Page 17: of Marine News Magazine (June 2012)

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www.marinelink.com MN17Closer to home, talk about what ishappening in Virginia. Whats hap- pening with your I-64 corridor?efforts? Give us an indication of the volume going up the JamesRiver and how many trucks youvecumulatively removed from the highways.The 64 Express, our barge service linking the Hampton Roads Harbor and the Port of Richmond, continues to build momentum. The three-year- old service now runs twice a week and the Virginia Port Authority expects to add a third run per week by early summer. So far this year (through April) traffic on the 64 Express is up 85 percent when compared with the same period in 2011: 2,975 TEUs vs. 1,606 TEUs, respectively. So for the first four months of 2012 the bargehas been responsible for removing just about 6,000 truck trips from I-64 (counting as roundtrip moves). Rescinding the federal HarborMaintenance Tax (HMT) for the shortsea leg has been cited as akey ingredient to getting our marine highways going. Do youagree? Whats the prospect of seeing that happen soon?The HMT is an impediment to thedevelopment of marine highways. This ad valorum tax is based on the value of the cargo and is paid by the shipper; no other mode of transporta- tion has to pay such a tax. What makes this even more egregious is that the federal government is not using the majority of the revenues it collects for channel maintenance. So we have a double problem: a tax that drives up the costs of marine high- ways and increasingly silted-in chan- nels that make it difficult for opera-tors to serve many terminals and ports. Can we expect to see a robust shortsea shipping effort here in the U.S. without the removal of the HMT?There is already a robust marine highway industry in the inland water- ways and Great Lakes since the cargo being moved are bulk commodities. However, the HMT acts as a disin- centive for the movement of contain- ers carrying higher value cargoes. Nonetheless, from a public benefits perspective, marine highways are a cost effective alternative to expanding highway infrastructure. Labor has to be one of theunknown variables in shortseashipping efforts. How has that affected your efforts in the Commonwealth?