Operations
The Port is the twenty-second busiest in the world today, but was number one as recently as 1985. Amongst the records it retains is being the port with the largest volume of imports from Germany of all US ports, with over 2.6 million tonnes in 2006, over 20% of the total volume of imports from Germany.
Since 1998, the Port has seen a 65 percent increase in traffic volume. In 2003, the Port moved over $100 billion in goods. Plans are underway for billions of dollars in improvements - larger cranes, bigger railyard facilities, deeper channels, and expanded wharves. New longshoremen are being hired as well.
It is the largest container port in the eastern United States and the third largest in the country. Container goods typically arrive on container ships through the Narrows and the Kill Van Kull before entering Newark Bay, a shallow body of water that is dredged to accommodate the larger ships (some ships enter Newark Bay via the Arthur Kill). The port facility consists of two main dredged slips and multiple loading cranes. Metal containers are stacked in large arrays visible from the New Jersey Turnpike before being loaded onto rail cars and trucks.
The height of ships serving the port is limited by the Bayonne Bridge over Kill Van Kull, a limitation that will become more serious when the Panama Canal expansion project opens in 2014, allowing bigger ships to reach the port from Asia. Options to remedy the situation under consideration include jacking up the bridge, building a new bridge or a tunnel. Likely, a facility at MOTBY on the Upper New York Bay will be built to handle the larger ships.
In 2009, the major port operators at Port Newark-Elizabeth included Maher terminals, APM terminal (A. P. Moller-Maersk), and PNCT (Port Newark Container terminal).
Read more about this topic: Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)