The Georgia Ports Authority is moving ahead with a nearly $5 billion, self-financed 10-year investment plan aimed at expanding capacity at the Port of Savannah and pulling more freight onto rail. The program will add five new big-ship berths at Ocean Terminal and the Savannah Container Terminal, the most of any US container port, supporting a projected 54 percent increase in container throughput.
A central piece of the strategy is the Gainesville Inland Port, which opened May 4 with daily rail service from Norfolk Southern. In its first year, the facility is expected to shift 26,000 truck moves from highways to rail, removing truck traffic from Atlanta-area highways while giving north Georgia shippers a direct rail link to Savannah. About 80 percent of Savannah cargo currently moves inland by truck and 20 percent by rail, and the authority is leaning on intermodal capacity to serve markets beyond 250 miles.
State infrastructure work supports the shift. In August 2026, the Georgia Department of Transportation will open the $126 million Brampton Road Connector, a four-lane link between Garden City Terminal and the interstate system that removes truck traffic from local neighborhoods. A cable replacement on the Talmadge Bridge will raise vessel clearance by 2029.
Researchers at Georgia Tech found that routing cargo through Savannah saves shippers more than $1,000 per container when delivering to Atlanta, Memphis, and Nashville compared with West Coast gateways.
Source: FreightWaves - https://www.freightwaves.com/news/georgia-ports-5b-bet-rewriting-supply-chain-logistics