Port of Virginia channel widening boosts ship traffic

In 2019, the Port of Virginia embarked on a massive $450 million dredging project to both widen and deepen its shipping channel to make it the widest and deepest harbor on the East Coast.

In March 2024, the widening portion of the project was complete, opening the doors to two ultra-large container vessels to pass by at the same time, and getting rid of a major obstacle. Experts say the port has seen a difference over the past year.

In fiscal 2024, the port processed 3.5 million 20-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, a 2% increase over fiscal year 2023, and ship calls increased 5% to 1,733 in 2024.

“The completion of the widening is certainly a big deal,” says David White, executive director of the Virginia Maritime Association. “What it has done is removed essentially a bottleneck in our port operations.”

In the old days, two ships could pass at a time, but then vessels got larger, White explains, and the port had to restrict ships to one-way traffic. But now, they’ve gotten the port back to a place where it can have “two-way ship traffic 24/7,” he says.

These ships can carry more than 20,000 TEU cargo units. Previously, the largest ship that called at the Port of Virginia was the CMA CGM Marco Polo, with a capacity of 16,022 TEUs. It called at the port in 2021 and also broke the East Coast’s big-ship record, according to CMA CGM, a French shipping giant with its U.S. headquarters in Norfolk.

But the Port of Virginia hasn’t seen any record-setters in terms of size “in a while,” says Joe Harris, a port spokesman. Nonetheless, the port offers direct services to more than 45 countries and indirect service to more than 200 countries, with top trade partners being China, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, according to the Hampton Roads Alliance.

There are also weekly vessel calls to Asia and Europe, and last July, the port announced new last-out vessel calls for the Indian subcontinent, giving the port a direct link to India and Pakistan, which Stephen A. Edwards, CEO and executive director of the Virginia Port Authority, called “an up-and-coming market and an area that holds a lot of trade potential.”

“There is a lot of interest and growing cargo volumes in this trade lane,” he said in a statement. “This is an excellent opportunity for exporters of agricultural products, like cotton and grain, to quickly get their products to this area of the world.”

Of course, the widening project has been under the watchful eye of the Coast Guard.

“Throughout this process, the Coast Guard has been focused on the safety and security of the port,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard’s Waterways Management team at Sector Virginia said in a statement. “With the widening and deepening of the port, we no longer have to shut down the port with a one-way traffic constriction, which allows for two-way traffic with ultra-large container ships from all over the world.”

As for the deepening project’s completion, which will make the harbor 55 feet deep, that’s expected to be finished in late fall, White says. At that point, he expects the port will start to see more first-in, last-out services where container lines take fullest advantage to load deeper.

“The widening in itself hasn’t really changed much in terms of where ships are coming from or the type set of ships that we’re seeing,” White says. “With that said, we now have far more traffic related to the offshore wind project than we had used to have,” as well as more cruise ships.

Dominion Energy is about halfway through its $10.7 billion Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind farm (CVOW), which will be the largest offshore wind project in the United States, producing 2.6 gigawatts of power, enough electricity for 660,000 homes. Despite a halt to federal approval of new offshore wind projects under President Donald Trump, CVOW received all of its necessary approvals before his second term began Jan. 20, so work on the project is moving full speed ahead to expected completion in 2026.

“There are some unique vessels calling Portsmouth Marine Terminal carrying cargo for the CVOW offshore wind project, and they are visible because they’re so unique looking, but their size doesn’t require any special treatment,” Harris says.