“Based on public comment, we are including a number of improvements, such as shore power for vessels, installing gates for noise and safety mitigation for rail, and significant traffic improvement measures,” said John Creighton, Port of Seattle Commission president and cochair of the Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA). “We want to thank the public for weighing in on this proposal during the comment period.”

Though it is not able to service vessels above 6,000-7,000 TEU currently, Terminal 5 presently has a capacity of 647,000 TEU. The FEIS is written to cover either a terminal with RTGs running parallel to the quay or RMGs over stacks oriented in a perpendicular direction. One option is for an RTG terminal with a capacity of around 1.3M TEU, while another includes a yard expansion to allow RTGs or RMGs and an annual capacity of 1.7M TEU. 

This capacity is likely to be brought on in phases, as Seattle and Tacoma are now planning for their needs across both ports under the NWSA initiative. Taken together, the ports’ container terminals are only operating at 55% of capacity today.

The FEIS forecasts that, “based on a compounded container cargo growth rate between 4% and 5% for Pacific northwest ports, Terminal 5 could be serving up to approximately 1.3M TEU by 2030”, which is quite optimistic, given the rate at which trade and containerisation growth have slowed this year. 

Nevertheless, the NWSA has identified that making Terminal 5 “big ship ready” is a priority, and the Final EIS brings that “one step closer”, said Connie Bacon, Port of Tacoma Commission president and co-chair of the NWSA. 

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This complete item is approximately 300 words in length, and appeared in the November 2016 issue of WorldCargo News, on page 7. To access this issue download the PDF here.