A new priority of the U.S. Department of Transportation is an age-old idea: Transport freight by ship for as long as possible. The DOT is proposing designated shipping channels known as Marine Highways, and one may be leading to a port near you.

If you've purchased any household goods in the United States recently, they probably took a familiar path from the factory to the store where you bought them: to North America on a massive cargo ship, from the ship to a railway, and finally from the rail yard to your local retailer by truck. In many cases, freight is carried solely by truck along interstate highways.

Unfortunately, such a system is far from efficient. It clogs our highways with multiple trucks headed in the same direction and brings pollution into our cities near freight terminals.

That's why the Maritime Administration (MARAD) has proposed a system of marine highways where ships would transit goods within the United States. Along designated corridors, ships could provide safe, environmentally friendly and reasonably quick freight transit among a network of well-situated ports.

A New Old Idea

According to MARAD Administrator Dave Matsuda, the United States is catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to marine highways. Also known as short sea shipping, coastal trade or coastal shipping, the rivers and seas of Europe and Asia are filled with small container vessels carrying cargo within a continent.

"This is an idea that's been around for awhile," Matsuda said. "The Europeans do it, and other folks do it. For about 10 years now people have been kicking the idea around in the maritime community. It's to the point that it's been joked about that the Marine Highway conference has become a cottage industry."

When we caught up with him, Matsuda had just been sworn in as MARAD administrator. Earlier this month, he announced an initial $7 million (.pdf) in grant funding for marine-highway projects that would primarily strengthen existing projects and proposals.

Some short sea shipping operations are already moving freight in the United States, and Matsuda wants to help them expand. "These are the experts, these are people who have started up new markets in the past," he said. "They know the industry, they know the people and the operations."

Matsuda is clear about engaging existing operators. "The government's role here is really to help promote these and get them up and running," he said. "We can talk to local transportation planners and say, 'Hey, here are some of the federal programs that help.' There's a limited amount of federal dollars to put towards buying cranes or barges or fixing up a port or something that we need to have up and running."

Some projects are economic no-brainers, such as moving overweight or hazardous materials, where the cost of obtaining road permits would be prohibitive for truck shipments. In most cases, however, in order for a project to make sense and for shippers to make money, MARAD must identify corridors with strong two-way traffic so empty ships don't ply the waters.

A good example of such a project is a proposed Green Trade Corridor in California, a project funded by $30 million of TIGER funds that connects the inland agricultural areas and the Port of Oakland by a marine highway.

Currently, goods from Asia come into the port of Oakland and are trucked across the state while agricultural products are trucked in the opposite direction. "It's a tax on commuters, and it adds to the congestion, beats up the bridges and raises the cost of maintaining infrastructure," said Matsuda. "It's not just getting the trucks off the road, but also putting people to work in some of these areas that are really devastated."

A marine highway would move some of that traffic onto barges and guarantee two-way traffic for the company operating the barges.

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats, Trains and Trucks

A project that promises to put people to work shouldn't put others out of work. Marine highways will change rather than replace rail and truck shipments, so they seem to have gained support from groups that represent competing modes of transit.

"Marine and rail freight have co-existed since the 1830s when the rail industry began, said Holly Arthur, a representative for the Association of American Railroads. "While shipping via water can be seen as competition, it also is a significant customer segment for railroads."

According to Arthur, intermodal transport – the movement of shipping containers by multiple methods, such as from ship to rail – represents 21 percent of rail revenue in the United States, a figure that is continuing to grow. If boat traffic increases, the rail industry stands to benefit.

Boats can't usually pull up to a factory loading dock or back into the parking lot of your local big-box store, so trucks are safe, too. "At the end of the day, your shipment winds up at a port, so it has to go on a truck," said Matsuda. In addition, boats tend to travel more slowly than trucks (though they usually don't have to stop overnight for rest). Often, short sea shipping services run on a weekly schedule and, said Matsuda, "It's hard to sell a weekly service when you're dealing with folks who need things a little more quickly."

In a country where the majority of freight travels along marine highways, Matsuda envisions some long-haul truckers working instead in freight yards or in regional distribution, while others remain on the roads with cargo that can't wait for a slower-moving boat. If estimates of 70 percent growth in the freight industry over the next 10 years are accurate, trucks will always be in high demand.

According to Matsuda, the U.S. DOT chose to refer to the project as Marine Highways rather than short sea shipping because the network of waterways would often be parallel to an existing interstate highway. "We wanted to draw a parallel with the interstate system, if you can draw a highway on a map, that you can draw a waterway along the map – maybe M-95 – and it'll get you to the same place," he said.

One kind of freight that Matsuda thinks is best suited for the water is hazardous material. "With hazardous materials, we only see an upside for getting them out of populated areas," he said. While a lot of bulk hazmat cargo is shipped, that which fits into a container is still largely transported on packed highways. "Anything we can get off the highway is obviously a benefit, if it makes sense to do," he said. "It's less gas per mile, but it also helps the people on the roads."

Better for the Environment

In addition to transporting hazardous materials outside of populated areas, a clear advantage of short sea shipping is the reduced environmental impact of moving freight on ships.

According to Carrie Denning, a researcher at the Environmental Defense Fund who coauthored the report The Good Haul: Freight Innovations for the 21st Century, a shipping company that moves containers by sea between Port Manatee, Florida, and Brownsville, Texas, already saves 70,000 gallons of fuel on each one-way voyage compared to a comparable truck journey.

Those fuel savings translate into fewer emissions in population centers. "One way to reduce pollution emissions in some regions will be to substitute multiple truck trips with single barge trips via coastal shipping routes that meet robust environmental performance standards," she said.

Even with the obvious fuel savings, Denning says that marine routes could still pose serious environmental consequences. Ports themselves are notorious for high levels of emissions from machinery used to move freight. To truly be environmentally responsible, ports along a marine highway would have to implement solutions such as electric forklifts and yard trucks – many of which are already in place at the Port of Los Angeles.

Additionally, highways would have to be designated clear of environmentally sensitive areas. "Coastal shipping is not a panacea," she said. "Depending on the highway route, there could be serious ramifications for marine life if dredging is required, if migratory patterns are disrupted, or if additional infrastructure is needed that interferes with certain marine ecosystems."

RoRo Your Boat

A centerpiece of the European short sea shipping industry is a small freighter known as a RoRo, short for "roll on, roll off." While larger ships require cranes to lift containers onboard, RoRos pull straight up to a dock where trucks can drive onboard and unload freight containers. Because they're smaller, they don't require channels as deep as larger ships, and can minimize the need for dredging.

"The ship literally pulls up, lays down a ramp and the trucks drive on and off it," said Matsuda. "From an operating standpoint, you don't need cranes, you don't need to pay the skilled workers – but you need people to drive the trucks on and off the ship."

Rather than investing in the installation of cranes and other equipment at small ports, Matsuda says that RoRos could follow what he calls the "Southwest Airlines model," after the carrier that started off flying into secondary airports. Smaller RoRos could bypass major ports and travel through shallower waterways to inland cities.

Matsuda just saw such a system in action at the Port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. "It is just incredible to see these relatively small, long, thin, self-propelled ships that can carry 20 or 30 containers that kind of zip around in this massive port after the giant container ship has been offloaded," he said. "They go up the rivers into Europe or around the coast to other ports."

Would such a system be possible in the United States? There may not be a choice. With roadways in major cities already crammed with freight traffic and the demand for freight ever increasing, putting freight on the water may be the most sensible solution for companies that need to move goods from here to there. Matsuda says a political climate that's focused on creating jobs and helping the environment also will support the cause.

"Where there are corridors, the federal government will help focus attention and investments to get those services up and running," he said. "This is something that we think is going to go a long way."

Photos:

Flickr/wirralwater. A RoRo ship in St. Petersburg

Flickr/electropod. Hazardous cargo in Zeebrugge, Belgium

*Flickr/electropod. A RoRo in Zeebrugge, Belgium

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