Port of Virginia, Hapag-Lloyd, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific revive landbridge concept of the 1960s
 In the late 1960s, in the dreamy days of containerisation, there was much talk of a "landbridge" across North America that would send trains from New York and Montreal to the west coast.
But little came of it. That's because there was little beyond the consumer-rich hinterlands of central Canada and the US eastern seaboard states. There simply weren't enough customers to make it work.
Not so today. Together, the Port of Virginia (Norfolk), Germany's Hapag-Lloyd in league with the Norfolk Southern Railway and the Union Pacific have revived the idea, thinking that what was not feasible 50 years ago can work today because conditions have changed so profoundly.
Back then, there were only TEUs, that is twenty-footers, even a number of ten-footers. No one had as yet conceived of double stacking purpose-built railcars because we all knew that bridges and tunnels could not accommodate them. Today, the shipping world is more accommodating - as are westbound freight rates.
Today, containers arrive weekly from Europe on Hapag-Lloyd ships at Norfolk International Terminals (NIT) to be double-stacked on Norfolk Southern trains for transport to Chicago, where some are switched to Union Pacific for delivery to Los Angeles and Oakland – thus avoiding California port congestion and Panama Canal transit.
In a next-generation twist on landbridging, double-stacked containers head toward the US west coast from the Port of Virginia's private terminal-operating subsidiary then onto a Norfolk Southern train.
“This is the first time I’ve seen an initiative of this nature in an established trade,” said Virginia International Terminals sales chief Thomas Capozzi.
“In today’s super-challenging trade environment, shippers are seeking dependable ways to efficiently get goods to destination,” he said, noting that transcontinental intermodal services customarily have moved containers from west to east – not vice versa.
Mr Capozzi says the efficiencies of the port and its expanding intermodal rail capacity were keys to the Hapag-Lloyd decision to replace its Mediterranean Pacific Service (MPS) with the new Mediterranean Gulf Express (MGX), introducing the Norfolk call to its rotation from the ports of Livorno, Genoa, Barcelona and Valencia.
Norfolk Southern trains carry containers from Norfolk to Chicago, where they are switched to Union Pacific rail for transit to California.
Not surprisingly, Norfolk Southern’s vice president of intermodal and automotive marketing, Shawn Tureman, fully backs the scheme. “Supply chain challenges have led shippers and carriers to diversify their networks,” he said. “In response, our team took a customer-centric approach by formulating a partnership with Hapag-Lloyd and Union Pacific to deploy a new landbridge service.
“The OceaNS Bridge Express (OBE) offers Hapag-Lloyd customers an efficient coast-to-coast product for getting their containers to the western United States,” said Mr Tureman.
“The OBE service will also help ocean carriers like Hapag-Lloyd better utilise vessels within their ship rotation strategy. With ocean carriers looking to have capacity shift from the west coast to the east coast, this new rail service will showcase our collective abilities to move containers quickly from an east coast origin to the west,” he said.
In announcing its weekly MGX service, operating with eight panamax vessels, Hapag-Lloyd executives pointed to its ability to furnish shippers efficient planning with realistic schedule reliability.
The service commenced with the mid-April arrival at NIT of Hapag-Lloyd’s Synergy Antwerp. Nearly 750 containers from that vessel were loaded on NS trains for Chicago, with the UP handling the final delivery to California.
Norfolk's Mr Capozz sees the new Virginia-to-California landbridge offering shippers a unique opportunity to dependably reach the west coast while averting congestion-and-delay hot spots.
With containerized cargo volumes at The Port of Virginia growing by more than 25 per cent year on year, and rail volume up 28 per cent, the rail investment is coming at the right time.
A major factor is that the Port of Virginia continues to consistently provide industry-leading turn times of less than 50 minutes for truck moves through its ultramodern, semiautomated marine terminals, thanks, it claims, to its cutting-edge appointment system.
Norfolk International Terminals rail facilities are undergoing expansion to nearly double their annual rail lift capacity to 610,000 containers, bringing Virginia port’s total annual rail lift capability to 1.1 million units.
Norfolk International Terminals rail facilities are undergoing expansion to nearly double their annual rail lift capacity to 610,000 containers, bringing the port's total annual rail lift capability to 1.1 million units.
The rail enhancements are just part of $1.3 billion in infrastructure investments being made between now and 2025 by The Port of Virginia, which also is modernising and renovating two berths and converting them to rail-mounted-gantry operations and is deepening channels to 55 feet while widening them to safely handle two-way traffic of ultralarge containerships.
Declares Mr Capozzi: “The Port of Virginia joins its ocean carrier and Class I rail partners in providing shippers with a revolutionary solution to the supply chain challenges of today and tomorrow. Shippers from the Mediterranean to the west coast no longer have to be at the mercy of delays involved with transiting the Panama Canal and congestion at California port facilities.
“We look forward,” he said, “to further ground-breaking collaborations that redefine the supply chain to the benefit of cargo owners looking to dependably get product to destination without undue delays.”
Such enthusiasm is reminicent of the mood that imbued the talk of a container landbridge across America in the late 1960s, except that this time there is every hope that the concept will materialise in a practical way.
One also sees the introduction of such a landbridge as relieving other problems serendipitously. The unrequited demand for agricultural containers being met in the US western states comes to mind immediately.
One is taken with early thoughts of the benefits of China's Belt and Road Initiative, a promise that lay not so much in more mundane plans to crossing a river here and boring a tunnel there that got goods to market that would otherwise not make it. Thus, one looks to the Port of Virginia's landbridge's success not lying its grand design, but rather its incremental and incidental nature of creating the critical mass of trade over shorter routes to foster developments, bringing what once appeared impossible, into the realm of the possible, if not the probable. |
