US DOT to Establish New National Network of Marine Highways for Cargo, Offloading Roads
10 October 2008
The US Department of Transportation (DOT) will establish a new national network of short sea transportation routes to help move cargo across the country in order to cut congestion on some of the nation’s busiest roads.
The Department’s “Marine Highways” initiative calls for the selection and designation of key maritime inland and coastal maritime corridors as marine highways. These routes will be eligible for up to $25 million in existing federal capital construction funds. The communities involved will continue to qualify for up to $1.7 billion in federal highway congestion mitigation and air quality (CMAQ) funds.
Overall, the DOT estimates that congestion on roads, bridges, railways, and in certain ports costs the United States as much as $200 billion a year, with the figure continuing to grow. Experts project that cargoes moving through US ports will nearly double over the next 15 years. Most of this additional cargo will ultimately move along surface transportation corridors, many of which are already at or beyond capacity. Some 92% of all domestic freight currently moves on road and rail infrastructure.
US waterways, consisting of more than 25,000 miles of inland, intracoastal, and coastal waterways, already transport about 1 billion tons of domestic cargo annually, and has considerable room to grow, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers.
The Marine Highways program has four primary components:
Marine Highway Corridors. Marine Highway Corridors are to serve as extensions of the surface transportation system and consist of the navigable coastal, inland, and intracoastal waters of the United States, to support the movement of passengers and cargo between US ports, or between US ports and unloaded either at a port in Canada located in the Great Lakes Saint Lawrence Seaway System; or loaded at a port in Canada located in the Great Lakes Saint Lawrence Seaway System and unloaded at a port in the United States, relieving landside congestion.
Marine Highway Project Designations. This regulation establishes the goals and methods by which specific Marine Highway Projects will be identified and designated by the Secretary of Transportation. The purpose is to mitigate landside congestion by designating projects that, if successfully started, expanded, or otherwise enhanced, would provide the greatest benefit to the public in terms of congestion relief, improved air quality, reduced energy consumption, infrastructure construction and maintenance savings, improved safety, and long-term economic viability. Designated Marine Highway Projects may receive direct support from the Department of Transportation.
Incentives, Impediments and Solutions. This component of the program is to identify short-term incentives and solutions to impediments in order to encourage use of the Marine Highway for freight and passengers.
Research. The Department of Transportation, working with the Environmental Protection Agency, will conduct research to support America’s Marine Highway and to encourage multi-state planning. Research would include environmental and transportation impacts (benefits and costs), technology, vessel design, and solutions to impediments to the Marine Highway.
Navigable waterways that parallel corridors already designated as “Corridors of the Future” under DOT’s National Strategy to Reduce Congestion will be fast-tracked for designation as Marine Highway Corridors.
The DOT has designated six interstate routes as Corridors of the Future:
- I-95 from Florida to the Canadian border;
- I-70 in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio;
- I-15 in Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California;
- I-5 in California, Oregon, and Washington;
- I-10 from California to Florida; and
- I-69 from Michigan to Texas.
This initiative does more than simply add new lines to a map. It makes our roads safer, expands our capacity for moving goods and reflects the kind of 21st century innovation we are going to need to be competitive in today’s global marketplace. These highways have no stoplights, traffic or potholes. Sometimes transportation solutions require new concrete, but other times the answer is as simple as using existing water.
—US Deputy Secretary of Transportation Thomas Barrett
The interim final rule is available for review and will go into effect after a 120-day comment period.
Resources
Excellent! This should significantly reduce the fuel intensity of moving certain cargoes.
Posted by: GreenPlease | 10 October 2008 at 05:40 AM
Perhaps we should also look at modernized railroad container terminals and: electrify some of our key railroad routes. If you run trains frequently, electric railroads (using high voltage overhead wires to supply power to locomotives) may pay off.
The old Pennsylvania Railroad electrified their trackage from Washington D.C. to New York City and from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, PA decades ago. Perhaps that line should now be electrified from Harrisburg to Pittsburg and beyond, all the way to Chicago. Perhaps some of our railroad lines to the west coast should be electrified too, if its important to reduce truck crowding on our nation's interstate highways.
Posted by: Alex Kovnat | 10 October 2008 at 06:25 AM
Agreed about electrifying rail lines. Long overdue.
Posted by: GreenPlease | 10 October 2008 at 07:10 AM
Alex & GreenPlease.
Left to the market place, railroad electrification, for lack of short term profits, may take a few centuries.
In a free wheeling economy, there are only about three ways to make that happened.
1) have the general public pay for it thru new general taxes. (not very popular)
2) impose a progressive but meaningful carbon tax to increase (multiply) diesel fuel cost.(lobbies and politicians would not accept it)
3) ban or charge a progressive but very heavy annual fee for diesel locomotives (and trucks and barges) operation.
None of those 3 options will ever happen in USA.
4) a compromise could be a partial ban, i.e. 20 or so miles from major and mid-size cities, with electric trucks for the rest of the way.
Posted by: HarveyD | 10 October 2008 at 08:13 AM
You are conducting a Monday morning QBing superficial review. The rail lines that can be profitably electrified, usually are.
There is a constant trade-off of power loss and distance. It is wholly uneconomic and wasteful of electricity, and generating fuels, to electrify a transcontinental rail-line.
Allocating government monies to such uneconomic activities,+ just makes the problem worse, usually aggravating rather than alleviating your concern over GHG. For example, all expenditures for trolleys, renamed "light rail", are simply burning money.
The majority of expenditures for route buses are uneconomic, and almost but not equally bad.
Little discussed expenditures for suburban park-and-ride rush-hour express busing is usually very viable, on an efficiency and power saving basis.
But simple dedicated expenditures to implement that sane portion of transit seldom occur. It is limited and of secondary concern to most transit proponents.
Posted by: stas peterson | 10 October 2008 at 08:57 AM
I'm not really getting this.
"Navigable waterways that parallel corridors already designated as “Corridors of the Future” under DOT’s National Strategy to Reduce Congestion will be fast-tracked for designation as Marine Highway Corridors."
And then they identify I-10 as "corridor of the future". I've driven I-10 a lot. There's a big stretch between San Antonio and El Paso that I'm very familiar with, and I don't recall seeing a whole lot of water along the way.
Posted by: David | 10 October 2008 at 09:01 AM
Isn't moving cargo by rail a lot more efficient than moving cargo by sea?
Posted by: Dave | 10 October 2008 at 11:58 AM
@Dave
Kinda depends on the presence of natural currents/winds. If you move cargo down the Mississippi, then it is not very fuel intensive. Rail is generally as efficient as you can get but, as I understand it, U.S. rail capacity is pretty much maxed out.
Posted by: GreenPlease | 10 October 2008 at 12:13 PM
It is great to hear that money is pumped into the inland, intracoastal, and coastal waterways. Europe is utilizing is waterways to the already to the fullest. Great job opportunities ahead!
[email protected]
www.MaritimeJobSearch.com
Posted by: ThinkMaritime | 10 October 2008 at 12:29 PM
The building of the freeways destroyed the rail system of the US. It also has induced large companies to build warehouses far from any sea or railway when there are many places available to be both adjacent to a freeway and a railine. No solar cells will ever make up for the fact that Walmart built a large warehouse at a place near Saint George, Utah that is almost as far as you can get away from a railroad along the entire distance of I-15. Walmart and similar businesses get enormous subsidies through the uncompensated wear of the roadways.
It has been well established by many tests that freight trucks wear the roads thousands of times more than cars. A toll or tax on trucks to pay for this wear should be imposed to give equal protection of the laws to the railroads.
Part of the revenues of the tax or toll can be used to build special rails right into the pavement of freeways. These rails would be designed to actually carry ordinary freight cars, but the use and the entrances and exits for such would be quite rare. Trailers that have ordinary tires and carry containers would also be equipped with steel wheels to run in the tracks when appropriate. These rails would both reduce the wear and increase the efficiency greatly. At not much cost a third rail for electric supply for cars could be implemented. Even a high voltage on the rail would not noticably increase the statistical danger of traveling on the freeway with cigarette and cellphone in hand.
Holland has built a new railway line from a port directly to Germany. No passenger trains are allowed to run on the line. This railroad is electrified but it allows other locomotives. The electricity can come from Norway. Perhaps People containers could be invented and loaded on the trains.
Holland just finished an undersea cable from Norway almost all power flows into Holland from the Hydroelectric power plants of Norway. It had been intended that there would be coal or gas power sent to Norway when water levels were low. It is more likely that nuclear power will flow from France.
The advent of the wide use of the container allows rail and road transportation to be interchangeable to a higher degree.
It is now possible for railroads to electrify only partially. Some diesel electric locomotives were made to run in electrified tunnels in Boston and New York with the diesel engine shut off. With full electronic control available this mode of operation becomes available to most diesel electric locomotives. Where it is logical to do so, such as in cities, the locomotive can take power from a third rail. Differently from other third rail systems there can be wide gaps in the third rail. A very modern flywheel or even old ones can supply power to bridge gaps until the engine is brought back to full power if the gap is too long.
General Electric has successfully tested Hybrid locomotives with ZEBRA batteries. The price is the only major objection to ZEBRA batteries. The cost now is mostly in the fabrication. There are several modifications that would allow the use of cheaper materials than nickel for part of the nickel used, if the materials price ever became a real issue. Iron is already used to produce part of the energy and to add to the performance at low charge as well.
A two fluid flow battery is possible using sodium as one liquid and a suspension of iron-nickel powder in sodium aluminum chloride as the other.
The ZEBRA battery would allow full electric operation on railroads that had widely spaced 500 to 1000 volt AC or DC charged third electric rails. There would be no power on the electric rail until the locomotive activated it by trying to take power by first electrifying the rail from the locomotive. Stationary batteries or flywheels could be used to reduce peak grid loads. Other ways of building ZEBRA batteries have been invented to increase power or energy density.
The ZEBRA battery will be for a while the cheapest high energy density battery available and is well suited to locomotives. Hybrid operation with a combination of battery, engine and third rail is reccomended; full electric operation is possible with a high density of third rail locations. Carefull planning of third rail location is not necessary and they should be put only where convenient or necessary. A train head end consisting of a full electric locomotive with a full load of ZEBRA batteries coupled physically and electrically with a Diesel electric locomotic locomotive could be an answer to many trains. The ZEBRA locomotive would have a very small diesel engine too, of course. The diesel electric could benefit from however much space was available for small ZEBRA batteries. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 11 October 2008 at 03:00 PM
The United States (in its entirety) is no longer
predominantly a coastal country (probably not since pre-rail). Now, it has great
ports, but there is a huge internal landmass. Making the interstates into the bogey man does not
change the fact that the lower 48 states comprise
a fundamentally different landscape than western
Europe.
I travel to Belgium and Holland regularly, and while
I appreciate their intensive use of waterways for
transport, I do believe if they had a gigantic hinterland to tap into, the infrastructure would be
re-balanced somewhat.
Posted by: J.H. | 14 October 2008 at 08:26 AM