Definition of Ports and Methods Used to Identify the Top 25 Ports by Total Tonnage, Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU), and Dry Bulk Tonnage

2.1 Definition of Ports

Ports are commonly recognized as places where cargo is transferred between ships and trucks, trains, pipelines, storage facilities, or refineries. Ports are more difficult to define for statistical purposes when such places are close to one another or when activity related to a port blends in with surrounding neighborhoods. Many ports are located adjacent to closely related land uses (e.g., railyards and truck depots) or to other ports. Continuous waterfront may be divided into separate ports by administrative boundaries, such as the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, or the series of Mississippi River terminals in Louisiana divided between the Ports of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In contrast, the Port of New York and New Jersey and the Ports of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are treated as single entities, even though the former has a river and a state line dividing its facilities and the latter has terminals that stretch along 226 miles of two rivers through two states. Further, for more detailed performance assessments, the appropriate entity may be an individual terminal, not a port comprised of multiple terminals with diverse ownership, cargo, and operating methods.

The Federal government defines ports in many different ways. For example, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) defines some “ports” as a single port and others as units comprising multiple ports. The U.S. Census Bureau relies on the CBP definitions for reporting on trade. The USDOT Maritime Administration (MARAD) defines a port as “a harbor with piers or docks” in its Glossary of Shipping Terms.⁴

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) identifies ports in different ways for planning and managing port and waterway improvement projects and for the collection and tabulation of waterborne commerce statistics. The USACE Waterborne Commerce Statistics Center (WCSC) aligns ports with their enacting legislation. In contrast, a USACE project area may encompass multiple ports along a shared stretch of water (like the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach which are both assigned to the same harbor), or multiple projects might be encompassed by a single port (as is the case with the Port of New York and New Jersey).

Ports are organized and governed in a variety of ways, with implications for port definition and data availability. Most ports are governed by port authorities or harbor districts, usually part of local government. Some governing bodies are state entities (e.g., the Maryland or Georgia Port Authorities) or interstate authorities (e.g., The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey). A port’s jurisdiction typically extends over land, where it may include concession and construction approval and policy decision-making authorization, and over water, where it is primarily focused on navigation.

A port authority is a government entity that either owns or administers the land, facilities, and adjacent water body where cargo is transferred between modes. A port authority promotes overall port operating efficiency and development, maintains port facilities, and interacts with other government bodies. Additional activities include business development and infrastructure finance. While the structure, powers, and role of port authorities vary, the American Association of Port Authorities (AAPA) states that they “share the common purpose of serving the public interest of a state, region or locality.”⁵ Port authorities may act as:

• Landlords, building and maintaining terminal infrastructure and providing major capital equipment, but are not engaged in operations. The Ports of Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey, and Oakland are examples of landlord ports. Ports may also offer concessions to tenants that make infrastructure improvements. For example, the Maryland Port Administration granted a 50-year concession for the Baltimore Seagirt Marine Terminal that included a commitment by the concessionaire to deepen the channel.⁶
• Operating ports, directly operating some or all of the terminals in the jurisdiction. For example, the Port of Houston Authority is an operating port.
• Jurisdictional bodies, under which private terminals are responsible for providing and operating their infrastructure. For example, the Ports of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky is a jurisdictional body.

A port may own and operate an extensive range of facilities over a large area, many of which may not be water-related. Several port authorities (e.g., Port of Oakland, Massachusetts Port Authority) also operate airports. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey operates airports, tunnels, bridges, and transit systems as well as the seaport.

Some states, such as South Carolina and Georgia, have statewide port authorities to administer some or all of the ports within their jurisdiction. These entities are typically led by boards of appointed members. They may also directly operate port facilities within the state. A state port authority may be a separate state department, or be located within that state’s DOT.

Some port authority jurisdictions cross state boundaries. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Ports of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are examples.

Port authorities typically have jurisdiction over public terminals. Private (usually bulk) terminals are normally outside the public port authorities’ jurisdiction although they are still subject to U.S. Coast Guard and Federal regulation.

This report follows the recommendation of the Working Group to use the USACE WCSC definitions of ports, which align with how ports are defined in legislative enactments of Federal, State, or city government. These legislative definitions of individual ports are relatively stable over time, although some ports have successfully petitioned USACE to alter their boundaries. Most WCSC-defined ports are consistent with common perception, yet some, like the Ports of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, cover an extended stretch of river that is not commonly perceived as one entity. In some cases, ports that work together under a common marketing label, such as the Northwest Seaport Alliance (Port of Tacoma and Port of Seattle), are still defined separately by USACE. The major advantage of using WCSC definitions is that the definitions are used in publishing key data on cargo throughput, including the variables used to select the top 25 ports. This report is largely based on data published by USACE WCSC.

2.2  Development of Port Lists

The FAST Act requires this report to include the top 25 ports as measured by overall cargo tonnage, twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) of container cargo, and dry bulk cargo tonnage. TEU is an international standard measure of container traffic and the various sizes of containers are converted to this common metric in this report. To identify the top 25 ports by overall tonnage, BTS included the total weight of cargo (domestic and international) entering and leaving the port in short tons as reported by USACE. For the identification of the top 25 ports by TEU, BTS included all domestic and foreign loaded containers as reported by USACE. Since tonnage statistics are not categorized as dry bulk and other commodities, BTS worked with USACE and MARAD to develop a method for identifying the top 25 dry bulk ports. This method is detailed below.

BTS, USACE, and MARAD tested three methods to identify the top 25 ports by dry bulk tonnage. The first method identified dry bulk cargo as cargo carried in dry bulk vessels as defined by the International Classification of Ships by Type (ICST) system (Appendix B). The second method identified dry bulk cargo from commodity classes in the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) Revision 3 that are predominantly dry bulk (Appendix C). This match is only approximate since some of the included commodity classes are not exclusively dry bulk, and dry bulk may appear in some of the excluded commodity classes. The third method selected only the dry bulk cargo that had been identified in both of the first two protocols. The first and third methods produced the same list of top 25 ports based on testing, and so BTS and its partners selected the first protocol (that uses ICST codes) due to its consistency and simplicity. Tables 1 through 3 list the top 25 ports in overall cargo tonnage, total TEU, and dry bulk cargo tonnage, respectively.

Table 4 combines the top 25 ports for each category (total tonnage, TEU, and dry bulk tonnage) into a single list. As indicated in

Table 4, many ports rank in the top 25 in more than one category. Each port listed in Table 4 is profiled in Section 5.

Table 1: List of Top 25 Ports by Total Tonnage in Alphabetical Order

Port

Baltimore, MD
Baton Rouge, LA
Beaumont, TX
Corpus Christi, TX
Duluth-Superior, MN and WI
Houston, TX
Huntington – Tristate, KY, OH, and WV
Lake Charles, LA
Long Beach, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Mobile, AL
New Orleans, LA
New York and New Jersey, NY and NJ
Pascagoula, MS
Port Arthur, TX
Port of Plaquemines, LA
Port of South Louisiana, LA
Port of Virginia, VA
Ports of Cincinnati and Northern KY, OH and KY
Richmond, CA
Savannah, GA
St. Louis, MO and IL Tampa, FL
Texas City, TX
Valdez, AK

Table 2: List of Top 25 Container Ports by TEU in Alphabetical Order

Port

Anchorage, AK
Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Camden-Gloucester, NJ
Charleston, SC
Honolulu, HI
Houston, TX
Jacksonville, FL
Juneau, AK
Long Beach, CA
Los Angeles, CA
Miami, FL
Mobile, AL
New Orleans, LA
New York and New Jersey, NY and NJ
Oakland, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Port Everglades, FL
Port of Virginia, VA
San Juan, PR
Savannah, GA
Seattle, WA
Tacoma, WA
Wilmington, DE
Wilmington, NC

Table 3: List of Top 25 Ports by Dry Bulk Tonnage in Alphabetical Order

Port

Baltimore, MD
Baton Rouge, LA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Corpus Christi, TX
Detroit, MI
Duluth-Superior, MN and WI
Houston, TX
Huntington – Tristate, KY, OH, and WV
Indiana Harbor, IN
Kalama, WA
Longview, WA
Mobile, AL
New Orleans, LA
New York and New Jersey, NY and NJ
Pittsburgh, PA
Port of Plaquemines, LA
Port of South Louisiana, LA
Port of Virginia, VA
Portland, OR
Ports of Cincinnati and Northern KY, OH and KY
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO and IL
Tampa, FL
Two Harbors, MN

Table 4: List of Ports Contained in Top 25 Container, Tonnage, and Dry Bulk Lists

⁴ Glossary of Shipping Terms (May 2008), U.S. Department of Transportation, available at https://www.marad.dot.gov/wp- content/uploads/pdf/Glossary_final.pdf as of December 2016

⁵ Sherman, R.; Seaport Governance in the United States and Canada (September 1999), American Association of Port Authorities, available at http://www.aapa-ports.org/ as of October 2016

⁶ The lease holder or operator of a terminal owned by a port authority—who often must make infrastructure improvement in return for their concession.