Survey: $154.8B of Port-Related Projects Planned For Five Years

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WASHINGTON – U.S. ports and their private-sector partners plan to spend a whopping $154.8 billion on port-related freight and passenger infrastructure over the next five years, according to a survey by the American Association of Port Authorities.

This estimate is a three-fold increase over the $46 billion projected in the same survey five years ago, according to the AAPA. It also is more than six times $24.83 billion -- the amount the group thinks is the best estimate of port investments to be made by the federal government during the same five-year period.

AAPA's 2016 infrastructure investment survey, completed at the end of March, was based on responses from its U.S. member ports. The group represents 130 of seaport authorities in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean.

More than $127.79 billion or 82% of the $154.8 billion of projected port and private capital expenditures for the five-year period came from ports in the Gulf Coast. The next highest was $9.38 billion from those in the South Atlantic, followed by $7.71 billion from ports in the South Pacific.

About $4.89 billion in projected capital expenditures was from ports in the North Atlantic, $4.03 billion from the North Pacific, and $1.01 billion from those in the Great Lakes area.

"The take-away from this survey is that we must have increased and sustainable funding at and on both sides of our ports," said Kurt Nagle, president and chief executive officer of the AAPA. "There's still a lot of work to be done, but the investments that we make today in our ports will pay off for generations to come."

Economist John Martin, president of Lancaster, Pa.-based Martin Associates said that, using the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis formulas, investing nearly $155 billion in capital projects at U.S. ports would create about 1.6 million of domestic jobs over the five-year period.

"Those are really significant job numbers," said Martin. In 2014, U.S. coastal ports also generated about $4.6 trillion for the U.S. economy, about 26% of the U.S. gross domestic project, he added.

The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act enacted last year authorized about $11 billion for land-side freight improvements through 2020.

"While that was a major positive step, additional investments are needed to effectively handle the nation's burgeoning freight volumes," said Nagle.

"Infrastructure investments in America's seaports and their intermodal connections – both on the land and in the water – are in our nation's best interest because they provide opportunities to bolster our economy, create and sustain jobs, enhance our international competitiveness, and pay annual dividends through the generation of more than $321 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue," Nagle said. "From a jobs standpoint, goods moved through America's seaports in 2014 supported the employment of more than 23 million U.S. workers – up from 13.3 million in 2007."

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