PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Beyond the human toll of the bridge collapse in Baltimore, there will also be widespread impacts on the supply chain and travel as the port is temporarily closed.
The port in Baltimore is a critical landing place for hundreds of thousands of vehicles annually, from passenger cars to heavy farm equipment. Supply chain experts say other products will be relatively easy to re-route to nearby ports, but vehicles will be more challenging because of infrastructure limitations at other East Coast ports. “Other ports that can absorb the volume will be New York and also Jacksonville, maybe a little bit of Charleston, because the other ports, they are not equipped to handle all these cars, all these vehicles parked on the dock,” said Christopher Tang, author and Senior Associate Dean of Global Initiatives at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
According to Tang, there is a risk that the disruption at the port could impact the availability of vehicles being shipped from Europe and the price of those cars. “I think the American consumers will not feel the impacts immediately, but I think they will feel it, maybe talking about a few weeks or a couple of months because it’s all these cars they unload from the container ship, will take months to get to the dealership to get to the consumers,” Tang explained.
There are also travel implications caused by the bridge collapse. Major cruise lines, including Carnival and Royal Caribbean, have cruises scheduled to depart from the port in Baltimore in April. In a statement, Carnival said it is temporarily moving its Baltimore operations to Norfolk, Virginia. That includes a current trip scheduled to return to port on Sunday, March 31. The company says passengers will be bussed from Norfolk to Baltimore.
“Our thoughts remain with the impacted families and first responders in Baltimore,” Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in a written statement. “We appreciate the pledge made by President Biden today to dedicate all available resources to reopen Baltimore Harbor to marine traffic as soon as possible. As those plans are finalized, we will update our future cruise guests on when we will return home to Baltimore, but in the meantime, we appreciate the quick response and support from officials in Norfolk.”
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