Weekly News Summary For February 22-28, 2010:
The Tri-City Regional Port District in Granite City, Ill., received a $6 million Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation February 17.
The $6 million for the Tri-City port will be used for the Southwestern Regional Intermodal Freight Transportation Hub, which will include a new harbor on the Upper Mississippi River, just below Locks 27. The Tri-City Port’s primary facilities are just above the locks, which are the southernmost locks on the Mississippi River.
The new facility will be used for barge loading and unloading of liquid and dry products, which will interface with associated rail and truck connections. The project has a total price tag of $24.5 million.
“We’re very pleased about the grant,” said Dennis Wilmsmeyer, general manager of the port. “This is great for the city of Madison, great for the Tri-City Port District, and great for the St. Louis region as a whole.”
The port had applied for $21.5 million through the TIGER program, with plans to borrow the remaining $3 million. Now, port officials are considering their options for borrowing the remainder needed, or how to make the best use of the smaller sum they will have available….
Louisiana’s worldwide exports totaled $32.7 billion in 2009, a 22 percent decline from 2008 but still the second-best year ever, the World Trade Center of New Orleans reported. The record total in 2008 was $41.9 million.
Despite the decline from the previous year, the 2009 export total was enough to move Louisiana up from ninth to eighth in the state rankings. Total U.S. exports fell by 18.7 percent last year.
In terms of volume, an important indicator for the state’s deepwater ports, the decline in total vessel weight for Louisiana’s exports in 2009 was only 3.5 percent compared to 2008, while total U.S. exports measured in tonnage registered a 7 percent decline.
“With the state’s exports rising in each of the last several months of the year, we’re hopeful that the global contraction has bottomed out and that worldwide recovery is underway, and we will start seeing the effects in 2010 trade figures,” said Larry Collins, director of international services with Louisiana Economic Development….
Last June, the World Bank predicted that the Indian economy would grow by 10 percent in 2010, making it the world’s fastest-growing economy, surpassing even China’s growth rate.
Nevertheless, India has achieved this remarkable growth without a key advantage shared by its more developed competitors, and even its close neighbors: a developed inland waterways system. But in the past few years, India’s agency in charge of waterways development has begun to act.
India has the world’s ninth-largest river system at 15,544 kilometers. But only about 5,700 km. are suitable for commercial navigation (5,200 km. in some estimates), plus 485 km. on canals, according to The Economic Times, a leading Indian business publication, in a February 1 article.
The CIA World Factbook says that only 1.5 percent of India’s estimated 1,000 billion ton-kilometers of annual bulk cargoes are carried on those waterways. The Economic Times rates that figure at less than 1 percent. That figure does not include what one report calls small-scale, unorganized users—i.e., small “country boats” and ferries.
P. Manoj, a shipping expert who writes a transportation column for the Indian site livemint/WSJ.com, told The Waterways Journal, “A shift of just 1 billion ton-kilometers of cargo transportation from roads to inland water transport [would] mean a savings of Rs 80 crore [about $800 million] alone.”…
The Tulsa Port of Catoosa began 2010 with a strong month, as inbound and outbound shipping reached 222,448 tons in January.
While slightly lower than December, the figure represents an above-average month, port officials said. Many of the same commodities that helped make 2009 an excellent year for the port were also shipped through the facility in January in relatively large quantities: soy products, fertilizer, and steel related products.
Of the total, 182,217 tons were outbound, and 40,231 tons were inbound. The port handled 134 barges in January.
“The Port is off to a good start in 2010,” said Ed Fariss, chairman of the City of Tulsa-Rogers County Port Authority. “These are positive numbers, and if the global economy continues to improve—even though it may be a slow process—we will continue to see good numbers from our port in the upcoming year.”
“Hopefully, we will see employment figures improve for our industries this year as well,” Fariss said….
Tom Ridge, former secretary of homeland security and twice-elected governor of Pennsylvania, will be the speaker at the 108th Annual Dinner of The Traffic Club of Pittsburgh at 7 p.m. on March 11 at The Omni William Penn Hotel, Pittsburgh.
Ridge served as Pennsylvania governor from 1995 to 2001. After the September 11 terror attacks, he resigned as governor to accept an appointment by President George W. Bush as assistant to the president for homeland security. In January 2003, he became the first secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Ridge grew up in Erie, Pa. He earned a scholarship to Harvard, graduating with honors in 1967. After his first year at The Dickinson School of Law, Ridge was drafted into the U. S. Army. He served in Vietnam as an infantry staff sergeant, earning the Bronze Star for Valor, the Combat Infantry Badge and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
After returning to Pennsylvania, Ridge obtained his law degree at Dickinson in 1972 and entered private practice. He became assistant district attorney in Erie County, Pa., in 1980. In 1982 he successfully ran for a seat in Congress from northwestern Pennsylvania, becoming the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. He served six terms from 1983 to 1995. As of 2010, Ridge has never lost an election for public office.
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