By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOTMuch of the current infrastructure growth at Florida seaports can be attributed to the expansion of the Panama Canal that is now under way, but concerns remain that ports, channels and inland transportation won’t be prepared for the trade boom after the canal project is completed a short seven years from now. “We’d better get ready,” Richard A. Wainio, port director and chief executive officer of the Tampa Port Authority, told more than 200 industry leaders assembled Jan. 23-24 in Tampa for a workshop cosponsored by the American Association of Port Authorities and the US Maritime Administration. Wainio, who worked 23 years in executive positions with the Panama Canal, is well-familiar with the importance of the “Big Ditch,” which links the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and knows that the doubling of its capacity will have profound impacts, as will its impending ability to handle containerships with nearly three times the capacity of the biggest vessels that can transit it today. “This project will certainly shake up transportation trade activities and routes and patterns,” Wainio told attendees of the workshop, titled “Shifting International Trade Routes: Planning for the Panama Canal Expansion.” (For additional workshop coverage, see the Feb. 4 edition of the American Journal of Transportation.) Florida port directors and staff of the Florida Ports Council have spent much of the past two years educating Sunshine State leaders as to the opportunities and challenges presented by the canal expansion and working to make sure necessary infrastructure is in place, Wainio said. John R. LaCapra, president of the Tallahassee-based Florida Ports Council, a not-for-profit association representing the interests of the state’s otherwise-nonaffiliated deepwater ports, called preparing for the canal expansion “an issue that really requires us, as an industry in totality, to look to the future.” At a workshop luncheon, Dr. Dale Brill, director of the Florida Office of Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, said a sufficient multimodal infrastructure must be in place to capitalize upon the opportunities. “You either fear this or you embrace this,” said Brill, whose doctorate is in communications. “It would indeed be appropriate to say, ‘Game on.’ “We need to understand we are building a trade route,” Brill said. “Ports must improve their productivity, and, to do this, they must embrace innovation.” To build the state-of-the industry facilities needed to accommodate burgeoning containerized cargo trade from Asia will require more than the limited available public funding – a reality not lost on Rick Ferrin, executive director of the Jacksonville Port Authority, who said, “We have tremendous capital needs.” At JAXPORT, a public-private partnership is advancing the $250 million, 158-acre terminal being built under an agreement with Japan-based Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd., and private funding is also expected to play a role in the impending building in Jacksonville of a $360 million, 170-acre container terminal for South Korea-based Hanjin Shipping Co. Ltd. JAXPORT is now looking for a private investor for development of an intermodal container transfer facility to serve the new box terminals. Ferrin, whose own Panama Canal experience dates back to being a project manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers during the locks expansion of the 1980s, said he sees Southeast US ports, particularly those of Florida, as “tremendous beneficiaries” of the canal’s expansion. A. Paul Anderson, a commissioner on the Federal Maritime Commission, said, “Florida has a special place in the opportunities that lie ahead to take advantage of some the shifts in global trade.” Rodolfo Sabonge, vice president of the Panama Canal Authority’s Office of Market Research and Analysis, issued a word of caution to Florida port leaders by stating that he believes that non-US ports in the Caribbean and Panama bode to benefit to a greater extent from canal expansion than those on US