But, with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), otherwise known as the “Stimulus Bill,” the US port industry does have a unique opportunity to put its best media foot forward. Media matters sometimes require delicacy, but this is not a time to be shy. Instead of being drowned out by high speed rail – which has Capitol Hill lobbyists scurrying all over Washington DC’s K Street, ports should turn up the volume in their media outreach.<\/p>\n
Ports create jobs and economic growth; every touch point with the media should emphasise these twin attributes. But, environmental sustainability is the next wave already washing over the entire maritime industry; watch the wind power generated at the EU and the IMO if you have any doubts. US vice president Joe Biden says: “We have reached that inflection point where jobs, economic growth and the environment are the same shade of green.”<\/p>\n
For various transit projects, the not-so-fine print in ARRA reveals that energy savings are an important criterion for getting funding. The rail mode (even freight) will clearly benefit as infrastructure spending is allocated. A cardinal rule of project selection, “follow the money”, suggests that planners work hard to conjure up new interfaces between ports and railways, all over the country.<\/p>\n
Another example of proactivity by ports, perhaps more speculative, notes that offshore wind power is likely to gain a foothold, certainly along the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states. As an example of green shades blurring together, the first ports that gird for the nascent offshore construction boom will certainly reap business benefits, and also bragging rights in the media.<\/p>\n
Think of a specialist facility, with staging and assembly areas adjacent to rail spurs, supporting wind turbines instead of offshore oil platforms. And benefits over time will go far beyond bragging rights; a recent study conducted by Pacific Northwest ports suggested that seamless rail port interfaces for the container trades will lead to lower carbon footprints. In a future world of “cap and trade” schemes, the money may well follow such teus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It usually takes an oil spill, collision or, lately, a pirateattack, for maritime stories to make the front pages of newspaper, orthe top of the hour on prime time TV news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-7042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-new-yorker"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7042"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=7042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}