PORT OF VANCOUVER GAINS SHARE FROM U.S. PORTS

PORT OF VANCOUVER GAINS SHARE FROM U.S. PORTS    In recent years, the Canadian port of Vancouver has made “serious gains in attracting business from U.S. ports,” a senior port executive at the Vancouver Port Authority said.
   “Containers landed in Seattle, bound for Canada, used to be around 35 percent of the total,” said Gordon Houston, president and chief executive officer of the Vancouver Port Authority. “Now it’s around 6 percent as these containers come direct to Vancouver,” he added.
   In the past two years, the port of Vancouver has climbed to the number one spot in the Pacific Northwest for the number of full foreign containers. This is ahead of Seattle, Tacoma and Portland, the port executive said.
   “We now rank number three on the West Coast for full foreign containers, behind L.A. and Long Beach, California,” he added.
   The number of foreign containers handled by the port of Vancouver increased from about 617,000 TEUs in 1996 to 1.16 million TEUs in 2001.
   Houston said that the port of Vancouver has solved the problem of truck congestion.
   “Almost three years ago there was a trucking dispute at the port, which centered on long line-ups at container terminals,” he said. “At peak times, the line-ups lasted three hours, creating a frustrating and unacceptable situation to drivers, terminals and our customers.”
   But the port has worked with terminal operators and other stakeholders to implement a web-based appointment system, he said.
   “Today, the system is fully utilized with waiting times ranging from zero to 20 minutes on average,” Houston report. “Customers of ports in the U.S. are now demanding similar systems to reduce their delays.”
   The port executive made statements about the progress of the Canadian Pacific Northwest port in Vancouver, while U.S. shippers and shipping lines are known to be weighing their options about re-routing transpacific cargoes in the run-up to an expected labor dispute between the port employers and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union this summer.
   The port executive said that the port of Vancouver will now work on “proximity cards” for cargo information, gate clearances, and port access. “In four years we expect to have eliminated much of the paper flow that surrounds these movements,” he said.