From The Journal of Commerce – Oct. 18, 2011:

“NY-NJ Port Called ‘Most Expensive'” [So what else is new?]

“High costs and sub-par productivity threaten continued growth at the Port of New York and New Jersey, industry leaders warned at the annual Port Industry Day symposium.

“‘Perhaps it’s something no one wants to hear, but if you were to compare the cost of doing business in New York – which carriers do all the time – to other U.S. East Coast ports, we are the most expensive,’ said Joseph Curto, president of the New York Shipping Association.

“Claudio Bozzo president of Mediterranean Shipping Co. (USA), and Rick Larrabee, the port authority’s director of port commerce, sounded a similar theme.

“Larrabee cited planned expansions at port terminals including Port Newark Container Terminal, where he said MSC has committed to increasing its cargo volume from the current 414,000 20-foot equivalent container units a year to 1.1 million TEUs by 2030 …

“Larrabee noted that the port authority has invested $ 2.1 billion in capital investments and terminal operators have invested $ 1 billion over the last decade, but said these investments won’t pay off without improved productivity.

“‘We need to find ways to maximize the real estate we operate on, and one way to do that is to improve productivity,’ Curto said. ‘Whether that be on the ships or the truck gates, improved productivity will allow more business to flow through the existing facilities.’…

What are they talking about anyway? Business is rapidly diminishing, but because MSC seems to think that unemployed and impoverished New Yorkers will be demanding about three times as many TEUs as they are now, there are “planned expansions at port terminals”?

And they’re calling these imagined 1.1 million TEUs “improved productivity”?

The only way “to maximize the real estate” the port utilizes would be to sell off about 80 percent of it to real estate developers. That’s what we suggested more than six years ago, and it’s the only way “improved productivity” could be realized. Our patented container storage, retrieval and delivery system could operate efficiently and profitably on much, much less of the valuable waterfront acreage now being wasted on the “most expensive container handling operations on the East Coast”.

And the “continued growth” they like to promise is nothing more than an effort to extract more funding from the cash-strapped states of New York and New Jersey. Taxpayer dollars are the real source of the port officials’ six-figure salaries – not “growth” and “productivity”.