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CBO: US Port Performance Act Would Not Cost an Arm and a Leg

September 9, 2015

The implementation of the Port Performance Act, a program to collect statistical information on the largest 25 ports in the United States, would cost USD 9 million over the 2016-2020 period, according to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office.

The Act was drafted following the recent nine month labor dispute at 29 West Coast container ports, and is expected to provide earlier warning of disruptions to various sectors of U.S. economy.

It requires the director of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to establish a port performance statistics program and report annually to Congress on the performance and capacity of key U.S. ports. The U.S. port authorities that are subject to federal regulation or that receive federal assistance would report annually to BTS.

The Act also requires the Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the Secretaries of Labor and Commerce, to report to Congress on a port’s performance before and after the expiration of maritime labor agreements to help indicate whether labor discussions have impacted operations, the estimated economic impact of such disputes and roughly how long it will take for shipments to return to normal.

The legislation would also establish a working group to develop recommendations for specifications of port performance measures and determine what additional information would be needed.

Based on information from the Department of Transportation and industry experts, some of the information is already collected by ports, and CBO expects that the cost of supplying that information to BTS would be small.

Ports may incur additional costs to collect new information, but CBO estimates that the cost of collecting the additional information would not be substantial.

Consequently, CBO estimates that the cost of the mandate would fall below the annual thresholds established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) for intergovernmental and private-sector mandates (USD 77 million and USD 154 million in 2015, respectively).