Shipping ports spring up inland

It's nowhere near an ocean, but plans are in the works to turn Prichard, an unincorporated crossroads in the mountains of West Virginia, into an international port.

Prichard, about 20 miles southwest of Huntington, is one of several locations nationwide where state and business leaders are building or planning inland ports — terminals away from the coasts where goods can be moved among trucks, trains and even planes.

A facility opened near Dallas in September, and ground has been broken for one near San Antonio. Other ports are planned in California, North Carolina and Virginia.

Driving the push are the 50 million containers projected to go through U.S. seaports each year by 2020, up from 20 million in 2000 and a million in 1970, according to Scott Hercik, transportation adviser to the Appalachian Regional Commission.

The inland port in Prichard, and another in Roanoke, Va. — both still in the developmental stages — are part of the five-year Heartland Corridor project that in 2005 won $143 million in federal funding, according to a report on inland ports by the Tioga Group, a freight transportation consulting firm.
Jim Booton, a Wayne County, W.Va., commissioner, says officials in Prichard hope a rail connection to the busy seaport of Norfolk, Va., nearly 500 miles away, could draw businesses in search of faster movement of goods. "People think of those facilities (as) needing to be on a large body of water," he said. "But they depend on rail and they depend on road."

The federal-state Appalachian Regional Commission sees a chance to create jobs in a poor region via a network of mountain ports, Hercik said. It is helping North Carolina pay for a $250,000 feasibility study.

The 34-employee Okuno International plant in Prichard is a possible client. It receives parts from its Japanese parent company by way of the West Coast, a journey of up to a month, operations manager Maria O'Reilly said. She said a new port would be worth considering.

Every major railroad company is building or considering versions of them, said Robert Harrison, deputy director of the Center for Transportation Research of the University of Texas at Austin.
The initiatives could help keep jobs in the country by allowing companies with U.S. facilities to better compete, Harrison said.

Some efforts to establish inland ports have not been successful.

North Carolina's Global TransPark was created in 1991 as a public-private partnership, but it fell short of predictions in attracting air cargo operations, according to the Tioga Group report. The report blames the facility's Kinston location, far from population centers, for its woes.

Despite threats from lawmakers to close the money-losing facility, the state has continued to pay $1.6 million a year to subsidize it, according to the report.

Still, businesses have flocked to the areas around terminals in Fort Worth and Front Royal, Va., both conceived in the 1980s.

"It has really driven economic growth," said Joe Harris, spokesman for the Virginia Port Authority. "Large distribution centers and warehouses have popped up literally next door (to Front Royal's Virginia Inland Port), because they can get their goods quicker."

Harris said the port has created 7,000 jobs nearby.

Others have taken notice.

In Texas, Union Pacific opened its $100 million, 360-acre terminal near Dallas in September, a month after the company broke ground on a 300-acre terminal on the outskirts of San Antonio, according to the company's website.

In a region that handles about 40% of U.S. imports, local officials with the Southern California Association of Governments are discussing potential sites for inland ports — in northern Los Angeles County and to the east in the Inland Empire region, association spokesman Jeff Lustgarten said.

Locations are increasingly moving away from major cities to reduce the environmental cost of the country's swelling transportation system, Harrison said.

"Efficiency means less engines idling, less queues," he said.