Piers 96 and 94, California

Once a container yard, the large asphalt lot of Piers 96 and 94 at the port of San Francisco are now used by the Police Department for an emergency vehicle operations training course, where vehicles maneuver through a sea of hundreds of orange cones. A scrap metal recycling operation occupies a former cargo handling shed. This portside building once housed a container loading system called "flying forks," a failed modular barge system developed in the early years of the containerization of shipping cargo. Narrow barges loaded with shipping containers were themselves loaded onto larger ocean-going ships. The barges could be released from the mother ship for travel through narrow canals, such as those in Europe. A military reserve cargo ship is often docked at Piers 96 and 94 along with a floating dry dock.