Mercator International partnered with a leading international economics firm to prepare a long-term forecast of flows of container and non-container traffic expected to move through the San Pedro Bay gateway (“SPB”) for a Southern California port authority. The forecast was based on analysis of cargo and commodity throughput trends in North America. The SPB ports’ past share of each cargo segment’s total volume was analyzed to see how it had changed and to identity what had caused any long-term shifts. Mercator also used its understanding of the ocean shipping, ports, railroad, and logistics industries, in combination with its proprietary analytical models, to quantify how industry trends are expected to affect the route costs for different cargo segments in order to benchmark the competitiveness of SPB ports vis-à-vis competing gateways.