The infrastructure to speed global access, helping companies quickly reach locations across the U.S. or throughout Georgia, works to the advantage of businesses operating in Georgia. The state’s transportation and logistical infrastructure seamlessly connects air, sea, rail and road - all to better enable companies to move goods and tap new markets.
One of the state’s greatest assets is Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport:
- No other airport offers more scheduled flights than Atlanta’s. Companies can send people to 75 countries and 150 U.S. cities on any given day without changing planes.
- Flights to major U.S. cities like Chicago and New York are offered throughout the day, and a new international terminal opens in spring 2012.
- Hartsfield-Jackson’s three cargo complexes move 650,000-plus tons of cargo annually. The adjacent 250-acre Georgia Foreign Trade Zone site accelerates movement of goods from port, which lowers duties and processing fees for companies.
- Outside Atlanta, another 107 public airports throughout Georgia provide access to every corner of the state.
BENEFITS
Beyond air travel, Georgia’s infrastructure facilitates global access, and shipping and receiving in equally robust ways:
- Shipping capacity. Georgia has two deep-water sea ports in Savannah and Brunswick, which serve all major ocean carriers and 100-plus trucking companies.
- Savannah has been the fastest-growing container port in the U.S. for the past 10 years and is a major reason Georgia now ranks no. 2 nationally in exports.
- Exporters can ship to 153 out of 159 countries via Georgia’s Savannah and Brunswick ports.
- Savannah moves more than 16 percent of the East Coast’s overseas container cargo and is one of the few ports in the U.S. with two Class 1 railroad facilities on-terminal.
- Savannah serves over 100 lines of steamships, has convenient intermodal connections, state-of-the-art cargo-handling equipment and value-added services.
- Savannah’s port also serves as the premier auto-processing facility in the south Atlantic.
Rail network. With 5,000 miles of rail track, Georgia boasts one of the nation’s most extensive rail systems for moving freight. The integration of rail with shipping on the Georgia coast makes Savannah the largest intermodal hub in the Southeast. It’s also one of a very few U.S. ports to have two class-1 railroad facilities on terminal (CSX and Norfolk Southern).
Road access. Also connecting to rail are four major U.S. interstates, which allows companies to reach 80 percent of U.S. markets by truck in two days or less. The condition of these interstates – urban and rural – were ranked best in the nation by an independent research foundation. And Georgia roads were named among the nation’s best by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in 2010.