If Portland can't compete with the big boys (LA, Oakland, Seattle, etc.), then why Eureka? And with the shifts that are likely as the new Panama Canal comes on line, why bother? As a port for local shipments, Eureka makes sense, but the kind of big money and facilities needed to seriously play in the international container shipping business aren't there and won't be. Why? Simple: 1) space (one usable dock doesn't cut it even if well-dredged); 2) landside access (see below); and 3) local politics being solidly anti-industrial.

The landside - note that it's not just whether the connections exist (they're marginal at best), it's also the reliability (rails, especially, probably down for several weeks in a good year; months or more in a bad one):

1) Roads - no freeways, no interstate, 3 hours on 2-lane roads to I-5 in Redding. You can reach Reno in (maybe) a driving day. 101 can get boxes onto 80 in about 1 driving day (about 8 hours), at a point that's about 1 driving hour east of Oakland. Huh? Portland can't make it work with far far better connections.

2) Rails - Eureka has none. The East-West dream would provide a slow single track snaking through the mountains to an interchange with UP in where? Anderson? Where most trains don't stop except possibly for crews if things have gone horribly wrong? Resurrecting NWP would also cost a fortune, wouldn't fix its fundamental issues with geology and meteorology, and could get the boxes to Willits (???) in one shift - at least 1 full working day, probably 2, to reach ... hold on ... UP in Suisun, about 2 hours from Oakland on a slow train. Does any of this make sense, really?

Eureka and the North Coast have a lot of things going for them in terms of weather (don't like it where you are? Drive or bike a couple of miles.), scenery, water (rain that most of CA would kill for, and someday might), and now that the lumber business is mostly gone little active pollution (the only place in CA that's likely to meet the new EPA ozone standard). Tourists and some more occult industries like pot growing like that kind of place, and for them the lack of easy accessibility is a bonus not a negative. The local politics are often odd, and bringing in a new major industrial operation like an active port with the landside transportation needed to support it doesn't seem like something that would go over well. Is it possible that most of the people that live there like it the way it is?

BTW, the driving distance from Eureka to San Diego is close to that from Beaumont to El Paso TX. Takes a lot longer, though - Texas is flat on Interstates, which about 1/4-1/3 of the trip from Eureka is anything but.

I *could* see things like re-starting the line to Scotia for feeding logs/lumber to the port. That would take some truck trips off of 101, which is a Good Thing. Likewise, fixing up the line around the Bay could provide transit benefits and touristy business. Those are appropriately-scaled rail projects for the area. Trying to put Eureka on the international container shipping map, though, is really spitting into the wind. Eureka/North Coast is a nice place to visit, now that the paper mill is no longer polluting the place, and is good place to live for those who would rather not be part of urban society; I doubt many of the locals would really want to change that.