Advanced Approach In Designing And Building Heavy Duty Pavements For High-Density Container Terminal Operation

In the years ahead, the maritime trade will continually grow, and a greater volume of consumer goods will be shipped into US Ports. This growth will require port facilities not only to handle an increased volume of ocean trade, but also to meet the objective of Port Owner's management to keep their ports competitive in order to generate a larger market share. In order to meet this growing business demand, ports will need to undertake steps in future decades to provide the necessary cargo handling capacity at their facilities to accommodate the projected volume demand. The availability of land for additional development of deep-water ports is almost non-existent, and furthermore, this alternative is often environmentally or cost prohibitive. The footprint of existing ports is nearly maximized for lateral expansion. Consequently, the only available option is to expand vertically. Accordingly, an upgrade of the existing container terminals will be required for deployment of hi-density grounding operations, which will maximize terminal container capacity and offer full operational flexibility to container terminal operators. As a result, the ports and their operators will need to continue to invest in projects and construction for infrastructure improvements that will have significant payoff in terms of increased capacity, greater productivity, and terminal efficiency.