NY-NJ expects container growth up 4 percent in 2011
This year’s container volume through the Port of New York and New Jersey is expected to be about 4 percent over last year’s 5.3 million twenty-foot-equivalent units, the port authority’s top seaport official said, Journal of Commerce reports. “We’ve had a good year,” Rick Larrabee, the port authority’s director of port commerce, told an industry gathering.
Larrabee said container lifts at the port’s ExpressRail on-dock rail terminals is expected to be about 12.5 percent over last year, when ExpressRail handled 376,770 lifts. He said the port’s container terminals started the year with double-digit gains that slowed in later months, but the port’s share of the East Coast and national markets rose or held steady.
Loaded container traffic at the port was up 6.1 percent in the first nine months of 2011, including 4.8 percent growth in imports. Rail lifts were up 13.2 percent over the first nine months of 2010. Last year’s container volume at the port was up 16 percent from the recession year of 2009 and was just under the record 5.3 million TEUs of loaded and empty containers the port handled in 2007.
Automobile volume is expected to be down 20 to 23 percent, largely because of disruptions following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in March. He said the port authority is targeting a 2016 completion date for raising the Bayonne Bridge’s 151-foot vertical clearance to 215 feet to handle larger ships bound for terminals in Newark and Elizabeth, N.J., and Staten Island, N.Y.
Larrabee said container lifts at the port’s ExpressRail on-dock rail terminals is expected to be about 12.5 percent over last year, when ExpressRail handled 376,770 lifts. He said the port’s container terminals started the year with double-digit gains that slowed in later months, but the port’s share of the East Coast and national markets rose or held steady.
Loaded container traffic at the port was up 6.1 percent in the first nine months of 2011, including 4.8 percent growth in imports. Rail lifts were up 13.2 percent over the first nine months of 2010. Last year’s container volume at the port was up 16 percent from the recession year of 2009 and was just under the record 5.3 million TEUs of loaded and empty containers the port handled in 2007.
Automobile volume is expected to be down 20 to 23 percent, largely because of disruptions following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in March. He said the port authority is targeting a 2016 completion date for raising the Bayonne Bridge’s 151-foot vertical clearance to 215 feet to handle larger ships bound for terminals in Newark and Elizabeth, N.J., and Staten Island, N.Y.