b'2American Journal of Transportation ajot.comPort of New York and New Jersey: coping withn ew york po rts2020the COVID economyAs cargo recovers from pandemic lows, the port considers the way forwardBy Peter Buxbaum, AJOT CallittheCOVIDecon- stores started restocking prod-omy. The lockdowns of Marchucts that enhance life at home, andApril2020causedeco- like appliances and electronics.nomicactivitynationwidetoOfcourse,keepingthe plummet.Laterreopenings cargo moving during the pan-butwithawidespreadpublicdemicrequiredanextraor-acceptanceofastay-at-homedinarylevelofcooperation lifestyleandcombinedwithbetweenlaborandmanage-government stimulus dollars ment. To that point, Poelma allowedeconomicactivitytosaid,We[APMTerminals] increase in recent months. want to recognize our Labor TheCOVIDeconomypartnerswhohaveshowed has seen discretionary spend- up every day to work at the ing on travel and hospitalityport this year throughout the falloffacliff,whilemore(COPINGcontinued on disposableincomeisgoingpage 4) Aerial view of APM Terminals in Port Ellzabeth, NJ for consumer goods. Staying athomehasalsoledtothe much-notedaccelerationof the e-commerce trend.Retailsalescollapsed duringthesecondquarter of 2020, then bounced back some, said Alexander Heil, chiefeconomistatthePort AuthorityofNew Yorkand NewJersey.Retailsales recovered in part because of thefiscalstimulusthatwas putinplacebythegovern-ment. COVID accelerated the e-commerce trend by pushing ten years of change into a six-month period.E- commErcE andcoVIdAccording to Census Bureau figures,e-commercegrew 17% during the second quar-ter,evenastotalretailsales fellby8%.Non-storeretail grew from 33.8% to 40.5% of the total during the pandemic.These trends are reflected in developments in and around thePortofNewYorkand NewJersey.InApril,cargo volumesweredown7.5% compared to the year before. By August, which saw a 1.3% increaseyear-over-year,the portwassettingcontainer-volumerecords.Thehot industrialrealestatemarket in the port region reflects the growthofe-commerce,as distributionandfulfillment centersarepositionedcloser to consumers.(See boxes on page 8 and 10) Whenyoulookatthe data,youseeanincreasein the deliveries of home goods, saidSamRuda,thePort Authoritysportcommerce director.Appliances,for example, are up. Interestingly, so are beer, wines, and spirits. On the other hand, apparel is down as people dont dress up for working at home.Earlieroninthepan-demic, we were seeing retail-ers cancelling their fall lines, saidJonPoelma,managing director at APM Terminals in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Once people started shopping more,'