Seaport inland access: Cases of Ports of Jacksonville, Everglades and Miami

Other conference contribution, 2017

While bigger vessels help carriers to reduce voyage cost, these savings are increasingly outweighed by higher port and landside costs. Capacity increase only at ports facilities to meet the demand for bigger vessels, without improvements in ports’ inland access, is not enough for the entire container transport chain to function properly since sea flow generates almost proportional inland flow. Many container ports around the world are involved in development of dry ports to improve their inland access by increased use of rail in order to be more competitive. However, container ports on the east coast of Florida; Port Miami, Port Everglades and Port of Jacksonville, show increase of their container volumes without apparent engagement in development of rail inland access or hinterland expansion. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the functionality of these seaports considering their lack of collaboration with inland ports. Interviews with the seaport mangers were conducted to analyse and compare the seaports’ inland access current state and development plans. Competition requires seaports to focus on their inland access but between container ports on the east coast of Florida there is no hard competition; they deal with different markets in hinterland and foreland; all three are heavily in cruise business, and they have no particular capacity issues at their terminals or congestion at the port gates so far. Many seaports tend to expand their hinterland and increase competitive advantage through collaboration with inland ports based on a higher level of functional integration. However, the seaports in the study show functionality without involvement in development of their inland access as long as they don’t face congestion or competition issues!