Page 30: of Marine News Magazine (January 2, 2010)

29 31

30 MN January 2010

In some areas, time is still a consideration for short-sea shipping to gain the smallest foothold, even if all other factors were favorable. Dr. Matthew P. Tedesco, teamed with Westar Transport, CDI Marine, and Transystems /

Manalytics on the study “Operational Development of

Marine Highways to Serve the U.S. Pacific Coast,” released in September 2009. Tedesco said “The San

Francisco region to Los Angeles / Long Beach (LA / LB) has the greatest volume of trailers moving daily in both directions [on the West Coast], however it is only about a 400 mile route. As a result, it is a challenge to make it work commercially. In order to provide a comparable level of service as trucking, vessel speeds of approximately 27 knots are required.” The America’s Deep Blue Highways study also addressed this concern, saying “Barges and articulated tug-barges have an important role to play in a diversified, thriving marine highway, but they tend to carry low-value goods that require only slow transit times.

Many previous market studies of U.S. coastal shipping suggest that barge speeds are simply too slow to compete effectively with a large share of existing road and rail traf- fic. Thus we recommend that America’s policy discussion on a revitalized coastal shipping industry focus more attention on ships with service speeds in the twenty-knot range.” This is connected to a proposition in the study that a U.S. fleet of CNG vessels, built specifically for short-sea routes, be explored.

Other obstacles include a lack of infrastructure to sup- port a short-sea shipping market. Although this is far from remedied, in 2009 ports did begin to see funds for capital improvements filter down from President Obama’s stimu- lus package. Finally, labor union issues have been cited as a potential obstacle. MARAD’s Four Corridor study doc- umented concern on behalf of shippers that traffic moving through ports could incur costly delays due to the involve- ment of longshore labor. In the study, port operators also cited likely difficulty in obtaining new labor agreements for short-sea shipping, specifically on the Pacific Coast.

No one-size-fits-all solution

The America’s Deep Blue Highways study contended that any disagreement over short-sea shipping is about how to move freight off the roadways and onto the water- ways, not whether it should be done. “Some argue in favor of moving the standard size steel container, denominated in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), in a hub and spoke system from international ports to domestic routes.

Others think it better to leapfrog busy international ter- minals with fifty-three foot domestic tractor-trailers, that length accounting for approximately 90% of all U.S. truck traffic. The other main difference among coastal shipping experts concerns the kind of vessel to engage in this work.

One camp supports Load-on Load-off (LoLo) vessels, often tug and barge, requiring shoreside cranes to move cargo. A competing group thinks the solution will be found in Roll-on Roll-off (RoRo) ships, where the cargo is driven aboard at the source and driven ashore at the desti- nation.” Your perspective probably depends on where you are. Weitz explained that for the east coast, RoRo seems to be the most applicable method, with fairly quick turn- around times. It could also be done with a fairly reason- able infrastructure investment. According to his study, “a typical Atlantic port can be prepared to handle RoRo traf- fic with a $5m investment. An incremental investment of approximately $50m would be needed to increase daily capacity along the Atlantic Coast to a total of 21,000 trail- ers.” Supporting the viability of short-sea shipping on the

East Coast, the Four Corridor study found that the largest

The Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry. (Photo courtesy Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry)

The Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry. (Photo courtesy Detroit-Windsor Truck Ferry)