By Dan McCue

CHARLESTON -- A year removed from his cabinet position in the Bush administration, Norman Y. Mineta still feels frustrated that he couldn’t do more to alleviate traffic congestion on the East and West Coasts as the U.S. Secretary of Transportation.

“I always felt that there was a solution to our traffic ills in the intermodal transport of cargo and short-sea shipping, but there was only so far we could go given the entrenched interests of the rail and trucking industry,” Mineta said shortly before addressing the Southeast regional meeting of the Propeller Club of the United States last week in the Gold Room of the Francis Marion Hotel in downtown Charleston.

“I understand their concerns, and I understand that any significant change is liable to be accompanied by apprehension, but at the same time I always thought — pardon the pun — that a move to short sea shipping would ultimately float everybody’s boat … that it would increase not diminish the amount of trade-related work to be done.”

In all, representatives of 10 ports attended the all-day session at the hotel, including officials from the ports of Gulf Port and Pascagoula, Miss.; Pensacola, Canaveral, Manatee, Tampa and Jacksonville, Fla.; Savannah, Ga.; and of course, Charleston.

“Events like this afford us yet another opportunity to talk about the challenges we share in terms of infrastructure, space for expansion and the sheer volume of trade coming into this country – and gives is an opportunity to discuss important initiatives,” said Propeller Club of Charleston president Byron Miller.

“One such initiative very much in evidence here is our fostering of students enrolled in the College of Charleston’s logistics and trade program,” Miller continued.

About a half dozen College of Charleston students participated in the day-long event and a raffle was held during lunch to benefit the program. “It’s a way of encouraging young people to get into our industry,” Miller said.

But it was Mineta, the man who ordered all commercial aircraft grounded in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, who was the main draw of the lunchtime event. Mineta entered public life as a member of the San Jose, Calif., City Council, was subsequently elected mayor — a post he said gave him an opportunity to become acquainted with Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. — and later served as San Jose’s representative in Congress.

President Bill Clinton appointed him Secretary of Commerce in 2000, and President George W. Bush asked him to stay on in a new role as Transportation Secretary in his administration.

Mineta left that post in 2006 to accept the vice chairmanship of Hill & Knowlton, the renowned public relations firm. More recently he also became a member of the advisory board of CaroLinks, the intermodal startup company.

Standing among port officials as they sipped Mimosas after an all-morning session on infrastructure and port efficiency concerns, Mineta said those gathered around him represented an underappreciated and often overlooked industry that is nevertheless a vital component of the economy.

“Think of what would happen — not just to this country, but those throughout the world — if goods did not move safely and securely through our ports,” he said.

Mineta then recalled the dockworker strike at West Coast ports in 2002, an event now seen as the beginning of an onslaught of trade coming through East Coast facilities.

“We had set up an office on site at the Port of Long beach to try to deal with the situation and I’ll never forget a call I received from a representative of Liz Claiborne who said, ‘You have to think of the shelf life of my bathing suits the way you think about the shelf life of bananas,’” the former Secretary laughed.

The person from Liz Claiborne went on to explain that retailers bought their bathing suits with a guaranteed margin and that if the suits didn’t reach store shelves by April 2002 at the latest, the company would be exposed to picking up the tab.

“Of course, that was an object lesson in just how important keeping the trade moving is,” Mineta said. “And it’s why I continued to try to get people with seemingly competing interests to sit down and discuss how we could move freight more efficiently, not just at the ports, but all the way to inland sites like Chicago, which has its own bottlenecks to contend with.

“You know, one of the things these officials talk about is how, if they can’t move the cargo to the satisfaction of the shipper and the retailer, it’s going to go somewhere else,” he continued. “Well that’s true on the macro level as well. There’s a lot of talk out of Mexico that they’re developing their ports as an alternative to our West Coast facilities and, by extension, to the East Coast ports that are relieving West Coast congestion today.

“We need to react to that and to do so quickly, because trade is like water — if it hits an obstacle, it’s going to go elsewhere,” Mineta said. “That’s why I think ports like the Port of Charleston have to constantly reinvent themselves so that they can meet the challenges of today.”

Throughout his discourse, Mineta was given to dramatize his points either through expansive facial expressions, or by jabbing an elbow sideways when talking of the relationship between competing transportation interests.

Growing more philosophical before excusing himself to speak to the room, he said working in transportation was a constant process of overcoming hurdles.

“I think it’s something every transportation secretary has found, that it doesn’t matter which rock you turn over, something else is always bound to pop up,” he said.

“It’s a funny thing about transportation. No one’s concerned about it until it’s denied them,” Mineta continued.  “That’s when you hear all the talk about getting the trucks off the roads and so forth.

“However I think there’s a much more compelling reason for us to address our transportation issues: The great gains we’ve achieved in productivity are being diminished by traffic congestion. That costs time in equipment, in manpower, all the way up and down the line,” he said.

“If we want our economy to continue to prosper, that’s the reason to act. And that’s why, again, alternatives like intermodal transportation and short sea shipping are important. We’ve done it others ways; it’s high time we tried something else to keep everybody in business.”