News from Cornerstone Systems

The Journal of Commerce is speculating that Shanghai will surpass Singapore to become the world's largest container port in 2010.

Longshore workers at the Port of Montreal reached a tentative agreement with employers Friday. The head of the union says members are sure to ratify it. The Maritime Employers Association at the Port of Montreal reached the agreement under federal mediation with Canada's largest union Canadian Union of Public Employees. The roughly 900 longshoremen locked out for five days in July will vote on the agreement on Sept. 23, and "they will accept it, for sure," Daniel Tremblay, president of CUPE Local 375, said in an interview Monday.

International Longshoremen's Association members in Jacksonville approved a labor contract with Hanjin Shipping that clears the way for construction of a long-delayed container terminal at the port. Hanjin signed a 30-year lease on the port-owned terminal property in December 2008, subject to negotiation of a contract with the ILA. The port later halted work on the terminal's final design because of uncertainty over whether the carrier and union could reach an agreement. Officials said they needed the ILA's agreement on work rules and staffing in order to determine how the terminal would be designed. Hanjin planned for the 90-acre terminal to be one of the most automated in the nation, with capacity to handle 750,000 TEUs a year.

The U.S. Senate's Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation said it will hold a full committee hearing on the federal role in national rail policy on Wednesday. Consumers United for Rail Equity (CURE), a group pushing for rail reform legislation, said the hearing "comes at an important time as momentum continues to build for Congress to enact bipartisan rail reform legislation this year." "This hearing shows the Senate is serious about passing legislation this year to address the problems posed by a lack of competition in the freight rail industry," said Glenn English, Chairman of CURE. "American consumers, companies and farmers cannot afford to wait any longer."

After three years of enlarging Appalachian Mountain tunnels, Norfolk Southern Railway opened its Heartland Corridor to double-stack operations Thursday between Virginia's seaport area and big Midwest hubs at Columbus, Ohio, and Chicago. The costly project, with a construction tab of more than $300 million split between the railroad and federal or state partners, converts a route dominated by coal and merchandise trains - plus one-high container trains - into the shortest and fastest route NS has for double-stack intermodal service between the mid-Atlantic region and the Midwest.

Canadian Pacific Railway expanded its ability to carry intermodal cars on trains 45 percent over the past two years, a company official says, and expects more gains as part of a plan to add capacity by improving productivity. CP stretched the maximum number of intermodal cars per train from 63 in 2008 to 90 this year, Kathryn McQuade, executive vice president and chief financial officer, told the Credit Suisse Automotive & Transport Conference in New York this week.

Kansas City Southern carried 700 U.S.-bound containers from Mexico's Port of Lazaro Cardenas during August and expects volume on the route to continue to grow, a KCS executive said. August's U.S.-bound volume through Lazaro Cardenas is the highest monthly total yet, said Michael W. Upchurch, the railroad's chief financial officer and executive vice president. Almost all of the Pacific Coast port's container traffic is to and from points within Mexico.