violent couplings can and do take place. Consider the cars no standard length also restricts the use of retarders on these cars thus most railroads seeing such a car on the Hump Track would pull it onto the sluff track and flat switch it into the proper train... You'll owe Whirlpool a hell of a lot less money that way. BTW much of the Florida traffic is humped in Waycross on the CSX but intermodal traffic is a different animal.

Jacksonville's yards like Atlanta and Charleston are flat and require a locomotive to drill the cars in and out to the proper tracks. As of today, I'd give Savannah a better score and it currently has the shortest time to Memphis and many other points on the NS system and a hell of a lot better/comprehensive rail access.

ALL MAPS / NS SHOWN IN RED







Charleston also has good rail access with BOTH NS and CSX via neutral terminal companies, something I've been preaching in JAXPORT forever. "General Notes about the Rail Service: The South Carolina Railway Commission provides rail service in the state with CSX and Norfolk Southern as the two major rail carriers. Each terminal in Charleston is operated by an independent rail service which feeds these terminals. These independents transfer railcars from the individual terminals to the two major carriersí offsite locations.

Independents:

PUC - Columbus Street and Union Pier
Port Terminal Railroad - North Charleston
East Coast Berkeley Railroad - Wando area"

NS maintains a mainline into the Charlotte area and over the mountains to the north and west in the new National Gateway Project.


Overall map.

Finally your puzzlement over the CSX routing? This is due to the way trains are made up and dispatched, each train is carefully weighed, tonnage + gradient + curvature determines the number of locomotives  + track condition for adhesion and incident free/claim free shipping plays into the game as well. The former L&N over the Birmingham - Nashville route is a hell of a rough mountain railroad. If they are moving a lot of coal or aggregates through there, they may want to shift TOFC/COFC onto a different line. The science behind that is the railroads match track structure to loads to keep it all as flexible as possible without taking it too far, needless to say there is a huge gulf between a train of loaded coal hoppers and a train of containers carrying washers and dryers.

It's been many years since I rode over that line, but the last time I did, I got off the train and promptly puked!

[Ocklawaha]

CSX one day could be bought out by BNSF, CN, or even Norfolk Southern. This I would put money on.

I expect CSX to jump in bed with 'Uncle Pete' and together they will seek a Canadian suitor. NS, KCS and maybe even our beloved FEC will end up in the Santa Fe camp also seeking a Canadian suitor. Though none of this may take place in exactly this order.

[thelakelander]

TraPac on board as JaxPort explores cheaper, scaled-back dredging option

TraPac, a major JaxPort tenant and key driver behind the push to dredge the St. Johns River, said it is fully behind port officials as they explore a scaled-back option deepening the river that would significantly reduce the cost of the project.
That option — which JaxPort officials confirmed last week to the Times-Union — would also reduce the current 13-mile dredging plan down to 11 miles, stopping it short of the Dames Point bridge and terminal, which houses TraPac.

That means the company, which is the port's major window into the growing Asian trade market and the mega ships it promises, would have to move from its current location east to the Blount Island terminal.

The company, a forceful local advocate for dredging, appears unconcerned by the prospect of moving.

"We have always said that a deeper harbor is a critical component of our competitiveness worldwide, allowing us to fully serve the bigger ships already calling on our JaxPort terminal and enabling us to increase our contributions to the region's economy," reads a statement provided by TraPac general manager Dennis Kelly.

Full article: http://jacksonville.com/news/2015-07-19/story/trapac-board-jaxport-explores-cheaper-scaled-back-dredging-option

[The_Choose_1]

No but when the worlds shipping is too big for our port and we get bypassed, watch them howl!

Check today's Florida Times Union 7/20/2015 "TraPac supports dredging Plan B" and then Eat Crow!

[jaxjags]

I may be wrong here, but if TriPac moves to Blount Island a lot of the FDOT Heckshear Drive/ I 295 exit work will have been wasted. Also, not sure how the new intermodal terminal will work as well. How short sighted is this by everyone involved.

[thelakelander]

They'd have to build another one on Blount Island or drive freight from Blount onto Heckscher to reach the one under construction. When everything is all said and done, you spend less on dredging about a lot more on everything else. Either way, you're coming out of a lot of cash.

"It's definitely doable," said Lake Ray, a state representative and civil engineer.
Ray said there are significant logistics questions that would come with moving a facility like TraPac's, such as relocating other facilities to make room for it. (He said TraPac chose Dames Point in the first place because it had greenfield space, so the terminal could be built from the ground up.)

Moving TraPac would also mean infrastructure improvements to wherever it would be moved to Blount Island — reinforcing the pavement to handle the number of containers TraPac would handle, establishing its operations in a new location, finding storage space for the containers.
Other issues, like what will be done with container cranes TraPac installed at Dames Point, also have potential solutions. For one, Ray said, the cranes can be moved to Blount Island — not an easy task, given their weight, but possible. But there are also plans by the port to invest in new cranes for Blount Island anyway.

There have also been questions about the port's new intermodal container transfer facility, which is being built at Dames Point in part to offer easy access to TraPac. Ray said not only is the ICTF easily accessed through a quick drayage trip over Heckscher Drive, but could also open up the opportunity to build another one at Blount Island someday.

It also leaves an opportunity for others to use the Dames Point property.
"In the long term," Ray said, "it doesn't mean the port loses the functionality of the TraPac property. There are a number of port users that will not and do not need the deeper draft, but could use the ICTF."

Full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/jacksonville/news/2015/07/17/shortened-river-deepening-plan-has-supporters-but.html

[Ajax]

This article was in the WSJ, but behind the paywall. They re-posted it here: http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/ports-policy-barnacled-bad-law?utm_content=buffer263dd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I've been following this subject, but I guess I haven't completely kept up with it.  Is this true - has anyone heard of this? 

But authorities at some ports, including Jacksonville, Fla., and Mobile, Ala., have complained about being unable to get U.S. dredgers to even bid on projects, as these companies are operating at full capacity.

I don't recall hearing it discussed much but it's possible that I overlooked this aspect of the conversation.