WASHINGTON: US ports and their private-sector partners will invest over six times more than the federal government on port-infrastructure over the next five years, the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) has claimed. The association claimed that the “best-case” scenario for investments by the federal government into national ports through 2020, including land- and water-side connections, amounted to US$25bn.
According to AAPA’s 2016-2020 Port Planned Infrastructure Investment Survey, the association’s member ports and their private-sector partners plan instead to spend a total of US$155bn on port-related freight and passenger infrastructure over the next five years. The survey’s results showed that the ports’ projected capital expenditures for 2016-2020 amount to US$23bn, while the projected private sector’s capital expenditures amount to US$132bn.
Kurt Nagle, AAPA’s president and CEO, said in a statement that the vast difference between the two values is concerning, especially when taking into account the need to increase government investments in the US federal navigation channels and the ‘first-and-last mile’ connections with ports. He added: “The take-away from this survey is that we must have increased and sustainable funding at and on both sides of our ports. There is 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.”
The US$155bn combined planned investments by the ports represent a more than three-fold increase over the US$46bn reported in the same survey five years ago, with the biggest project investments being planned for ports along the US Gulf Coast. Despite admitting that the federal government made some progress in regard to investments in port-related infrastructure, AAPA claimed that it has historically under-invested in the national goods movement system.
As AAPA reported, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) 2012 Failure to Act report claimed that by 2020 there will be a US$16bn investment gap between the expected annual federal funding on goods movement infrastructure and the funding needed for the effective maintenance of the system.
“AAPA applauds enactment of the FAST Act surface transportation bill at the end of 2015 that authorised US$11bn in new funding for land-side freight improvements through 2020,” Nagle added, “while that was a major positive step, additional investments are needed to effectively handle the nation’s burgeoning freight volumes.”
