By Air, Rail and Sea, San Antonio is Now An International Port of Choice
Published Apr 14, 2008
Investments in the expansion of rail networks are strengthening the Alamo Area’s position as a global logistics hub.
The Alamo Area is poised to become one of the nation’s largest international ports, by highway, air, rail and sea.
With the ongoing development of Port San Antonio at the former Kelly Air Force Base, a Union Pacific railroad hub under construction and highway improvements, the region is capitalizing on its location.
San Antonio is perched on Interstate 10, halfway between the east and west coasts. Interstate 35, traveling north and south, gives San Antonio a prime location on the NAFTA Corridor connecting Canada and Mexico. And Interstate 37 provides easy access to the Gulf Coast at Corpus Christi.
The rail system is undergoing significant improvements as well.
Kyle Burns, president and CEO of Free Trade Alliance San Antonio, says investments such as Union Pacific’s $90 million terminal, under construction, “will strengthen San Antonio’s position as a global logistics hub.”
Already the city “is at the crossroads of the North American Free Trade Agreement area. With I-10 and I-35, you can access any of the three markets (Mexico, Canada and the U.S.) from here and enjoy a low cost of living and a great life.”
The Union Pacific terminal will add to both the trade and lifestyle pluses of San Antonio. “It will keep trucks off the road and allow more to go on rail,” Burns says. “It’s going to make (San Antonio) a lot more accessible for companies to do things more cost effectively.”
Port San Antonio, the former Kelly Air Force Base, “got a whole new life for shipping, distribution and manufacturing” when it was turned into a trade hub, according to Stephanie Ramsey, vice president of marketing.
The 300 acres of railport industrial property includes about 70 “rail-served acres.” The port has invested in interchange tracks and a switch engine to bring rail cars into the distribution center. Rail containers can “either be unloaded into the buildings or onto the trans-load pads and then picked up by trucks,” Ramsey says.
“Already, we have had copper ore coming in from Idaho into our rail port, where it was trans-loaded into trucks and went to the port of Houston and then on to Hanover, Germany.”
The same process gets goods to and from manufacturers and seaports in Mexico.
Enhancing the port’s development is the fact that it “is serviced by a 11,500-foot runway, which is one of the largest in the country,” Ramsey says.
On one side of the strip is Lackland Air Force Base. “On the Port San Antonio side, we have approximately 575 acres that we will be developing for office flex space and warehouse area, and we will be completing construction on an almost 90,000-square-foot cargo terminal” by the first of this year, says Ramsey.
“We are a formidable location for a logistics platform,” she says.
Jeff Webb, vice president of the Austin/San Antonio Corridor Council, says his organization is involved in logistics upgrades enhancing the growth of the entire NAFTA hub.
“The largest economic development in the state of Texas” is the State Highway 130 project, a 90-mile toll road that will connect the area north of Austin with Seguin, just east of San Antonio.
“The road is like a river of commerce: Growth comes with it,” says Webb, of the project which is set for completion in 2012.
“What we are technically doing is pushing the cities of San Antonio, Austin and all the cities in between to the east,” he says of the toll road project that eventually will run virtually parallel to I-35, but will divert much of the traffic from that road that cuts through both cities.
“Over a million trucks from Mexico pass through San Antonio and Austin each year,” Webb says. “That’s 8,000-10,000 a day. And they obviously impact this region.”
Story by Tim Ghianni
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