MarEx Op-Ed: Waterways Transportation Research: Needed Now More Than Ever

By Craig Philip, Chairman, National Waterways Foundation

Many industries and organizations commit time and resources to conducting research as a way to solidify their strategic direction and help people better understand their mission. Solid research is even more important for the inland waterways system, which is often out of sight and out of mind to most Americans.

The National Waterways Foundation, of which I serve as Chairman, develops the intellectual and factual arguments for an efficient, well-funded and secure inland waterways system. Its work helps protect America’s waterways through research studies, education and training programs, grants, forums, and similar activities that help people better understand how to maintain our waterways system, enhance its capabilities and promote its critical value in the future.

Fuel-Efficient, Green and Safe
The importance of this work is aptly demonstrated by the Foundation’s most recent project. Working with the U.S. Maritime Administration and the Texas Transportation Institute’s Center for Ports and Waterways at Texas A&M University, the Foundation released a 2008 study comparing selected societal, environmental, and safety impacts of inland river barge transportation with highway and rail transportation. “A Modal Comparison of Freight Transportation Effects on the General Public” was peer-reviewed and conducted over more than a year. It produced astounding data points that surprised many who’d spent their entire careers in the industry. The Foundation also released an addendum in 2009 addressing the carbon footprint of the three modes.

To recap the key points of the studies, one common 15-barge river tow has the same capacity as 1,050 trucks and 216 rail cars pulled by six locomotives. In terms of fuel efficiency, barges move a ton of cargo 576 miles on one gallon of fuel (trains get 413 and trucks 155 “ton-miles per gallon”), while at the same time generating fewer emissions of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogenus oxide than rail or truck. As far as safety is concerned, after adjusting for differences in cargo quantity moved by each mode, for each person injured in a barge accident, 125 are injured in rail accidents and 2,171 in truck accidents.

While we are truly an intermodal society, this researched comparison of rail, truck and inland waterways transport modes offers an important perspective on the real benefits of moving cargo by water. Barge transportation is clearly the greenest, most fuel-efficient and safest way to move our nation’s cargoes.

Who Benefits, and Who Should Pay?
The National Waterways Foundation’s next study will address waterways system beneficiaries. While the barge and towing industry is the only beneficiary that is taxed to pay for locks and dams, there are many other beneficiaries of these structures, including recreational users, consumers of clean drinking water obtained from river pools, electric utilities that use water in power generation, and numerous communities that benefit from flood damage reduction as well as improved health.

The Foundation is keenly interested in the new recommendations made by the Inland Marine Transportation System Investment Strategy Team to the Inland Waterways Users Board (IWUB) in December 2009. The Team, comprised of key Corps of Engineers personnel and members of the IWUB, met for nearly a year to draft a 20-year Capital Development Plan to prioritize navigation projects across the entire system, improve the Corps of Engineers’ project management and processes to deliver projects on time and on budget, and recommend an affordable funding mechanism to meet the system’s needs.

These recommendations are significant and, if adopted, would set a future course for continuing investment in our nation’s inland waterways infrastructure. A critical part of the Team’s proposal would preserve the existing 50/50 cost-sharing formula for new lock construction and major rehabilitation projects above $100 million, while adjusting the current model to provide that dam construction and smaller rehabilitation projects be 100 percent federally funded. These adjustments would partially restore the original exclusion under the Water Resources Development Act of 1986 of major rehabilitation projects from cost-sharing and recognize the value derived by other beneficiaries of dams and the pools created by dams.

Importantly, the Team also recommended a cap on all new lock construction projects that would protect the Inland Waterways Trust Fund and the industry from having to pay for significant cost overruns. These new funding parameters will likely necessitate an increase in the current fuel tax but would be worth the investment as a solution to the future of America’s inland waterways system. It is now up to Congress to decide and for industry to support.

The late, great astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan said, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." The National Waterways Foundation’s research is a path to revealing the incredible value of inland water transportation for the benefit of the nation. – MarEx

For more information, visit www.nationalwaterwaysfoundation.org

Craig Philip was elected Chairman of the National Waterways Foundation in October 2009. He also serves as CEO of Ingram Marine Group in Nashville, Tennessee. He appeared on the cover of Maritime Executive in 2003.