Alaska ports and harbors: economic engines of growth.

• Author: Stomierowski, Peg
• Position: TRANSPORTATION

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Movement of people and goods at Alaska's ports involves some challenging choreography by a cast of diverse transportation managers. They work together to make many of the coordinated movements, connections and transitions seem smooth and easier than they are. After a couple of slow years, business is starting to improve, said port transportation sources who generally expressed an air of cautious optimism.

Much of the on-loading and off-loading at Alaska's busier docks remains largely invisible to the public--at least to those folks who aren't debarking from ships or picking up friends, family members or consumer goods that are unloaded, one-by-one, from ships and barges. Nowhere is this more the case than at the Port of Anchorage, which processes 90 percent of the commodities that enter the state for 80 percent of the population. Port employees who watch the transportation interplay probably recognize the consumer and strategic importance of integrated port operations, managers observed, more than the average state resident does.

Rail and cargo transportation haulers who service this hub and smaller ports around the state are responsible for the movement and distribution of goods, including heating oil, jet fuel, gasoline, groceries, clothing and more, from incoming ships to local retail centers including Wal-Mart, Costco, Sam's Club and Fred Meyer, as well as grocers, gas stations and military bases.

At the Port of Anchorage, an economic engine with an annual benefit exceeding $1.3 billion, "a lot of moving parts have to fit together" to make things work as well they do, says Steve Ribuffo, deputy port director. "Everyone involved here does take their job seriously."

Their goals involve a hefty degree of cooperation among firms and agencies involved in maritime, air and ground transportation, including rail, trucking and road traffic.

MAJOR PLAYERS AND PLANS

Besides the Alaska Railroad, major players in the general port transportation scene include Horizon Lines, Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE), Tesoro, Chevron, Flint Hills Resources, Aircraft Services International Group, Alaska Basic Industries and the Alaska Trucking Association. The latter does a lot of heavy lifting for the major hubs as well as for ports at Skagway, Haines and Valdez.

"Alaska has as much or more intermodal activity as anywhere in the country," said Aves Thompson, director of the Alaska Trucking Association. Water, rail and air carriers, he said, must work together efficiently. Containers off loaded in Anchorage may be taken by rail to Fairbanks and again by truck to other destinations from there. Atone point or another, 90 percent of the freight that comes into to the Port of Anchorage from the Port of Tacoma in Washington is moved by truck or van, he said. And 50 to 60 of the communities in Alaska (e.g., Tok, Delta Junction and...