The Port of Tacoma is offering a free bus tour of its facilities Friday from 9 a.m. to noon.

The port's tour bus will pick up passengers who've reserved their seats at the South Hill Park & Ride lot at 10416 94th Ave. E. at 9 a.m.

Reservations are available by calling the port at 253-383-9463 or by e-mail at bustours@portoftacoma.com

Passengers should be back in South Hill by noon, the port said. Photo identification is required for riders 17 and older.

New figures from Sea-Tac Airport show airport passenger business remained below last year during August with a particularly sharp drop in international passengers.

The airport reported that passenger traffic was down 4.62 percent in August overall with domestic traffic down 4.23 percent and international traffic off 8.84 percent.

Total passengers for the month were 3,191,450, a drop of 154,483 from August 2008.

Year-to-date traffic to the end of August was off 1,063,285 passengers or 4.77 percent. Domestic YTD traffic was off 4.11 percent, and international traffic had fallen 11.34 percent.

The Port of Tacoma's plans to develop the east side of the Blair Waterway for shipping terminals are over for now.

The Port of Tacoma Commission today will consider new agreements with Tokyo-based NYK Line that have the shipping company calling at an existing terminal at the Port.

The Port of Tacoma Executive Director said the deal is a positive for the port in that NYK still comes to Tacoma, but the agency doesn't have to invest millions of dollars in building them a new terminal.

NYK Line and the port announced more than two years ago plans to build the Tokyo-based shipping line a $300 million, 168-acre terminal on the Blair-Hylebos Peninsula.

But in the time since, the estimated total cost for developing the peninsula -- including building NYK's terminal and the necessary road and rail infrastructure to support it -- soared from about $700 million to $1.2 billion.

At the same time, the recession hit the shipping industry hard and sent cargo volumes plummeting.

The commission will consider three items today including one that breaks the lease signed between NYK and the port in 2007.

NYK Lines has committed to coming to Tacoma by July 2012 -- which is when the company's contract expires in Seattle -- though the company's commitment is "subject to competitive market rates and efficient operating conditions."

The company's ships will call at the APM Terminal, which used to serve Maersk ships. Maersk now stops in the Port of Seattle.

The commission will consider a Memorandum of Understanding noting just that.

Sea-Tac Airport is changing how it labels the two parking options in its multi-story terminal garage.

Instead of the present "Hourly" and "Daily", the two different parking options will become "Terminal Direct" and "General Parking."

Perhaps more descriptive labels would be "Expensive" and "Not Quite as Expensive."

"Terminal Direct" parking will be on the garage's fourth floor, the same floor as the skybridges to the terminal. "General Parking" will be on other floors of the garage where you'll have to take an elevator or stairs to the fourth floor to reach the terminal.

The rates will be $3 an hour for General Parking and $4 an hour for Terminal Direct. On a daily basis, the convenience of the fourth floor will cost $35. General Parking will be $26 a day.

The Port of Seattle will reopen Sea-Tac Airport's longest runway at a minute after midnight Sunday morning, marking an end to a six-month construction closure.

The 11,901-foot runway, the easternmost of the airport's three runways, was demolished and completely rebuilt during the closure.

The runway, the first part of which was built when the airport opened in 1944, was last overlaid with asphalt in 1992 and was overdue for reconstruction.

The port delayed rebuilding the runway until its $1.1 billion third runway, which opened last fall, was up and running well.

The longest runway was rebuilt with a 12-inch crushed rock base overlaid with four inches of asphalt which was covered with 20 inches of new concrete.

The old concrete from the original runway was crushed and recycled in the base, and the asphalt overlays from the old strip have been stockpiled for recycling with fresh asphalt for other projects.

The State of Alaska and the cruise ship industry are arming themselves for a court battle over that state's $50-a-passenger cruise ship tax.

The fight could have an effect in the Puget Sound area where many of those cruise ship begin their summertime Alaska voyages. Cruise ship companies say that if they're able to convince the courts to abolish the tax, more consumers will cruise to Alaska.

The Alaska Cruise Association, representing nine major cruise lines, filed suit in Anchorage federal district court last week claiming the voter-passed tax violates constitutional prohibitions against individual states from charging taxes that raise funds used for non-cruise related expenses and improvements.

Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan told the Juneau Empire that his office will "vigorously defend" the tax passed by voters in 2006.

The cruise industry is challenge $46 of the $50 tax. Four dollars of that tax is used to monitor pollution in state waters. The cruise lines are not challenging that expenditure.

The cruise industry says funds raised by the tax were used for many projects not directly connected with the cruise industry such as zoo and train station improvements.

Sea-Tac Airport, which has imposed standards on taxi drivers for years, now is doing the same for limo drivers serving the airport.

The airport now is requiring limo drivers serving the airport to pass a multi-part screening and training regime in order to serve the airport.

The program includes:

* Passing drug screening and criminal background checks
* Successful completion of a driver training course
* A basic health examination
* Service and transportation training

The airport says some 500 limousine services pick up arriving travelers at the airport. Drivers without the required For Hire or Chauffeur license will no longer be able to pick up Sea-Tac passengers.

Smoking will no longer be allowed on the airport drives outside Sea-Tac Airport's terminal building, the airport announced this week.

The airport is moving its smoking area to two areas outside the north and south ends of the terminal structure.

Both area are on the lower, baggage claim level of the airport. On the south end of the terminal, the smoking area is now located at the far south end of the ground transportation lot. On the north, the smoking area is located north of door 26 across a small parking lot adjacent to the stairs to the cruise tent lot.

Washington law bans smoking within 25 feet of a work area. The King County Health Department recently said the airport drives were work areas.

Construction of a 2,200-foot bridge over four sets of busy Tacoma Tideflats railroad tracks begins Tuesday.

The project, funded in large part by federal economic stimulus money, will allow both trains and trucks better access to Port of Tacoma terminals.

The tracks which the overpass will span serve the port's two main intermodal container yards.

Lincoln Avenue will be closed in two stages, the port said.

The first closure will happen Tuesday from Milwaukee Way to Thorne Road. About two weeks later, Lincoln will be closed from Marc Street to Thorne Road. Milwaukee Way and and the APM Road connector will continue to provide public access through the construction zone.

The project is scheduled for completion in May 2011.

Stimulus funds will pay $15.4 million of the $21.8 million cost of the project. Some 200 jobs are expected to be created during the duration of the construction.

For more information on the project and to view a map and construction schedules, see the port's Web site.

A new program called Global Entry allows pre-screened, pre-approved, registered international travelers to speed to through U.S. Customs at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The system, called Global Entry, debuted today, according to a news release.

“Global Entry is a definite win-win for international travelers and for (Customs and Border Patrol),” said Michele James, director of the Seattle Field Office.

“It provides pre-approved travelers an expedited clearance process and allows our CBP officers the ability to focus on processing other arriving passengers,” he said.

Travelers can apply online to be pre-registered for the system.

Approved applicants present their machine-readable passport, submit their fingerprints for biometric verification, and make a declaration at a kiosk. They are then directed to baggage claim and the exit, unless chosen for further inspection.

Global Entry reduces the average wait times for CBP processing by 70 percent, according to the news release, with more than three-quarters of the travelers processed in under five minutes.

About 18,000 people have enrolled in Global Entry, which is operating at more than a dozen major airports around the country.

For more information, go here.

Ground-breaking for the first of two new hotels on downtown Tacoma's Foss Waterway could come this fall.

That's the latest word from Bellingham's Hollander Investments which plans to buy the potential hotel site near South 15th and Dock streets early this fall from Seattle hotelier Bob Thurston.

If construction begins, it will be a long-delayed victory for the Thea Foss Waterway Authority, which has waited five years for a hotel to be built. The authority, which is overseeing redevelopment of the formerly industrial waterway, has worked unsuccessfully with two prior developers to see a hotel constructed.

Hollander told the Tacoma City Council's Economic Development Committee this week that its preliminary plans call for construction of a 96-room Mariott Residence Inn on the south side of the site beginning this fall.

The second hotel, likely a Hilton with 128 rooms, would be built on the site's north side near the Esplanade condominium project. Construction of that second hotel would begin sometime between 2013 and 2015 depending on market conditions.

An office structure would be built at the same time as the second hotel. The office structure would visually link the two hotels to form a u-shaped configuration with the open end facing the waterway.

The development would include partially underground parking to serve all three buildings and retail and commercial space facing the water totally some 5,700 square feet in the final development.

Each of the hotel structures would be 9 stories tall.
Total investment in the project would be $35 to $40 million according to Hollander.

Holland owns the Marriott Courtyard Tacoma Hotel among other hotel properties.

Don Meyer, the waterway authority's director, said Hollander must begin construction by March of next year under the shoreline development permits obtained by Thurston.

If construction doesn't begin, the lengthy process of applying for those permits will start anew.

The waterway authority will meet Wednesday at 4 p.m. at its offices in the Dock office building to consider approving a new development agreement for the hotel.

The City Council must also approve new agreements with Hollander that would protect Hollander from claims related to past pollution on the site. Most of that pollution has been cleaned up.

The authority worked with two prior developers to build a hotel on the site, but neither was able to make the financing work.

Thurston, the site's present owner, hoped to build a boutique hotel. He added condominiums to the building design during the condo boom, but failed to find financing after the housing market crashed.

A jumbo-sized containership longer than the QE2 or the Navy's aircraft carriers, called on the Port of Seattle this week.

The ZIM Djibouti with a capacity of 10,000 20-foot shipping containers, was the largest containership ever to call at the port.

The ship called on the port's Terminal 18 Thursday.

The Zim Djibouti is 1,145 feet long and 151 feet wide. The QE2 is 962 feet long. The USS Abraham Lincoln, a Navy carrier homeported in Everett is 1,092 feet long.

The Zim Djibouti is not the largest containership in the world. That honor belongs to the Emma Maersk and its sister ships. Those ships carry 15,212 20-foot-equivalent container units.