The Western Seaboard has four major deep water gateways: Seattle, Portland,
San Francisco and Los Angeles. However, there is poor waterway access to the
interior because of the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains. The only exception is
the Columbia River basin, which is accessible to deep-sea ships up to Portland,
about 160 km inland. The existing short sea services transport mostly containers
and trailers between Tacoma and Anchorage. Except for a few very small
instances, there are no inland maritime container services in North America.