While living in the United States, I must admit that I knew little about city planning.. and I really didn’t care. I enjoyed driving, and my morning/ evening commute was always an adventure.. .and more than my morning commute, I loved getting out on the open road for a cross country trip.

But that was when I had the time, and gas was only .98USD/ gallon.

However, with 6+ years in China (the last 5 in Shanghai), all I can say is that China for me is a model of what transportation networks in cities - and between cities - should be for the future… and what makes me appreciate Shanghai more and more, is reading article/ posts like the one Jim Kunstler just wrote called Blind Spot on his blog Clusterfuck Nation:

I got a little guided tour of Minneapolis from the author-shlepping service that my publisher engaged. We rode past the old Minneapolis central train station. He said no trains stop there anymore

In other words, this region of the country has next-to-zero railroad service. Can we pause a moment here to ask: exactly how far does America have its head up its ass? Do you get the picture? Can you connect the dots? The airline industry is dying and absolutely no thought is being given to how people will get around this big country — except to make the stupid assumption that we can just drive our cars instead. Even during the several days I was around Minneapolis, no news media or politician raised the subject of reviving passenger railroad service.

In point of fact, these are exactly the kind of trips that would be better served by rail, anyway — the towns that are less than five hundred miles apart. The travel time between trains and planes would be comparable, considering the two hours or so that you have to add to every airplane trip because of all the security crap, not to mention the delays. As a matter of fact, USA today ran a front page story two days after the Delta / Northwest announcement saying “Air Trips Slowest [now than] in Past 20 Years.” Subhead: “Trend likely to persist as congestion worsens.”

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In what has to be yet another Darwin award for US Trade reps, it appears that now that the US finally has a bit of silver lining from the lows of the greenback, has hit another snag in taking advantage of this opportunity.

They are out of containers.

Container Shortage Puts U.S. Export Boom in a Box is an article from the journal (sorry.. I think you have to subscribe to see it) that shows just how backwards the US supply chain is.. literally:

“There are some places, particularly in the Midwest, where there’s a complete lack of containers,” says Philip Damas, the head of container research at Drewry Shipping Consultants in London.

And it’s not just boxes that are in short supply. Maersk Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, the Danish container shipping company, notes a shortage of chassis, which are sets of wheels and frames on container-carrying trucks. Without enough chassis to deliver containers, it doesn’t matter how many are piled up in a port, says a company spokeswoman. Yet another problem: Many shipping lines, including Maersk, have shifted container capacity away from the U.S., just when U.S. producers need them most.

so, for those of you who though that all that was needed was for the Chinese to stop manipulating their currency before your orders would come back… apparently, another example of how bad planning has hit your bottom line.

So, like vietnam, it looks like you can count on the bandaid for the timebeing coming from the air cargo industry. Hint.. hint… buy air cargo stocks

That is, if they can actually get the birds in the air.

Bill Dodson from This is China writes a piece in Euro Biz this month entitled Parts missing that looks at some of the difficulties a few friend are facing when entering China’s interior market of Chongqing.

It is one of those pieces that will surely get a lot of reads, because he is right. Chongqing is missing some hardware, a lot of software, and for many firms it has yet to develop the local market necessary to warrant real interest from a lot of firms.

why this article is interesting is that Bill’s writing reminds me of conversations I had 5 years ago with investors about Nanjing and Chengdu. they were in Shanghai, they were in Beijing, but when I mentioned Nanjing or Chengdu… the response was “where?”

In one case, I was working on a 10 million USD investment for 6 buildings. the development firms had gone bankrupt, creditors were knocking LOUDLY, and we had exclusive right to it. We spent two days going over the sites, mapping the locations, and building the models based on current market conditions and a general understanding that Nanjing was about to see a huge economic jump over the next 5-8 years that would make these properties really really sexy.

The result of our analysis was that without doing anything, investors would make 200% within 6 months (the lock out period) by simply flipping the properties.

200% sounds attractive right?

well… after meeting with 10 investment groups based in Shanghai, and more based internationally, we came to a single conclusion that 15% in Shanghai was better than 200% in Nanjing because investors really did not understand the fundamentals of China. It wasn’t that there weren’t opportunities. It was that these opportunities required some background, a little imagination, and patience.

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I learned a long time ago, that while Shanghai moves quick you sometimes end up hanging out while people need to make their way across town for appointments. So, wihle waiting for my lunch appointment (I made it early), I caught up on some reading by opening up the CHaINA that is sitting on my desk.

By far China’s best english language logistics publication, I was happy to see that I not only made the front cover, but that my post last month entitled Factory Closing: Why Is Anyone Shocked? This Was Coming was highlighted in the blog section.

Mug shot of me, and a reposted All Roads article aside, this magazine is a must for anyone looking to learn more about cold chain (particularly those interested in the Olympic food chain) . There are also a number of interesting articles on the logistics of flowers from Yunnan (written by Chris at Go Kunming), and a large news roundup section as well.

to access the new (and fantastically slick) web version go here, and honestly (this is my inner treehugger talking) you do not need to print this or ask for printed copy anymore. Their web version is more than enough.

An interesting clip on Youtube as been released by the user TNTcommunications on TNT’s China Operations.

While the China domestic market one of great interested by everyone in the express market, TNT has taken a much different approach. The clear leader at this point being Fedex, who purchased Datian and have 38 guaranteed cities, I have yet to see TNT do much more than to buy out their partner Sinotrans.

Where TNT has taken a stronghold is through their Shenzhen Anda operations, and their capabilities in their automotive services.

With that being said, if TNT is anything like the other groups then they are defiantly looking at ways to improve their position, and while FedEx has a clear advantage at this point, it is safe to say that anything is possible in the domestic market.

A huge fan of China’s plans to install metro lines across more then 30 cities, I was happy to stumble across this clip covering BEijing’s plans for its public transport network.

Overacting aside, it was really good to see that some of the plans I was hearing about while living there were now in service, and it would be good to hear from anyone in Beijing as to how the new lines are doing.

After all, while the new lines in Shanghai  are a great step (9 lines in total now), it feels like the number of riders has tripled… it is simple stacked

Oh - the clip is 30 minutes long, so probably best to get some popcorn.

While on a trip to Sinapore in 2001 with 30 Thunderbird students, we were given a behindthe scenes tour of the singapore port and its plans to develop.  the goal was simple.. surpase HK once and for all.

Well, apparently it didn’t work out as planned, and as reported in the China and Shanghai Daily papers, Shanghai has now passed HK to become the world’s second largest port with an amazing 26+ million TEUs.

If there were any doubt about how important the Yangtze delta has become, this should bring about a bit of reality.  26 million TEUS is nearly the throughput of the entire country of Vietnam, and that is factoring in the bulk freight that is also moving through the port.

and if that weren’t enough, Tianjin just logged a 20% increase on last year with 7 million TEUs … and is looking to ramp that us significantly over the next few years.

Now wonder a PE fund specifically for improving the shipping industry is being set up in Tianjin…. Shipping expansion floated

So, congratulations to the folsk at Shanghai Port, and JIAYOU to the folks at Tianjin port.