Last week the National Retail Federation released its June Port Tracker survey results and reported that major container ports in the US are operating smoothly and that serious congestion is seen as unlikely in the coming months. Paul Bingham of Global Insight, the co-author of the survey, was quoted as saying that, “The ramp-up into peak season is now underway, with monthly container volumes building through October … There is no congestion at the ports now, and the truck and rail systems are operating fluidly … The bottom line is that we expect the industry to get through the 2006 peak season without serious congestion”.

PierPASS Inc., of course, would have us understand that much, if not most, of the credit for this traffic relief is due to the initiative now in effect at the LA/Long Beach complex. Since the start of the program, the two ports have established five new shifts making it possible to move some 30 to 35 percent of container cargo at the ports to offpeak hours.

“The Offpeak program demonstrates the willingness and ability of the goods movement industry to make important changes in business processes to benefit poor communities and address operational issues … Offpeak is giving stakeholders a window of opportunity to develop a regional goods movement strategy, including long-term infrastructure solutions”, says Bruce Wargo, the PierPASS president.

[How’s that for spinnage?]

Also last week, we saw a few articles more to the point;

– Business News Americas reported that Northern Mexico’s Guaymas port is looking to capture some of the cargo traffic that normally would flow through ports north of the border.

– The Port of Seattle container volumes jumped by 40 percent over the past two years.

– The Port of Tacoma expects container volumes to exceed even those of neighboring Seattle, thus enabling it to become the Northwest’s largest container port.

– North of the Canadian border, Vanterm and Deltaport, the two busiest of the three Vancouver container terminals, have already reached or exceeded capacity, thanks to diversions caused by untreated congestion in port communities south of the border.

The sad truth of the matter is that port and state officials in California won’t admit that the astonishing flow of container terminal activity seen in Mexican and Canadian ports is due to the inability of the LA/Long Beach complex to handle Asian production. It isn’t PierPASS that has provided a semblance of congestion relief to Californian port communities, it’s the unnecessary diversion of container traffic to other ports. But employment opportunities throughout the state have also been diverted. Too bad self-satisfaction couldn’t be diverted.