Office of Naval Research - National Transportation Library

grown twofold (from 1.3 billion tons) since 1967. The tonnage of goods transported fordomestic waterborne trade grew moderately until the 1980s, from 871 million tons to about 1billion tons (an 18 percent growth for the entire period,) but has since remained stagnant. Incontrast, the foreign waterborne commerce has grown from 466 million tons to 1.6 billiontons, a growth of 236 percent over the past four decades. Until 1993, domestic tonnageexceeded foreign trade tonnage by as much as a factor of 2. Subsequent to the rapid growthin the foreign-trade component of the U.S. waterborne commerce in the 1990s, a reversal inthe relative shares of domestic and foreign trade cargo has occurred. 8 Since 1994, theforeign trade component of the waterborne commerce has outpaced the domestic componentby 50% (Figure 2.)Figure 2 - Waterborne Commerce of the United StatesWaterborne Commerce in the U.S.1967-2006Millions of Short Tons3,0002,5002,0001,5001,00050001967197019751980198519901995200020052006Total Foreign Domestic.Source: Volpe Center-generated chart based on USACE, Waterborne Commerce of the US,Calendar Year 2006, Part 5, National Summaries.The distribution of the 1 billion tons of freight carried each year for domestic trade amongthe U.S. waterway segments is as follows:• Inland rivers carry over 60% of the tonnage (622 million tons);• Domestic ocean/coastwise, Gulf and St. Lawrence Seaway facilities carry less than athird of the volume (267 million tons); and the• Great Lakes carry the remaining 11 percent (115 million tons).Shares of the coastal, inland rivers and the Great Lakes traffic of the nation’s domesticfreight transportation have been moving on a downward slope. In the inland waterways,most of the waterborne transportation takes place on the Mississippi. Channel depthrestrictions and the presence of locks and dams in the Upper Mississippi, Illinois, and Ohio8 Waterborne Commerce of the United States, Calendar Year 2006, Part 5 – National Summaries, IWR,USACE, Release date: 07/04/2008.ONR SSS Final Report 11