Office of Naval Research - National Transportation Library

Conventional subsidy programs that close the gap in operating costs for SSS have provenineffective, as suggested by the lessons-learned from the Port Authority New York/NewJersey (PANY/NJ) initiative in support of the Albany Express Barge Service. The failure ofthe initiative showed the difficulties involved in using subsidies in support of cargooperations that reduce emissions and highway congestion. For several years in the early2000, the EPA Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grants were used tosubsidize SSS operators for moving cargo inland on the Hudson River. The subsidy was paidto enable the barge operators to charge a lower per-container fee to shippers (10 percentlower than the equivalent truck costs) to compensate for the longer transit time. The AlbanyExpress Barge was designed to operate as part of a strategy to promote diversion ofcontainers from the highways to a Port Inland Distribution Network (PIDN) for processingthe container transload operations and then shipping them on the coastal and inlandwaterways. The initiative, however, was not sustainable after the CMAQ funds ran out.More successful implementation of CMAQ funds have been for promoting SSS in Portland,Oregon, for the Columbia Slough Intermodal Expansion Bridge project – that connected theriver to the deepwater port facility and eliminated many truck trips – and for the Port of NewYork Red Hook Container Barge project for the purchase and operation of a barge servicethat removed about 54,000 truck trips from the region’s highways each year.Actively promoting environmentally “green” features of low emission-marine fuel andengines is another approach to closing the pricing differential between marine and highwaymodes. Environmental advocates for the promotion of SSS have suggested that “coastalshipping must go green.” Among viable options for promotion of green transportationalternatives are the emerging markets for more efficient energy consumption – e.g.,promotion of alternative fuels, advanced engine design that burn natural gas or ultra lowsulfur diesel, or mechanisms for turning waste heat into additional energy or filtering exhaustfumes. 926-2-4 Supporting a Feeder Port System and Transshipment Hubs:Lessons Learned from Successful European OperationsThe existing U.S. marine infrastructure is amenable to development of an integrated systemof marine transportation infrastructure in support of the global supply chains. Developmentof an efficient network of small self propelled feeder vessels and fast freight ferries, togetherwith the existing fleet of tug-barge vessels, could promote a highly efficient marinetransportation system. Such as feeder network, not widely developed in the U.S. today,would facilitate the alignment of the nation’s “mega ports” with an emerging system ofsatellite feeder ports and transshipment hubs on the East and West Coasts. Such a network ofsatellite ports, developed to meet the transshipment and container distribution needs of theglobal importers, would significantly alleviate the current highway congestion and marineport capacity pressures in the nation.Smaller vessels used for transshipment and feedering of cargo delivered at Tier 1 coastalmega ports would efficiently utilize the smaller Tier 2 ports to mitigate port capacity andhighway congestion problems. Ports such as Philadelphia, PA, Wilmington, NC, andJacksonville, Florida, for example, are suitable feeder ports because they would be able to92 Institute for Global Maritime Studies (IGMS), September 2008.ONR SSS Final Report 73