Lifting the curtain (slightly) to the future
It’s time to take a quick look at the near future and there’s no need look further than Interstate 16 and Ga. 247. The predictor for I-16 is activity by the Georgia Ports Authority. The August numbers are in and the state’s ports are going gangbusters. GPA set an August record of 330,846 20-foot equivalent container units, an increase of 5 percent over August 2015. The month’s figures were the third highest in the GPA history, falling below only April and May 2015, when cargo increased because of a strike at West Coast ports.
While many of those containers head off from the port by rail, others head up Interstate 95 and I-16, and for August that amounted to 2.62 million tons. In the future, more container traffic will be seen coming through Macon on Interstate 75 as well as it heads inbound and outbound to Cordele’s inland port. Why is that important? Follow the money.
The GPA contributes:
▪ $84.1 billion in sales (9.6 percent of Georgia’s total sales);
▪ $33.2 billion in state GDP (7.2 percent of Georgia’s total GDP);
▪ $20.4 billion in income (5.3 percent of Georgia’s total personal income);
▪ 369,193 full- and part-time jobs (8.4 percent of Georgia’s total employment);
▪ $1.3 billion in state taxes.
The GPA is planning for the future with the dredging of the channel in preparation of the large Panamax ships. It was reported to the GPA board last week that the project is about 25 percent complete. And it is linking two rail yards at the Garden City terminal and expanding capacity to handle about 1 million containers annually.
Macon is in an interesting position in all of this. We have one of the largest rail yards on the East Coast, and it sits between I-75 and I-16. You can bet some of the rail and truck traffic will travel through Middle Georgia because 44 percent of the U.S. population is within a two-day drive of the Savannah and Brunswick ports.
Off Ga. 247 there is another transportation related predictor. It’s the Middle Georgia Regional Airport. Its future will be determined not by how many flights head off for weekends in Biloxi, Mississippi, but by how quickly we can figure out how to pay for extending its runway so the facility can handle larger aircraft for freight and maintenance. What the port and the airport have in common is that both can bring good jobs to the area. The port will be operational with the deeper channel by 2020. Will our airport project be online by then? Probably not, but let’s hope it’s further along than it is now.
This story was originally published September 28, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Lifting the curtain (slightly) to the future."