By Paul Scott Abbott, AJOTUS ports and inland transportation networks aren’t ready to handle trade growth associated with Panama Canal expansion – and they won’t be unless there are swift changes to governmental processes. That urgent message was repeated throughout a day-and-a-half gathering of 200 officials Jan. 23-24 in Tampa. “Our first obligation is to recognize that the decision-making process that we have for making improvements is not working, is not good, is not a good system,” John Paul Woodley Jr., the civilian head of the US Army Corps of Engineers, told attendees of the Shifting International Trade Routes: Planning for the Panama Canal Expansion workshop, cosponsored by the American Association of Port Authorities and the US Maritime Administration. Woodley, assistant secretary of the US Army for civil works, was far from the only high-level speaker to express concerns that US ports are ill prepared for Panama Canal expansion, which is set for completion in 2014, the 100-year anniversary of the original canal opening. “This is an incredible opportunity for us,” said MARAD Administrator Sean Connaughton, referring to the opening of a third set of Panama Canal locks that will double annual transit capability. “The question is, are we ready for it? “It is becoming a national concern, something that we, as a federal government, have been slow to come to grips with,” Connaughton said later in the conference. Insufficiencies exist in US port channel depths, on-port infrastructure and intermodal connections, as well as highways and railways, Connaughton and others noted. Connaughton and Woodley both called for a federal system that efficiently facilitates projects to deepen channels and to improve transport capabilities on land. Woodley said the system must be “nimble, agile and entrepreneurial,” as opposed to the current slow-moving “bureaucratic” process that he said is based on “all the reasons why not to do a project.” Richard A. Wainio, port director and chief executive officer of the Tampa Port Authority, which hosted the workshop, said deeper channels and other improvements will remain mired in bureaucracy for 10 to 20 years unless there are fundamental changes in the process to “fast-track” funding and move projects forward “very, very rapidly.” Wainio called the existing system “basically broken.” “The handwriting was on the wall years and years and years ago,” said Wainio, who has headed Tampa’s port for three years and previously served 23 years in executive positions with the Panama Canal before its shift from US to Panamanian control as 2000 began. “What’s happening now should not come as a surprise… Why are we so far behind the curve? We’re falling further and further behind.” Among other US port leaders echoing Wainio’s view was Michael A. Leone, port director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, who said, “If we’re just now starting to look at how we’re going to accommodate vessels that can transit the Panama Canal, we’re way, way, way too late on it.” Bernard S. Groseclose Jr., president and chief executive officer of the South Carolina State Ports Authority, commented that, in the United States, “the permitting process practically makes port expansion impossible,” and he called the speed with which the Panamanians are moving the canal project forward “like lightning compared to us.” Tampa’s Wainio also commended the Panamanians for advancing canal expansion – something he said the United States should have done years earlier but to this day probably still would not have. Federico A. Humbert, Panama’s ambassador to the United States, said the $5.25 billion project, undertaken after October 2006 approval by Panamanian voters, bodes to significantly increase cargo trade on Panamanian soil. “Panama is going to be one of the two – a threat or an opportunity,” Humbert said. Ports of Panama and throughout the Caribbean region that are prepared to handle the larger containerships (of capacities of as many as 12,000-plus