45 INDUSTRY KNOWLEDGE, (cont.) Knowledge of the port industry and/or the Port of Long Beach And, according to the L.A. Times article, “The threat from Canada and Mexico is all too real with the emergence of a major effort to link the ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert via Canadian National Railway. The railway has acquired routes that run south into the U.S. to Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, in a bid to challenge Union Pacific and BNSF as North America’s dominant railroads. “In Mexico, much attention has been given to the effort to build a major port at Punta Colonet, but two other ports – Manzanillo and Lazaro Carenas – have emerged as the real players, benefited by rail infrastructure improvements by lines such as Kansas Southern." Together those four ports in British Columbia and Western Mexico handled four million containers in 2009, most bound for the U.S. The two charts below illustrate how the Port of Long Bach compares to other West Coast ports (Fig. 1), and notable global ports (Fig. 2), in terms of container shipments. West Coast Container Port Traffic in TEUs (TEU = Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit) Fig. 1 TEUs (000) 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 9,000 2 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 2 2 0 0 3 2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 Port of Los A ngeles Port of Long Beach Port of Oakland Port of Seattle Port of Tacoma Port of San Diego Source: American Association of Port Authorities