An article in the Economist (Jan 28, 2012) describes the impact of increased Panama Canal width to handle large ships and the consequent container shipments to the East Coast being sent directly to East Coast ports, rather than being shipped to Long Beach or Los Angeles and sent by train to the east Coast. But even though shipments directly to the East Coast will be cheaper, some Long Beach authorities claim the longer more expensive shipments through Long Beach can be faster by one week.  Should time sensitive flows from Asia to the US continue to take the more expensive faster routs through Long Beach ? Should unloading capacity and rate be speeded up in the East Coast to make it cheaper and faster to ship Asian containers directly ? Will Californian ports, whose shipments by truck from the port to the rail yard create the bulk of the ports’s  air pollution, be better off with a lower shipment volume and lower pollution levels ?