NORTH AMERICA

LA/LONG BEACH

21 years ago

Long Beach and Los Angeles are working together to reduce congestion. The two giants have finally settled a squabble that threatened to undermine an innovative plan to speed up cargo moving through the two gateways. The free time allowed for containers has been reduced from five to four days. The arrival of the new generation 8,000TEUclass ships on the US West Coast alerted terminal operators to the fact that because of the way the tariff was calculated, some cargo owners were benefiting from much more free time.

With mega-ships needing longer time in port, the first boxes discharged were enjoying more free time than the last. This anomaly has now been corrected.

Meanwhile, terminal operators and lines employing dockworkers on the US West Coast are facing hard choices with regards congestion easing.

Some are considering a complete shake-up in the way longshoremen are allocated jobs. Instead of a different gang turning up every day, each facility would have a dedicated workforce. The idea is radical, but with West Coast ports living on borrowed time where congestion is concerned, bracing themselves for a resurgence by the decade’s end, consideration has to be given to long-term solutions as well as short-term fixes, say observers.