Reading the word barges instantly reminded me of the Google Barge. Does anyone know the story behind it and what ended up happening to it?

Wikipedia says they all were sold in 2014; whatever they were, it was a fairly short lived experiment.

Let's not forget the freighters that pass through the Bay and travel up to Pittsburg and Stockton -- incredible!

Nice writeup. A website with no annoying popups or "call to action"? Cool.

ha ha I knew something felt off.

I wished they talked more about the ferries and personal boats in the article.

Also fun fact: San Jose used to have a port for exporting animal hide up in Alviso

There was a proposal for restarting ferry service and possibly developing the Alviso location circa 2010, which I looked at around when the Richmond ferry opened last month. They spent a few years evaluating it but concluded that proceeding now would be too expensive, due to accumulation of silt from various environmental mishaps during the 20th century making the river channel narrower and shallower. The silver lining is that restoration is expected to reverse the trend, which would allow the plan to be revisited without expensive dredging as the channel clears naturally.

In the meantime there are still plans for other South Bay terminals, such as Redwood City. The ferry system is one of the most exciting things going on in local transit developmemt.

In terms of scale, in 2017, the port of Oakland handled 2,388,000 TEUs (a TEU being a 20 foot equivalent unit, essentially, a shipping container). During that same year, the port of Shanghai, the busiest port in the world, handled 40,233,000 TEUs. Rotterdam, the busiest western European port, handled 13,734,000 TEUs.

NB: most standard shipping containers are actually 40 feet long, so a TEU is half the standard-sized box you'll see, and you can divide by two to get about 1.194 million of those handed by PoE.

There are 20 foot containers, they're just not nearly as common as the 40s.

It might be quicker to list the types of boats that you can't find in the bay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boat_types is a fun article to browse