By Peter A. Buxbaum, AJOTThe Port Authority of New York and New Jersey marked its 90th birthday recently, without much of a look to the past but rather with a view toward the challenges of the future. The nation’s first first interstate agency was established on April 30, 1921, as the Port of New York Authority. Its name was changed in 1972 to more accurately reflect the bi-state nature of the agency. “April 30 was an interesting milestone,” said Rick Larrabee, the Port Authority’s director of port commerce, “but we didn’t pause for very long to look back. The bi-state model still works. It is a legacy we all respect. But the challenges facing the Port Authority are as significant today as they have ever been.” After taking a dip thanks to the global recession, volumes of trade are up globally and the same applies to the New York/New Jersey region. The port faces continued challenges to attract its share of this cargo growth and that means continuing to expand capacity in a constrained real estate environment and to improve productivity and efficiency in existing facilities. It also means developing the capabilities necessary to handle cargo offloaded from bigger vessels, which also include the completion channel deepening projects which will bring port depths to a uniform 50 feet and executing a solution to air draft issues associated with the height of the Bayonne Bridge. Overarching all of these is the challenge of how to pay for it all. “We truly believe that commerce and trade will continue to grow,” said Larrabee. “We can debate how much that growth will turn out to be but we are all of the mind that we will see continued trade growth for the foreseeable future. For us, that means that we must continue on a path we have been on for the last ten years to grow our capacity in the port, not only to handle more cargo but also larger ships.” Addressing the funding issue is critical in this day and age of constrained budgets. “Public agencies are finding revenues to be inadequate to cover operating expenses as well as the capital improvements that need to be made,” said Larrabee. The ability to handle bigger ships, especially those that will be traversing the Panama Canal after the expansion of that waterway is completed in 2014, involves completing the port’s dredging of channels and berths to a 50-foot depth. By 2012, 30 percent of the ships, and, more importantly, 64 percent of containership capacity, will be in post-panamax vessels, according to Larrabee. “We think the dredging will be complete in 2014,” said Larrabee. “Seventy to 75 percent of that dredging is already completed. By the end of 2012, the channel to Port Jersey and Elizabeth/Newark will be 50 feet and the channel will be complete to Howland Hook on Staten Island by end of 2014.” The key dredging projects yet to be awarded are related to deepening near the piers on the Brooklyn side of the port and in the areas of the Arthur Kill and Newark Bay adjacent to the New York Container Terminal, also known as Howland Hook. The other issue which directly impacts the port’s ability to handle larger ships involves the height of the Bayonne Bridge, which connects New Jersey and Staten Island, New York, over the Kill Van Kull channel. The Kill Van Kull connects New York Bay with Newark Bay. The bridge has a central clearance of between 151 feet and 156 feet, depending on the tides, not enough to accommodate larger container ships. “We have have answered two of the three questions on people’s minds about the Bayonne Bridge,” said Larrabee. After a review of alternatives, the Port Authority announced that the most cost-effective solution to the Bayonne Bridge clearance issue will be to raise raising the bridge’s roadbed to 215 feet to increase the existing 151-foot navigational clearance restriction. Other choices considered included tearing down the existing bridge and building a new one and building a tunnel to replace the bridge. As far as how the Bayonne Bridge project will be paid for, the Port Au