Looks like our fair city is getting serious about building a new cruise terminal in San Francisco.

As a cruise fan I think that would be nice -- the current terminal was put up in the 20s, and it shows in the drafty, bare-beamed facility.

We've also had a sad decline in the number of cruise ship calls to the City by the Bay:

• 87 visits in '06
• 60 in '07
• 59 in '08
• 46 in '09

The trouble is, I seriously doubt a new cruise terminal would help with that decline. The real problem for San Francisco is that we are too darned far from the places people want to cruise.

A seven night cruise (what most people want) can just get to Canada from here, and even then there aren't a lot of interesting ports along the way. OK, Seattle's cool, but then you might as well fly into Seattle. Worse, to do that itinerary, a ship has to do more than 20 knots for much of the trip.

Given the continually-rising cost of fuel, and the explonential relationship between fuel consumption and speed, it seems a lot better for cruise lines to sail from places closer to the desireable Alaska and Mexico destinations: Vancouver, Seattle, San Diego.