Those observers of the contemporary scene can daily witness the slow and somewhat agonizing decline of the Port of San Francisco. Politicians and muckraking reporters like Warren Hinkle like to blame Port officials for the present lack of shipping and maritime use, but of course they're wrong.
Published: February, 2003
Those observers of the contemporary scene can daily witness the slow and somewhat agonizing decline of the Port of San Francisco. Politicians and muckraking reporters like Warren Hinkle like to blame Port officials for the present lack of shipping and maritime use, but of course they're wrong.
The reason they are wrong is buried in history, but with careful excavation, we can uncover the roots and trace out what happened. The real decline of the Port began shortly after World War II and accelerated quickly. In fact, the Port was so alarmed at the loss in tonnage that a study was commissioned in 1951 to discover the causes. This study noted that landside traffic congestion, inadequate warehouses (with interior support poles in the way of cargo handling), and inadequate truck access made it easier for other ports to grab the business.
The response by the Port was to rebuild Pier's 17 and 27 into the ugliest rail and truck friendly piers to address the problems cited in the study. But that left all the other finger piers with the same old problems. And we do mean old. The majority of the finger piers were built in 1910 or shortly thereafter, with graceful bulkhead entrances to beautify the city in advance of the Pan Pacific Exposition of 1915 (and to handle the new tonnages expected by the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914).
But in that era, all goods went by rail or by water, so truck access was not a component of the design. However by the late 1950s, trucks had captured 80 percent of the cargo market and San Francisco's finger piers were too obsolete to compete. And trucks were poised to grab an even larger share of the freight market thanks to Eisenhower's 1954 Interstate Highway and Defense Bill that would ring America with the remarkable German Autobahn.
While the Port's policy of competition through obsolescence did not change into the '60s, cargo shipping did. The container was invented, where goods had previously been stowed on pallets, and the end of break bulk shipping was in sight. A new container vessel could be unloaded in a fifth of the time of a break bulk ship, so the owners could turn it faster, requiring fewer vessels for a huge capital savings. But container ships need container cranes and lots of open ground to store the boxes. As a result, San Francisco's already obsolete finger piers became practically useless for maritime cargo.
The Port responded to the challenge by building container terminals at Piers 80 and 94-96. But today, they sit almost unused, handling barely 5 percent of their capacity. This, the zealots say, demonstrates the lack of management at the Port. But does it? Certainly ship calls are limited to smaller container companies and niche markets like fishmeal and tallow and at one time, newsprint and automobiles. But what lack of management caused this container investment to sit idle?
The next big change to rock the Port was railroads. Railroads had been losing market share to truckers every year the Interstate Highway System expanded. Now they would fight back with new Intermodal cars that could stack containers two high and handle a train filled with over 200 containers. To do this, they invested millions in new cars and clearing height restrictions, like tunnels and bridges. But one line they invested nothing in was the line to San Francisco. Thus, Piers 80 and 94-96 sit behind a tunnel and double stack container trains cannot operate out of San Francisco.
Visionaries at the Port studied this problem and realized that they needed to spend $12 million to fix the tunnel and more to improve the tracks. This project remains unfunded and the piers remain virtually unused. However, it's never as simple as that. The other problem concerned the fact that San Francisco was served by the Southern Pacific Railroad, and for its trains to go east, they had to first go south to San Jose and then north to Oakland, a rail trip of over 100 miles. So even with fixing the tunnel, San Francisco would still be at a noncompetitive cost disadvantage to Oakland.
There's now a light at the end of the tunnel, however, because in 1996, Union Pacific bought Southern Pacific. Surprisingly enough, this had the immediate effect of moving San Francisco 100 rail miles closer to Oakland. Here's how this works. The Southern Pacific's stack train route was north and east out of Oakland. The Union Pacific operated its stack trains out of Oakland south to San Jose and then east over the Altamont Pass before continuing on to Sacramento, the Feather River, and points east. If the tunnel problem is solved, stack trains could now operate south from San Francisco and then head east over Altamont Pass, making a rail journey similar in distance to the trip from Oakland. San Francisco can now compete.
However, other problems remain to be solved. Former UP and SP crews would have to have a special agreement to operate an interdivisional run on each other's former lines. New tracks need to be built to properly serve the container terminals. Money, which does not exist, must be spent. And the railroad is not going to spend it. From their perspective, they get the business in Oakland now, so why spend a dime to get the same business in San Francisco. And worse, shippers in Oakland would have the choice of two competing railroads to ship on, while San Francisco can only offer one.
So a few ships still call at San Francisco and the maritime trade lingers on, but without more investment, the Port will remain in the niche shipping business and the obsolete and aging finger piers will continue to rot, almost as if they are waiting for a fresh resurgence of steam and clipper ships.
