BTS Report Analyzes U.S. Container Traffic
The Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics issued its first stand-alone container report in March 2007 entitled, "America's Container Ports: Delivering the Goods." The report analyzes U.S. container ports and their role in global container traffic.
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Highlights of the report's findings include (partial list):
U.S. ranks second in world container traffic. Although the U.S. remained the leading trading nation in 2005, it ranked second behind China in container traffic, a position it has held since 1998. The report states that today, one maritime container out of every nine is bound for or comes from the U.S., accounting for 11% of worldwide container traffic.
U.S. container traffic is becoming more concentrated. U.S. container traffic tends to be highly concentrated and is becoming even more so as the use of larger, faster, and more specialized vessels arrive at the ports capable of handling them. The top 10 container ports accounted for 85% of U.S. container traffic in 2005, up from 78% in 1995 (measured in TEUs1).
BTS notes that this concentration is due to the limited number of ports that have made the required investments to handle advanced information technology, perform additional dredging, and make accommodations for larger cranes, berths, and storage yards.
Southern and Western U.S. ports are showing the most growth. Five of the top 10 U.S. container ports are on the west coast, four on the east coast, and 1 on the gulf coast. Over half, nearly 55%, of U.S. containerized merchandise trade in terms of TEUs passed through west coast ports in 2005, up from 42% in 1980. BTS states that this change reflects increased trade with Asia.
The southern ports of Savannah and Houston were among the top three ports with the highest average annual growth rates, reflecting increased container trade with Latin America as well as changes in shippers' decisions on how to move their cargo in order to limit the impact of port terminal or waterway closures for weather-related or other reasons.
Container entries to U.S. are up 37% in just 5 years. Overall, there were nearly 26 million container entries into the U.S. by all modes of transportation in 2005, a 37% increase since 2000.
More containers enter U.S. by land than by sea. Over 15 million containers entered the U.S. by truck and rail in 2005, as compared to the nearly 11 million ocean borne containers. BTS states that the large number of land border container crossings reflects the continued importance of overall U.S. trade with its top two trading partners, Canada and Mexico.
Top five U.S. container cargo partners are from Asia. According to the report, the top five overall U.S. containerized cargo trading partners in 2005 were China, Japan, Hong Kong (categorized as a special administrative region of China), Taiwan, and South Korea. China alone accounted for 43% of U.S. maritime import TEUs, up from 25% just five years ago.
1The standard measure for counting containers is twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). This measure is used to count containers of various lengths. A standard 40-foot container equals 2 TEUs, while a 48-foot container equals 2.4 TEUs.
BTS press release (no. BTS 18-07, dated 04/23/07) available at http://www.dot.gov/affairs/bts1807.htm
BTS report on U.S. container ports (dated March 2007) available at http://www.bts.gov/publications/americas_container_ports/