It’s not so simple for a lay person to evaluate various proposals and decide on the need to have a new port, to build a port terminal, or any facility related to the transportation of cargo. These are generally very expensive projects, and they have a huge impact on the existing structure, positive or otherwise. Because of the investment needed, it’s normal to see lobby pressure groups defending this or that alternative, and each one points out the defects in the rival plan, so we can’t expect them to focus on problems common to all interests

It’s not a specific problem for this or that country, but the fact is that questions related to transportation have reached a high level of complexity in recent years. One of the complicating factors is the expansion of urban areas around ports (residential clusters built on highway margins, advancing to areas that would normally be needed by ports and their environs), which increases the value of land, creating new questions on pollution, urban interferences and other matters that were ignored up to a few years ago.  

Who would ever have imagined having to deal with trains of 120 wagons holding up an entire city’s traffic for well over an hour? And more, that this means choosing between ambulances held up, traffic congestion, school, trade and other sector routines changed or investing in viaducts, tunnels, and walkways, with all the increased costs that this represents to the authorities?

Mexico is facing such a problem right now, as revealed by T21 magazine: tenders for a general cargo and container terminal are being considered in the port of Tuxpan, in Veracruz state, where they haven’t bothered with "even the simple exercise of applying common sense in order to favour the logistical chains that cater for the country’s foreign trade.”

Going by the arguments presented (by the government), costs of dredging the River Tuxpan were not considered in the study, nor was the fact that a new terminal would divide the market even more, reducing the competitiveness of the already underused Mexican ports in relation to Houston in the USA. The project also ignores new generation vessels (with greater capacity), and changes administration relations in the port...and so it goes...Arguments that other Mexican ports would want to present were not even considered, nor those of highway and railway transporters, the cities involved, cargo shipping companies...
 
Similarly, in Brazil it’s common for large-scale projects to be initiated and later abandoned, because at the very least common sense was not employed, not to mention the logistical questions that would need to be seen to. And lots of money is wasted, to say nothing of the costs resulting from the abandonment of a project once it has been started.

One would expect the government to employ specialists capable of giving a sensible opinion on new projects or on adapting existing facilities. But, even though such posts are occupied by people inexperienced in the function, and presuming that they have the will to put things right despite their lack of experience, it would be good for them to do a transportation management course, which is on offer at several universities in many countries.

Knowledge is the key to the contemporary world. The transportation sector is no different, whether it’s a regular worker who needs to know his job, or managers who need to know how to plan transportation infrastructure, taking into account the impact that their actions will have...