With the record backup off the shore of southern California taking up all the port-related news for the past few months, let’s look at a bright spot. The Port of Virginia had its “most productive year” ever last year, successfully handling a 25.2 percent increase in cargo volume over the year before.
The Port of Virginia is not just one port. It includes all the major ports in Hampton Roads, one of the world’s largest natural harbors. The ports at Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Newport News are all run by the Virginia Port Authority, which is a state-level agency.
That organizational model is different than most other ports, and the port authority CEO and executive director, Stephen Edwards, credits it with delivering better results. From a November 27 Norfolk Virginian-Pilot story:
In the Los Angeles area, the two ports are run by two distinct organizations. The Hampton Roads terminals are run by one entity — the Virginia Port Authority. That means, if one terminal has a congestion issue, he said the port authority can easily divert cargo to another terminal.
“There are major differences in how we operate, which come to our advantage,” Edwards said.
Beyond the two ports, the Los Angeles area has three trucking providers unrelated to the terminals. In Virginia, the port authority has sole control over the trucking fleet and how to resupply it during shortages, Edwards said.
The next paragraph contains a word that’s often absent from American port conversations: “automated.”
Modernization efforts also have paid off, he said. For example, the port spent $320 million to expand the Virginia International Gateway terminal by 800 feet in 2019. The terminal’s automated stacking cranes means the port spends less time running extra shifts and burning out employees when ships are late. With only one in five ships arriving on schedule this year, it makes a big difference, Edwards said.
The Port of Virginia shelled out $217 million for 86 automated cranes back in 2016. Those are the kind of investments that made last year’s record productivity possible. As Rich Lowry pointed out for Politico in October, “The highly automated Port of Virginia has been weathering the current crisis better than its counterparts.”
The port is building for the future as well. A project to expand its rail capacity was approved in November and is scheduled to be completed in 2023. It will increase the port’s total on-dock rail capacity by 260,000 containers per year, to a total of 1.1 million.
It has also overcome the obstacles presented by the Jones Act and the Foreign Dredge Act and is deepening its commercial ship channel to 55 feet. That will allow two-way traffic of the largest container vessels operated today. Edwards said, “Our progress on dredging has us tracking to make Virginia home to the deepest port on the US East Coast by late 2024.”
More automation, better technology, expanding capacity — it’s already working in Virginia, and every port authority in the country should be taking notes.