NY road congestion brings port benefits

While the actions of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), which is looking to promote barge transportation of freight, are local, they are tied to, and may provide the framing for, an ecosystem for other ports where commerce is mired in traffic.

Importantly, the NYCEDC is co-operating with the local port authority — not necessarily an easy task — and with the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) which continues to push its Marine Highways programme in the face of sometimes strong headwinds from the landside.

The city and the port interests have spearheaded the formation of a coalition called the North Atlantic Marine Highway Alliance with the objective of bringing public stakeholders and private interests together “to assess and develop existing and potential marine highway services that will improve intermodal efficiency within and between major ports”, up and down the US East Coast. The focus will be on local and therefore “discretionary” cargo.

While the story is still being written, there are some promising developments so far. Notably, the NYCEDC — which controls a large part of the Hunts Point Market, a major food distribution entrepôt — has begun the process of seeking an operator for a terminal, not yet built, that would service barges to potentially move cargo around the local region. NYCEDC received a grant from MARAD last year to study cargo flows around the region and the Hunts Point request for proposal (RFP) is a tangible result of this analysis.

Studies of likely cargo growth in a harbour are hardly the stuff of ‘Opinion’ articles, but the RFP, issued in mid-March for responses in June, is. Additionally, the co-operation between different agencies to work on crafting maritime solutions to a vexing problem is certainly worth my shout-out.

The RFP, and the steadily-loudening buzz, comes at a time when distribution patterns are moving in a ‘local’ direction and the pallets, rather than 40-foot boxes, are increasingly infused into conference presentations and discussions among decision makers.

Similarly, transportation ‘sustainability’ is on decision-makers’ radar screens, perhaps due to steady mentions surrounding the International Maritime Organization’s 2020 limit, for sulphur in fuel oil used on ships operating outside designated emission control areas, of 0.5% mass by mass. Private enterprise will do the eventual lifting, but it’s heartening that government is attempting to open the fairway. The roster of the Highway Alliance covers members from Maine (in the north) to Delaware in the mid-Atlantic region. But it also includes carriers with proven track records in coastal barging, who would be eager to serve an even bigger swathe of the Marine Highway.

This commentary article features in the May issue of Port Strategy. Click here to get your free advance copy.