38 American Journal of Transportation American Journal of Transportation ajot.com Traffi c meets intelligence Optimizing schedules for 29 terminals and 3,000+ ships per year, our Active Vessel Traffic Management Program coordinates and streamlines ship movements, eliminates unnecessary transits, and enhances vessel traffic flow to keep cargo moving. See our innovation in operation. portvancouver.com/smarter_gateway Port of Vancouver moving forward Port of Nanaimo’s shortsea vocation gathering momentum By Leo Ryan, AJOT On Vancouver Island, cargo at the Port of Nanaimo is currently dominated by forest products and logs, which accounted for 3.8 million metric tons out of a total 2025 volume of 4.1 million tons. It is also a growing gateway for Canadian automobile imports. Much sought-after container throughput is relatively limited at under 15,000 TEUs. But major change is in the works with the forthcom- ing launching of a shortsea operation by DP World of the Salish Sea Gateway. DP World is completing construc- tion of a C$22 million facility in Vancouver that will connect in weekly calls a dedicated marine barge service with Fraser Surrey and Duke Point Terminal in Nanaimo. The infrastructure project is designed to shift cargo from truck-and-ferry movements to a dedicated marine connection linking regional road and rail networks with global ocean carrier services. While reducing highway and ferry congestion, it will lower carbon dioxide emis- sions, and help to avoid seasonal bottlenecks across the Georgia Strait. Perspectives from DP World’s Doug Smith In a recent posting on Linkedin, Doug Smith, CEO of DP World Canada, offered these perspectives: “For years, people have talked about shortsea shipping on Canada’s West Coast,” he began. “Now we are putting it into motion. The idea is simple: use the water better. “The Salish Sea Gateway will create a dedicated barge connection between Vancouver-area container terminals and the Port of Nanaimo, helping move con- tainers across the region without relying only on truck- and-ferry movements. That matters for customers. “It gives importers and exporters another option. It con- nects Vancouver Island more directly into global trade. It supports smoother movement between port, road, rail (MOMENTUM – continued on page 40) By George Lauriat, AJOT The Port of Vancouver, located in British Columbia (BC) on Canada’s Pacific coast, is the country’s largest port and the key gateway in Canada’s efforts to double global exports to non-United States trade partners. And the port, administered by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority (VFPA), is in line to get substantially larger in the near future with the development of a new container terminal — a container terminal that could add 2.4 mil- lion TEUs to the port’s throughput by the mid-2030s. Port of Vancouver Gateway A deeper dive into the Port of Vancouver’s num- bers illustrates just how important the Port is to both the Canadian economy and to the country’s supply chain. For instance, in 2025 the Port had a container throughput of 3,778,996 TEUs, up 9% on the 3,473,822 handled in 2024. To put the Port of Vancouver’s container contribu- tion in perspective, Canadian container ports as a whole, handled around 6.3 million in 2025. And by way of port- to-port comparison, the Port of Montreal, the number two container port in Canada, had a throughput of 1.52 mil- lion TEUs, and is operating at nearly full capacity. And it is hard to overstate the importance of the Port of Vancouver gateway to the Canadian economy. Overall, the Port of Vancouver handles some $365 billion in trade annually that connects Canada to 170 global markets. Put another way, approximately 40-cents out of every $1 in Canadian goods traded outside North America runs through the Port of Vancouver, which amounts to a billion dollars’ worth of commodities every day. Unsurprisingly, Asia is the main source of container traffic for the Port of Vancouver. In terms of container- ized tonnage, China has been the leading trade partner for the Port on both the inbound and outbound sides of the container equation [particularly if Hong Kong is added to the total]. But trade is diversifying as Jeff Scott, Vice President Operations and Supply Chain for the VFPA, noted. “More than three-quarters of the port’s total inter- national trade volumes moved to the Indo-Pacific econ- omies and we expect that region to account for about 50% of the global economy by 2040. So, we’re definitely focused on that. China remains our largest trading part- ner. [However], … we’re seeing an increase in growth in The development of a new container terminal could add 2.4 million TEUs to the Port of Vancouver’s throughput by the mid-2030s. (MOVING – continued on page 39)
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