Port Houston Wins $48 Million Federal Grant for Bayport Container Terminal Expansion
Port Houston has secured a $48 million grant through the U.S. Maritime Administration’s Port Infrastructure Development Program to fund construction of a new container yard and exit gate at the Bayport Container Terminal. The port will contribute roughly $56 million in matching funds, bringing the total project value to over $100 million.
The investment is structured under Port Houston’s STORM (Strategic Terminal Operations & Resilience Measures) application, which targets four operational objectives: adding 440,000 TEUs of cargo handling capacity, cutting truck turn times through a new East Exit Gate projected to save more than 11 million truck hours over the project’s lifetime, modernizing drainage and utility systems for hazard resilience, and expanding electrical and communications infrastructure to support current equipment generations and terminal security.
The Bayport terminal sits within the nation’s fifth-largest container port, one that has posted faster volume growth than any other major U.S. port over the past decade. That growth trajectory is precisely what makes the capacity constraint urgent — and the federal funding timely.
The PIDP pool distributes $450 million across port projects nationally. Port Houston’s $48 million draw is a meaningful slice, and it comes with strong bipartisan congressional backing from Senators Cornyn and Cruz and Representatives Babin and Garcia. The alignment is notable: Texas ports have become central to the political conversation around domestic supply chain resilience, and Bayport’s Gulf position gives it strategic weight that Washington has clearly recognized.
The congestion-reduction angle may matter as much as the raw TEU expansion. Truck dwell time is one of the least glamorous and most operationally damaging bottlenecks in container logistics. An east exit gate that materially reduces turn times does more for throughput efficiency than additional yard acreage alone — it accelerates asset velocity across the entire terminal stack.