Travel along the I-10 exhibits the mainstays of our consumer economy: transportation, retail, food, and the overall built environment. Its underlying global supply chain is less obvious. The Ten Across region offers glimpses of how emerging technologies and rising nationalism will change the future of American commerce.
Since the 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act was conceived, this system has become the primary means of transporting goods across the country. Autonomous trucks currently being tested along the I-10 corridor will recalibrate the economies that have developed around this network.
goods shipped via truck in the U.S.
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Our values can now be measured by the container load. East Asia’s rise as a manufacturing center for popular consumer goods resulted in the expansion of Western U.S. ports. Los Angeles is now the country’s largest container port complex, the hub of a vast distribution and retail network radiating outward.
Facts and Figures, FY 2018-2019. Port of Los Angeles.
Market share of containerized goods destined for West Coast states passing through Los Angeles’ port complex
Source Facts and Figures, FY 2018-2019. Port of Los Angeles.
The U.S. transition in 2019 from net importer to net exporter of fossil fuels is intertwined with continued growth in the petrochemical industry. In turn, the scale of bulk shipping and infrastructure in the Gulf has been dramatically expanded, and the number of deepwater ports handling the region’s exports is projected to grow from 1 to as many as 6.
Annual U.S. economic value threatened if the Houston Ship Channel is inundated by storm surge
The U.S./Mexico border is frequently a rhetorical flashpoint for immigration and security. Yet it also represents a mutually beneficial point of connectivity, the locus of tremendous social and economic exchange as people and goods cross daily.
Annual U.S./Mexico trade passing through inland ports of call
Source U.S.-Mexico Trade Facts, 2019. Office of the United States Trade Representative.
Photo: Jones Studio, Inc
