Editorial: Marine Highway Potential Arouses Interest
The Waterways Journal
31 May 2010
According to Pam Kasey and the West Virginia Journal, that state and
four others “hope to make the Ohio River ‘Marine Highway One.’” The
Journal reported that in addition to West Virginia, the Ohio River
valley states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania are angling
for marine highway corridor designation.
This reported interest over marine highways is significant because it
reflects a growing understanding of the important role water
transportation can continue to play in the growth and prosperity of our
nation. Waterway transportation enabled America to be discovered and
settled in the first place. Then, during the wagon train era and before
the development of railroads, it played a huge role in the movement of
settlers westward. Today the role has changed vastly, and water
transport moves millions of tons of product, contributing heavily to
U.S. economic wellbeing. Since the advent of environmental law and a
growing interest in cleaning up operations that contribute to the
pollution of our country, stakeholders are finally beginning to take
seriously suggestions that moving goods by barge can relieve highway
congestion, reduce polluting emissions and increase safety.
Like a good stew, ideas related to marine highways and (not to be
ignored) container-on-barge operations have been simmering for some
time. In recent years, focus has been on East Coast potential for
marine highways to relieve congestion. Serious interest in
container-on-barge operations has been around for decades. While there
have been some success stories, the overall idea has never been
developed as fully and successfully as it has in Europe and Asia. For
years, the European Union has offered incentives to shippers moving
cargo via water transport.
The barge and towing industry has always had a good grasp of its
importance. That importance has grown for environmental reasons. Among
other things, people just don’t like congested, dangerous highways and
polluted air. Barge transportation can help solve those problems.
When the federal government invited ideas related to marine highways,
“Ohio River waterways officials jumped at the chance,” Kasey reported.
According to West Virginia Public Port Authority Executive Director
Patrick Donovan, the opportunity comes as federal transportation
officials prepare for an anticipated 73 percent increase in commercial
shipping by 2035. “We showed up with 22 signatories, five states,
calling ourselves ‘Marine Highway One,’” Donovan said. The five states
anticipate an overall increase in shipping, particularly in container
traffic from the Pacific to the ports of New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.,
when the Panama Canal expansion is completed in 2014, the West Virginia
Journal report said. Donovan said that moving product out of coastal
ports is traditionally done by tractor-trailers, “but at the end of the
day we need to be able to effectively and efficiently move containers
out of these coastal ports into inland markets.”
Donovan knows that Europe and Asia are “light years ahead of us on how
to handle this freight in a maritime environment.” He also knows that
not all products can be moved by barge. He emphasized that many large
regional distribution centers for operations like Home Depot, Wal-Mart
and Target receive goods in 20- and 40-foot containers—goods that “have
a long lead time in the logistics chain.” In other words, the
opportunity exists to reconfigure river ports like Huntington and
Weirton-Wheeling to handle containers, he said.
If marine highways are a dream, it is a dream moving ever faster toward
reality. A big step forward for the inland waterways would be a federal
designation of Marine Highway One as those five states see it. Donovan
warns, however, that much of this nation’s great infrastructures
(including waterways) were built during the Great Depression and two
world wars. “Now we are in a global economy and without intermodal
connectivities to coast ports—Baltimore, Norfolk, Wilmington, Mobile,
New Orleans—and the ability to move containers into and out of those
ports, we’re not in the game.”
While the dream of marine highways is now receiving more attention and
will be, they tell us, the recipient of considerable federal financing,
inland waterway supporters would like to see more money put into the
improvement of waterways.
In a related message, Port of Pittsburgh Commission Executive Director
James McCarville spoke of a need for attitude adjustment—recognition of
the need to sacrifice to improve the infrastructure before it falls
apart. (Many waterways structures are passed their design life.)
When Thomas Jefferson purchased 828,000 square miles of the Louisiana
Purchase from the French for $15 million in 1803, one of his reasons
was to keep France and Spain from having the power to block American
trade access to the Port of New Orleans. That purchase involved what
today makes up 14 states and two Canadian provinces. If a Marine
Highway One designation is secured, eventual development could impact
far more than 14 states, and the value of Gulf Coast maritime
operations could be increased exponentially.
That would be a boon to trade.