U.S. Ports' Market Share Analysis

The rapid growth of world trade has increased demand on ports and transportation services that distribute freight throughout the country. User fees have been considered as a method to invest in new infrastructure to better meet this demand. This paper demonstrates a method for evaluating the potential impact of such fees on ports' market shares. The paper summarizes multiple analyses of the potential impact of fees on competitive ports' traffic volume and market share. The goal is to estimate if/how additional fees would affect port demand, and ultimately port revenues. Besides measuring ports' market shares via PIERS, transportation costs were estimated for alternative routes between overseas Trade Regions and inland market areas. A regression model compares the costs of routing through competitive ports and their respective shares. The model also helped evaluate the impact of all-water routings, size of the port market and the logistics resources near the port.