BY MARK B. SOLOMON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR–NEWS
MARITIME/PORTS
Transportation Report
IN SEPTEMBER 2016, THE GEORGIA PORTS AUTHORity (GPA), the operator of the containerport of Savannah
and the break-bulk and roll-on/roll-off port of Brunswick,
announced it would construct an arc-like rail network
stretching across the country’s midsection. By building
97,000 feet of track linking the two rail yards at its Garden
City container terminal, GPA would offer the two railroads
that serve Savannah—Norfolk Southern Corp. (NS) and
CSX Corp.—sufficient scale to build 10,000-foot unit trains
to routinely run from Savannah’s docks to markets as far
west as St. Louis.
Nearly a year later to the day, the largest containership
ever to call on the East Coast, the 14,000-TEU (20-foot
equivalent unit) CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt, docked at
Savannah after sailing through the widened and deepened
locks of the Panama Canal, which accommodates vessels
nearly three times the TEU capacity of the canal’s original
design.
The two events are interconnected. The $128 million
“Mid-American Arc” project, expected to be fully operational by 2020 with the first phase set for completion in 2019,
goes, East Coast ports can expect to see steady increases in
