The American Landbridge

Rail freight in the United States has experienced a remarkable growth since deregulation in the 1980s (Staggers Act) with a 77% increase in tons-km between 1985 and 2003. A significant share of this transformation concerns the emergence of long distance rail freight corridors linking the two major gateway systems of North America; Southern California and New York/New Jersey via Chicago. This represents the most efficient Landbridge in the world, which considerably reduces distances between the East and the West coasts. Thus, the North American landbridge is mainly the outcome of growing transpacific trade and has undergone the containerized revolution; container traffic represented approximately 80% of all rail intermodal moves. Landbridges are particularly the outcome of a cooperation between rail operators eager to get lucrative long distance traffic and maritime shippers eager to reduce shipping time and costs, particularly from Asia.

With the North American landbridge, an alternative to freight shipments across Panama Canal or the Strait of Magellan is thus available. For instance, a container coming from Singapore takes 36 days to reach New York using the Panama Canal sea route. The same journey takes 19 days if the Landbridge is used (Double-stack rail transport using the Seattle-Chicago-New York rail chain). The distance from Yokohama to Rotterdam is reduced from 23,200 km to 20,240 km if the American Landbridge is used. On average, transport services between the East Coast of the United States and Pacific-Asia are reduced from 6 days to 2 weeks depending on the case. The North-American Landbridge is also competing for a market share of the traffic between Europe and Asia. It requires for maritime shippers on average from 5 to 6 weeks to service the harbors of Tokyo and Rotterdam. With the Landbridge, this time is reduced to about 3 weeks with an 80 hours railway journey across North America.

With the landbridge service, several maritime companies abandoned the Panama Canal and were able to shift to post panamax class containerships. Their productivity and long distance shipping costs were reduced proportionally as maritime shippers were able to use larger ships with a higher level of frequency of services. A higher capacity can thus be achieved with the same number of ships. The North-American Landbridge also includes a Canadian (Vancouver-Montreal-Halifax) and a Mexican section (Salina Cruz-Coatzacoalos). As opposed to the Eurasian landbridge, the American landbridge has the advantage of providing a transcontinental link through a single country (Canada, USA or Mexico).