New San Francisco cruise terminal dedicated

By Tom Stieghorst
James R. Herman Cruise Terminal, San FranciscoThe Port of San Francisco is dedicating its new cruise terminal, which will accommodate longer cruise ships, in a Sept. 25 ceremony.

Situated on the city’s famed Embarcadero, Terminal 27 totals 88,000 square feet on two levels. An older maritime shed was demolished to make space for the terminal, which had a soft opening with the arrival of a Princess Cruises ship last week.

The new terminal comes with an overhead gangway for boarding passengers along the Pier 27 apron and shoreside power infrastructure to permit docked ships to shut down their onboard engines.

A three-acre triangular paved area between Pier 27 and Pier 29 has been developed as a ground transportation and provisioning area.

The existing terminal at Pier 35 will continue as a secondary terminal when there is more than one cruise ship in port.

The port currently gets between 40 and 80 calls a year. That is not expected to change, although the passenger count will grow because the ships docking at the pier are getting larger.

Redevelopment of Pier 27 has been in the works since 2007.

Key West voters say no to large cruise ships

Key West voters say no to large cruise ships

By Tom Stieghorst
Key West residents have voted against asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study widening the ship channel to accommodate larger cruise ships.

The vote was 4,531-1,630 against the study, according to newspaper reports.

Dredging the channel from 300 feet to 450 feet in width would displace 150,000 cubic yards of seafloor protected by the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The $3 million study would lay out the economic benefits and environmental costs of the project.

Cruise passengers spend about $80 million annually in Key West.

The vote pitted some business interests against a group called Key West Committee for Responsible Tourism, which opposes the project.

Carnival to build new Barcelona cruise terminal

Carnival to build new Barcelona cruise terminal

By Tom Stieghorst
Carnival Corp. and the port of Barcelona reached an agreement on the construction of a new $27 million cruise terminal that will handle post-Panamax sized ships.

The terminal will be about 107,000 square feet, large enough to accommodate 4,500 people. It is expected to open in 2016.

Carnival already operates a terminal at the port, which will be expanded by about 14,000 square feet. Both terminals are on the Adossat Wharf.

Carnival will invest the $27 million and run the terminal as a concession. The port will invest about $2.7 million on roads and other infrastructure and about $2 million on signage.

Barcelona is the fourth-busiest cruise port in the world, with an estimated passenger volume of 2.6 million passengers this year.

Post-Panamax ships

Post-Panamax or over-Panamax denote ships larger than Panamax that do not fit in the canal, such as supertankers and the largest modern container ships. The “largest oil tanker in the world”—whichever ship held the title at the time—has not been able to transit the Panama Canal at least since the Idemitsu Maru was launched in the 1960s; it carried about 150,000 deadweight tons. All US Navy aircraft carriers since USS Midway have been in the post-Panamax class