Megaport picks up momentum

Plans being drawn up, Baja governor says
By Diane Lindquist
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
March 7, 2007

TIJUANA – Baja California officials are drawing up a master plan for the development of the city that will surround the planned Punta Colonet megaport 150 miles south of the border, Gov. Eugenio Elorduy Walther said in an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The port-rail Colonet complex “will be the most important project that has been constructed in the history of Mexico,” the governor said.

Plans so far call for the port to be as large as the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach combined, occupying nearly 7,000 acres at Punta Colonet. About 97 percent of the area will be water and 3 percent tidelands.

The port is expected to handle 8 million 20-foot equivalent units or TEUs – the standard measure of container cargo – a year. The containers, mostly from Asia, would move into the U.S. interior on a 180-mile rail line that will be developed with the port. The line is expected to connect with existing rail systems at Yuma, Ariz.