The Shipping Container and the Globalization of American Infrastructure by Matthew W. Heins
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The Shipping Container and the Globalization of American Infrastructure by Matthew W. Heins A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Architecture) in the University of Michigan 2013 Doctoral Committee: Professor Robert L. Fishman, Chair Associate Professor Scott D. Campbell Professor Paul N. Edwards Associate Professor Claire A. Zimmerman © Matthew W. Heins 2013 Acknowledgments I wish to express my sincere and heartfelt thanks to my advisor, professor Robert Fishman, who has provided such valuable guidance and advice to me over the years. Ever since I arrived at the University of Michigan, Robert has been of tremendous assistance, and he has played a vital role in my evolution as a student and scholar. My deepest gratitude also goes out to the other members of my dissertation committee, professors Claire Zimmerman, Scott Campbell and Paul Edwards, who have all given invaluable help to me in countless ways. In addition I would like to thank professor Martin Murray, who has been very supportive and whose comments and ideas have been enriching. Other faculty members here at the University of Michigan who have helped or befriended me in one way or another, and to whom I owe thanks, include Kit McCullough, Matthew Lassiter, Carol Jacobsen, Melissa Harris, María Arquero de Alarcón, June Manning Thomas, Malcolm McCullough, Jean Wineman, Geoffrey Thün, Roy Strickland, Amy Kulper, Lucas Kirkpatrick and Gavin Shatkin. My fellow doctoral students in architecture and urban planning at Taubman College have helped me immensely over the years, as I have benefited greatly from their companionship and intellectual presence. There are too many to name in full, but I particularly wish to thank Kush Patel, Aysu Berk, Nghi-Dung Nguyen-Phuoc, Douglas Kolozsvari, Laura Smith, Patrick Cooper- McCann, Conrad Kickert, Lori Smithey, Eric Seymour, Wonhyung Lee, Michael McCulloch, Neha Sami, Nicholas Senske, Deirdre Hennebury, LaDale Winling, Stephanie Pilat, Diaan Van Der Westhuizen, Kristina Luce, Elizabeth Vandermark, Matthew Weber, Robert Walsh and Elizabeth Keslacy. In addition I give sincere thanks to my dear friend Sonja Janeva, and send along my best wishes to her. The archivists at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., were of great assistance when I visited their archives. Two librarians at the Art, Architecture & Engineering Library of the University of Michigan, Paul Grochowski and Rebecca Price, were also extremely helpful. Likewise Mindy Alguire, a librarian at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) Library, provided valuable assistance. My family is far away geographically, but always in my thoughts. I give special thanks and love to my mother Marjorie Heins, my father Gregory Heins, and my sister Catherine Boalch. I also send thanks and love to Karen Haas, Philip Boalch and Melanie Boalch, and I pay my deepest tribute to the memory of Robert Boalch. To anyone I have left out, my apologies. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ii List of Figures iv Abstract v Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. The Rise of the Container as a Global Standard 12 Chapter 3. Containerization as an Infrastructure 31 Chapter 4. Globalizing the Infrastructure of the Nation-State 53 Chapter 5. The Reluctant Railroads 77 Chapter 6. Trucking Gets on Board 110 Chapter 7. The Transformation of the Railroads 143 Chapter 8. Trucking Put in Its Place 165 Chapter 9. Sites of Transfer 190 Chapter 10. Slow Going on the Inland Waterways 215 Chapter 11. The Emergence of the Domestic Container 239 Chapter 12. Intermodalism as Transportation Policy 254 Chapter 13. Conclusion 269 Bibliography 278 iii List of Figures Figure 2.1: Early Sea-Land containers being loaded on the ship’s deck 18 Figure 2.2: A typical 40’ ISO global shipping container 21 Figure 2.3: A contemporary container ship in port 26 Figure 4.1: 1915 advertisement for AT&T 56 Figure 5.1: Across the Continent (“Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way”), 79 Currier & Ives lithograph Figure 5.2: Containers being transferred between train and truck in the 1920s 91 Figure 5.3: Flexi-Van container being moved between truck and railcar 96 Figure 6.1: Ocean Van Lines containers 129 Figure 6.2: Twistlock on a trailer chassis 133 Figure 7.1: Unit of an articulated double-stack railcar 150 Figure 7.2: Example of clearance-raising work in a tunnel 153 Figure 7.3: A stacktrain 157 Figure 8.1: Trailer chassis with gooseneck 170 Figure 8.2: 40’ container moving by truck 179 Figure 8.3: Port of Miami Tunnel 188 Figure 9.1: Container transfer at an intermodal terminal 199 Figure 9.2: Operations at a contemporary intermodal terminal 203 Figure 10.1: COB on the Columbia-Snake river system 228 Figure 10.2: COB on the Rhine 231 Figure 11.1: 53’ domestic containers moving by stacktrain 249 iv Abstract Over the past few decades the transportation infrastructure of the United States has been globalized by the shipping container, an object that carries vast amounts of global commerce. Best known for traveling over the ocean, the container’s ability to move in trucking and railroad infrastructures is equally crucial. As its intermodal capability allows for easy transfer between transport modes without its contents being loaded and unloaded, a container is able to follow a global trajectory through the use of multiple infrastructures. Consequently the domestic American transportation system has been integrated into the worldwide network of containerized freight movement. The American trucking and railroad systems have moved containers since the 1920s, and larger modern containers since the 1950s. Paralleling the dramatic rise in global trade, in recent decades the container has been widely carried by these two domestic infrastructures, and has also traveled on inland waterways sporadically. Trucking and railroads have been altered in many ways by containerization, both in terms of the necessary equipment and the routes of movement. Furthermore, the container’s proliferation in the U.S. transportation network has necessitated the development of intermodal terminals, large facilities at key junctions of road and rail where containers are transferred from one transport mode to another. Yet the U.S. national infrastructure has kept many of its longstanding characteristics, for the container does not replace or transform it but rather depends upon it. The container’s impact is substantial and results in some important changes, as American transportation systems must accommodate its physical qualities and other characteristics, but the fundamental nature of domestic infrastructure generally remains in place. In this regard containerization is typical of many processes of globalization, in that change is largely carried out within and through existing frameworks of the nation-state. The way the container impacts American transportation, therefore, is deeply affected by the historical, geographic, social and political realities of the nation and its infrastructure. Globalization is not a top-down transformation in which the worldwide scale inexorably dominates national, regional and local contexts, but rather is a nuanced and contingent process. v Chapter 1 ~ Introduction This dissertation examines how the American transportation infrastructure has been altered—in a sense “globalized”—to accommodate the internationally standardized shipping container. This process has taken place from the introduction of containerization in shipping in the 1950s up to the present day, and seems likely to continue. Over this period of time the domestic infrastructure within the American territory, well established and possessing its own distinct qualities, changed in many ways to suit the container. The United States, like so many other countries, has been integrated into the global networks of container movement and supply chains. Yet during this process American infrastructure retained many of its characteristics, for the container is designed to work within existing transportation systems already in place. So while it is the case that the container impacted U.S. infrastructure in certain ways, the global infrastructure of containerization has largely operated through national systems rather than transforming or replacing them. This does not mean globalization has failed to transpire, but rather that global processes are shaped by national and local circumstances and are carried out in ways that vary depending on specific contexts. Globalization is not a generic trend that flattens particularities of place, but instead coexists with these varied contexts and at times is even generated by them. The bulk of the dissertation provides a historical account of the shipping container’s effect on the American transportation system. The container’s presence within the United States has been most prominent in two infrastructures, trucking and the railroad. From the early days of containerization until roughly the late 1970s these two infrastructures were relatively lightly affected by the container, and in the years since they have been far more deeply altered due to the massive growth in container traffic. The spatial and material qualities of trucking, railroads and the container itself have played a key part in this process. An additional component of this infrastructural transformation, especially since the 1980s, has been the development of large intermodal terminals where containers are transferred between train and truck. Placed throughout