by Tim Clifford

An alliance between the Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma, to be known as the Seaport Alliance, was officially announced during a West Seattle Chamber of Commerce meeting at Jack Block Park near Alki.
Port Commissioner Stephanie Bowman announced the alliance between the historically antagonistic ports and explained the benefits that both ports will see moving forward.

As Bowman explains it:
“It is not a merger, it is an alliance. That is a key difference here. What that means is that we are going to be bringing the two seaport divisions together into a single entity and having one management structure for that. The ultimate result for the region is that it won’t matter if a container comes into Tacoma or if it comes into Seattle, both ports will benefit from that box coming into the gateway. There will no longer be that competition about where it goes, a company will be placed at the best place that it should be whether it’s in Seattle or Tacoma, but the jobs will stay in that region”

The expected CEO of this new Seaport Alliance is John Wolfe, the current CEO for the Port of Tacoma.

Discussions and plans for this alliance have been ongoing for the last 10 months with details being finalized as recently as Oct.7. Further discussions between the two ports are scheduled to be held Oct. 14 in Auburn.

A scheduled period of 6 months to perform “due diligence” will end in March 2015 at which point a final agreement will be submitted to the Federal Maritime Commission.

This alliance and the recent closing of Terminal 5 on Harbor Island are both directly tied to the future of the shipping industry and direct competition from Canadian ports, specifically the Port of Prince Rupert in B.C.

Located on the northern tip of Canada, there are few obstructions for ships coming from Asia to dock at a terminal in the Port of Prince Rupert. There is also less lag time for the distribution of cargo once it is on the docks thanks in large part to the Canadian Rail system.

“Specifically the two ports can work together on transportation funding with the legislature. We already have started that where we are jointly lobbying on SR-167, which is a major project for the Port of Tacoma, and on 509 which is a major project here [in” explained Bowman.

The shutdown of Terminal 5 was explained further with Bowman promising “it won’t be closed for long”. Most commonly attributed to the expansion of the Panama Canal container are vessels known as Ultra Large Container Ships which are soon to become the norm in the shipping industry. In order to accommodate these oversized ships new cranes, known as Super Post Panamax cranes, will need to be installed and the dock supporting them will need to be reinforced.

To give an idea a ship’s size is currently measured in TEU (twenty foot container equivalent) with current vessels measuring 6,000 TEU and the new super-sized vessels to measure 18,000 TEU.

“It’s a paradigm shift, they expect other ports around the country to do something similar” said of Bowman of the Federal Maritime Commission’s reaction to the proposed alliance.

While the bulk of the meeting revolved around the new alliance other projects for the Port of Seattle were discussed as well.

The International Facility at SeaTac airport will be seeing improvements to the facility itself as well as a reduction in “hard standings” or the amount of time that passengers are made to wait on an airplane at the gate upon arrival.
Further development on the NorthSTAR project between the Port of Seattle and Alaska Airlines as well as improvements on the baggage system (a whopping 17 miles of conveyor belt systems below the airport) at the airport were discussed as well. The cost between the 3 projects is expected to fall within the 2 billion dollar range with grants from the Federal Government.