Page 28: of Marine News Magazine (January 2, 2010)

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Short-sea shipping, also referred to as the “Marine

Highway” and, in some cases, “coastal shipping,” is the subject of more studies than we can list. Whatever the label, the concept refers to an initiative to get freight off our roadways, which are at capacity, and onto our water- ways, which have yet to be tapped to their potential. More than likely you’ve heard about the promises of this mode of transport, including reduced highway congestion, reduced consumption of fuel and fewer emissions per unit shipped. So what’s the hold up? In the following pages

MarineNews looks at the obstacles that stand between the concept and the reality.

Two major studies

Dr. Rockford Weitz is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for

Global Maritime Studies and co-author of the September 2008 study “America's Deep Blue Highway: How Coastal

Shipping Could Reduce Traffic Congestion, Lower

Pollution, and Bolster National Security.” Weitz prefers the term “coastal shipping” because he excludes brown water operations from his research and believes “short-sea shipping” is not a very useful term to get those “people in

Washington, who don’t know the difference between a bow and a stern, onboard with this.”

According to the study, “The U.S. today moves by sea an almost negligible two percent of domestic freight among the lower forty-eight states; in stark contrast,

Europe ships over 40% of its domestic freight along ‘motorways of the sea.’” One of the study’s recommenda- tions is that the U.S. invest $150m in prospective coastal shipping ports. “This amount, equivalent to the cost of constructing only about twenty miles of expressway, would be sufficient to jumpstart coastal shipping services on the Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific and Great Lakes coasts,” it contended.

A previous study, “Four Corridor Case Studies of Short-

Sea Shipping Services: Short-Sea Shipping Business Case

Navigating Obstacles: The Trials and Tribulations of

Short-Sea Shipping by Raina Clark

CG Railway’s train ferry. (Photo courtesy CG Railway) 28 MN January 2010