LGT3003 - 11 The agile port BILL MONGELLUZZO. Journal of Commerce. New York: Dec 11, 2006. pg. 1 Abstract (Document Summary) A benefit of the agile port model is that it provides a terminal operator with the flexibility to move back and forth between an agile port and a traditional port operation. When a terminal operator has a close working relationship with a shipping line and railroad, the carriers provide destination information on each container so the terminal operator can build full trains that the railroad simply hooks and hauls from the terminal. Full Text (1357 words) (Copyright 2006 Commonwealth Business Media. All rights reserved.) Mike Lingerfelt, president of Washington United Terminals in Tacoma, envisions the day when ocean carriers will send strings of vessels from Asia to the U.S. carrying only intermodal cargo destined for inland rail hubs such as Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas. The ships would carry little if any local cargo, allowing terminal operators to move the containers directly to intermodal trains as they are unloaded from the vessel. "Once the industry can get there, it will increase the velocity of the cargo flow through the terminal significantly," Lingerfelt said. Washington United Terminals, Hyundai Merchant Marine, the Port of Tacoma, BNSF Railway and the engineering and consulting firm TranSystems cooperated in a 2003 demonstration project of the concept known as the agile port. Vessels were block-stowed - that is, containers destined for the same area are stored on the ship in accessible racks in Asia so that when the containers were unloaded in reverse order in Tacoma, the boxes could be transferred immediately to unit trains bound for eastern cities. TranSystems was commissioned by the Center for the Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies at California State University-Long Beach to coordinate the agile port demonstration project and further test the concept for the movement of military cargo through the same marine terminal. Blair Garcia, senior associate vice president of TranSystems in Norfolk, Va., reported to a conference presented by the center in Long Beach last month that the results indicate the agile port concept indeed has dual-use applications for commercial and military cargoes. Garcia views the agile port as the third step in the evolution of intermodal transportation dating back to the early days of containerization in the 1960s. Containerization revolutionized the former breakbulk ocean trades from Asia and Europe to the United

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States. Intermodal transportation took off in the 1980s with the double-stack train that allowed railroads to move 40 percent more cargo cross-country by stacking containers two-high in well cars. The missing link that will permit the two modes of transportation to coordinate the intermodal handoff is the sharing of vessel and train manifest data so that vessels can be stowed in the foreign port according to how they will move by rail to the inland destination in the U.S. In the traditional marine terminal model, intermodal containers that are removed from a vessel are taken to a place of rest where they may sit for up to a day. In the pure agile port model, the containers never touch cement, Garcia said. Containers move from the vessel to yard tractors and immediately to the on-dock train. Coordinating the activities of a vessel operator, marine terminal and railroad is a complex endeavor that requires sharing of data, detailed stowage of containers in Asia, a sophisticated marine terminal operation in the U.S. and communication with the railroad to ensure that trains are ready to receive the intermodal containers. The same level of coordination is required for the return move for the export of loaded or empty containers from the U.S. interior to Asia. In its purest form, the agile port concept also requires a vessel that is carrying mostly intermodal cargo. Tacoma was favored for the demonstration project because vessels regularly arrive from Asia with 70 percent or more of the cargo destined to move by rail to the eastern half of the country. Ships arriving at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, by contrast, have a 50-50 split of local and intermodal cargo because of the large consuming population in Southern California. The commercial application of the agile port project in Tacoma produced significant improvements in marine terminal operations, Garcia said. TranSystems estimates that under the right conditions, the terminal operator could realize up to a 300 percent increase in throughput capacity and an operating cost savings of up to 40 percent compared to a conventional terminal operation. Lingerfelt said an agile port is more efficient because it minimizes the rehandling of cargo, accelerates the movement of containers and reduces operational costs compared to the conventional method of shuffling containers to a stack and rehandling them several times before they are finally loaded aboard a train. The ability to reduce container dwell time is a powerful tool for port authorities that wish to increase the throughput capacity of their marine terminals, Garcia said. Container volumes at U.S. ports continue to increase and are projected at least to double over the next 10 years. However, waterfront land is limited, and many container terminals cannot be physically expanded. The agile port concept allows ports to greatly increase throughput capacity of marine terminals on their existing footprint, Garcia said.

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The agile port model also results in more efficient use of cranes and yard equipment, said Jeannie Beckett, senior director of inland transportation at Tacoma. When container movements from the vessel through the yard to the on-dock rail facility and the subsequent reverse moves from the train to the vessel for export containers are coordinated, equipment operators are able to double-cycle, Beckett said. Every container that the crane operator removes from a vessel is replaced with an empty or loaded container from the train. The same double-cycling occurs with the yard tractor moving containers to and from the train. In conventional terminal operations, crane operators do very little double-cycling, and yard equipment operators do even less, she said. As a terminal operator, Lingerfelt looks for the day when ocean carriers recognize that there is so much value in the agile port concept that they will choose to send ships from Asia to the U.S. carrying nothing but intermodal containers. The cost savings and efficiency improvements would be significant, he said. In reality, most trans-Pacific or trans-Atlantic services involve multiple port calls, which make block stowage of vessels more difficult, and involve a large component of local cargo, ranging from 50 percent in Los Angeles-Long Beach to 80 percent or more local cargo at East Coast ports. TranSystems believes that even the less-than-ideal cargo mixes can still be handled at a cost savings if the agile port model is modified to include a rail buffer yard close to the port or an inland port located farther from the harbor. These off-dock rail facilities act as staging yards where single-destination trains can be built or broken down without taking up valuable space at the marine terminal. The downside of this model is that it involves an extra handling of the containers. However, if the containers were placed into stacks at the marine terminal, as occurs in the conventional terminal operation, more handling would occur as the boxes are shuffled around before being moved to the destination. Garcia said the modified agile port model would give port authorities an option to determine whether it is more cost- efficient to expand a marine terminal, if possible, or to establish an intermodal corridor with a buffer yard or inland point. In fact, the whole purpose of the Center for the Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies' commercial and military demonstration projects is to develop a generic model that allows ports, terminal operators, carriers and the military to quantify the costs and savings involved in establishing an agile port tailored to their particular operations. TranSystems is working on such a model, Garcia said. A benefit of the agile port model is that it provides a terminal operator with the flexibility to move back and forth between an agile port and a traditional port operation, Lingerfelt said. When a terminal operator has a close working relationship with a shipping line and

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railroad, the carriers provide destination information on each container so the terminal operator can build full trains that the railroad simply hooks and hauls from the terminal. If the terminal operator does not have the same working relationship with the parties involved in the next vessel call, the terminal can revert to a traditional operating model, Lingerfelt said. Ocean carriers vary in their use of the agile port concept. APL Ltd., for example, has been planning since 1988 container stowage in Asia predicated upon the intermodal rail move at the U.S. port, the company said. However, some lines have not even attempted to deploy the concept.

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