A few short weeks ago, just before Memorial Day, I announced in this blog post, that the port of Savannah had made an agreement with The St. Louis Regional Freightway and the Port of Savannah are forging a partnership to create a new connection between the St. Louis, Mo., region and what aims to be “the largest single-terminal container facility in the western hemisphere.” At the end of the blog, I asked, "Now let's see which Marketing Hub Savannah targets next...?" Today, we know that answer; Chicagoland.
First it was St. Louis, Now it’s Chicago. The Port of Savannah is out to conquer North American shipping. Here’s the latest News Brief from Trains Magazine.
So now, I must ask a question: Will all (Rail)roads eventually lead to (the Port of) Savannah?
First it was St. Louis, Now it’s Chicago. The Port of Savannah is out to conquer North American shipping. Here’s the latest News Brief from Trains Magazine.
So now, I must ask a question: Will all (Rail)roads eventually lead to (the Port of) Savannah?
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Cargo imported through Savannah will now get 3-day rail service to Chicago,officials say
September 16, 2019
A view of the ship-to-rail operations at Savannah, Ga.
Georgia Ports Authority, Stephen B. Morton
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Rail is a key component in expansion of the Port of
Savannah, with new fast service to Chicago and development of new
infrastructure.
Griff Lynch, executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority, introduced
three-day CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern service between the port
and Chicago while addressing an audience of 1,400 at Thursday’s Savannah
State of the Port meeting
Calling the service a “game changer” in the port’s growth, Lynch says,
“We’re now moving containers from ship to departing rail in only 24 hours —
two-and-a-half times faster than our previous schedule — which makes
Savannah competitive on time and lower on cost compared to traditional
cargo routings.”
As a result of increasing rail demand, the Port of Savannah is in the midst
of a $220-million expansion of its rail facilities, says Will McKnight, the
ports authority's board chairman.
Phase I of the ports authority’s Mason Mega Rail terminal is slated for
completion in the spring of 2020, with Phase II done the following fall.
The expansion will double the port’s rail lift capacity to 1 million
containers per year, officials say.
“The Mason Mega Rail Terminal will be the largest on-dock rail facility at
any port in North America,” McKnight says. “It will allow the Authority to
shift more of its cargo mix from truck to rail, so that we can grow our
overall volumes without congestion at our truck gates.”
Savannah has gambled on massive infrastructure projects targeted at
securing larger container ships now able to pass through the Panama Canal
following the canal’s expansion three years ago.
The effort to date apparently has been successful as the Georgia Ports
Authority reports record volumes in containers, total tonnage, and freight
moved by rail.
Twenty-foot equivalent container traffic was up 7% at the end of the fiscal
year in June to 4.5 million.
“The market has clearly chosen the Port of Savannah as the Southeastern hub
for containerized trade,” says Lynch. “To fulfill the growing
responsibility placed on our deepwater terminals, we have developed a plan
to double our capacity.”
Current capacity is 5.5 million TEUs; plans call for a capacity of 11
million.
Besides rail, port officials say other expansion projects include more
cranes, revamped dock space to accommodate more large ships, and a new
terminal at Hutchinson Island.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the final stages of deepening the
Savannah harbor, officials say.
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Full disclosure: My parents met, married and had my 1st little sister and me in Savannah. Mama attended and graduated from Savannah Business College, and worked fro the I. C. Helmy Furniture Company in Savannah. Daddy, 8 years her senior worked a Chemist at the Southern Cotton Seed Oil Company, which would become Wesson Oil and then Hunt-Wesson Foods. We left when I was 4 years old for a different job opportunity for my Dad in another city. I have a fondness for the city, which I'm sure has dramatically changed in the 54 years since I lived there. It's history, with Azalea flower filled squares ,the Cotton Exchange and River Street make it a place worth visiting. However this is not the reason for today's blog post.
A few short weeks ago, just before Memorial Day, I announced in this blog post, that the port of Savannah had made an agreement with The St. Louis Regional Freightway and the Port of Savannah are forging a partnership to create a new connection between the St. Louis, Mo., region and what aims to be “the largest single-terminal container facility in the western hemisphere.” At the end of the blog, I asked, "Now let's see which Marketing Hub Savannah targets next...?" Today, we know that answer: It's Chicagoland.
Chicago is a HUGE Marketing Center and point where the railroads exchange traffic from West to East and vice-versa. However, it's such a spaghetti bowl of rail lines, crossing each other "at grade" that the US Department of Transportation, the state of Illinois, the railroads and the local municipalities decided to spend BIG MONEY (approximately $4.6 Billion of which $1.6 has already been spent) on multiple projects to try and unravel the knotted ball of yarn that has becomes Chicago's railroads. The project is called CREATE and it's designed to "unclog Chicago" by building Railroad fly-overs (where one railroad crosses another with an overhead bridge) and with railroad overpasses and under passes vehicle crossings, eliminating crossing the railroads "at grade" that stop vehicle and other train traffic.
To see how large Chicagoland is from a marketing perspective, one only has to go as far as slide #8 in the CREATE program overview linked above. The total TEU Lifts in Chicago were 15.4 Million units in 2014 exceeding the sum of both the twin ports of LA and Long Beach. But, per slide in Also note Although the report is dated August 2019, the data on slide #8 is dated 2014, before the Panama-Max Lane of the Panama Canal opened. The port of Savannah was listed as having 3.35 Million TEU Lifts, but it actually had 4.5 million lifts in the fiscal year having just ended in June, 2019 has increased increased its TEU lifts by 1.15 Million. And the port of Savannah, has just entered a partnership with St. Louis Regional Freightway for 1 month. I wonder what next year will bring for the Port of Savannah, especially with 1 full year of the St. Louis Freightway Partnership and with 10 months of 3-day service from the port to Chicagoland in the books.
Slide #6 states that 26% of Intermodal freight lifts from the twin ports of LA/Long Beach touch Chicago and Chicago has 15.4 Million TEU Lifts. But how many of the intermodal units would move from the twin ports of LA/Long Beach to Savannah, a port that is closer, has fewer and lower geographic obstacles to overcome and requires a shorter time to travel from the port to the distribution hub? These intermodal trains from LA/Long Beach, San Francisco and Oakland are most likely to be affected by the new Pana-Max lane of the Panama Canal.
Only time will tell just how successful the Port of Savannah is by shipping Container Ships directly from Southeast Asia to the closest large eastern US Port. While some intermodal rail traffic will continue to be exchanged in Chicagoland, a percentage of it will be diminished by the Port of Savannah. We need only to look to seeing track capacity from Savannah being expanded on the Norfolk Southern, CSX or even the Genessee & Wyoming's Georgia Central by the addition of sidings, double tracking or adding Centralized Traffic Control to lines out of Savannah to see if Savannah is making the impact they hope to be making.
****************************************************************************************************
Full disclosure: My parents met, married and had my 1st little sister and me in Savannah. Mama attended and graduated from Savannah Business College, and worked fro the I. C. Helmy Furniture Company in Savannah. Daddy, 8 years her senior worked a Chemist at the Southern Cotton Seed Oil Company, which would become Wesson Oil and then Hunt-Wesson Foods. We left when I was 4 years old for a different job opportunity for my Dad in another city. I have a fondness for the city, which I'm sure has dramatically changed in the 54 years since I lived there. It's history, with Azalea flower filled squares ,the Cotton Exchange and River Street make it a place worth visiting. However this is not the reason for today's blog post.
A few short weeks ago, just before Memorial Day, I announced in this blog post, that the port of Savannah had made an agreement with The St. Louis Regional Freightway and the Port of Savannah are forging a partnership to create a new connection between the St. Louis, Mo., region and what aims to be “the largest single-terminal container facility in the western hemisphere.” At the end of the blog, I asked, "Now let's see which Marketing Hub Savannah targets next...?" Today, we know that answer: It's Chicagoland.
Chicago is a HUGE Marketing Center and point where the railroads exchange traffic from West to East and vice-versa. However, it's such a spaghetti bowl of rail lines, crossing each other "at grade" that the US Department of Transportation, the state of Illinois, the railroads and the local municipalities decided to spend BIG MONEY (approximately $4.6 Billion of which $1.6 has already been spent) on multiple projects to try and unravel the knotted ball of yarn that has becomes Chicago's railroads. The project is called CREATE and it's designed to "unclog Chicago" by building Railroad fly-overs (where one railroad crosses another with an overhead bridge) and with railroad overpasses and under passes vehicle crossings, eliminating crossing the railroads "at grade" that stop vehicle and other train traffic.
To see how large Chicagoland is from a marketing perspective, one only has to go as far as slide #8 in the CREATE program overview linked above. The total TEU Lifts in Chicago were 15.4 Million units in 2014 exceeding the sum of both the twin ports of LA and Long Beach. But, per slide in Also note Although the report is dated August 2019, the data on slide #8 is dated 2014, before the Panama-Max Lane of the Panama Canal opened. The port of Savannah was listed as having 3.35 Million TEU Lifts, but it actually had 4.5 million lifts in the fiscal year having just ended in June, 2019 has increased increased its TEU lifts by 1.15 Million. And the port of Savannah, has just entered a partnership with St. Louis Regional Freightway for 1 month. I wonder what next year will bring for the Port of Savannah, especially with 1 full year of the St. Louis Freightway Partnership and with 10 months of 3-day service from the port to Chicagoland in the books.
Slide #6 states that 26% of Intermodal freight lifts from the twin ports of LA/Long Beach touch Chicago and Chicago has 15.4 Million TEU Lifts. But how many of the intermodal units would move from the twin ports of LA/Long Beach to Savannah, a port that is closer, has fewer and lower geographic obstacles to overcome and requires a shorter time to travel from the port to the distribution hub? These intermodal trains from LA/Long Beach, San Francisco and Oakland are most likely to be affected by the new Pana-Max lane of the Panama Canal.
Only time will tell just how successful the Port of Savannah is by shipping Container Ships directly from Southeast Asia to the closest large eastern US Port. While some intermodal rail traffic will continue to be exchanged in Chicagoland, a percentage of it will be diminished by the Port of Savannah. We need only to look to seeing track capacity from Savannah being expanded on the Norfolk Southern, CSX or even the Genessee & Wyoming's Georgia Central by the addition of sidings, double tracking or adding Centralized Traffic Control to lines out of Savannah to see if Savannah is making the impact they hope to be making.
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