Inland Waterways and Container Shipping
A promising match that needs a bit more help from the government.
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I spent some time over this past year learning about the America’s Marine Highway Program and its efforts to boost the usage of the United States’ inland waterways—rivers, canals, channels—by shippers of containerized freight that is taking up ever more space on the country’s crowded roads and rails. Passed by an act of Congress in 2007 and administered since 2010 by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the AMHP seeks to reduce traffic congestion, create jobs, help the environment, strengthen national defense capabilities, and improve public safety by moving containerized freight onto water. These are noble pursuits, but the DOT’s fulfillment of these goals currently amounts to little more than acting as an ATM for state port authorities and its broad achievement of these goals over the past decade has been unconvincing at best.
As my paper explores, Congress built into the DOT’s mandate some mechanisms to shape the inland waterway network in a way that is economically attractive to shippers who might currently be comfortable with preexisting shipping arrangements with a trucking firm or railroad. Data collection, research, and coordination with other government agencies were all permitted under its engendering legislation, but the DOT has not made an effort to publicize this work if it has in fact been done—and the Department is not known for secrecy.
The America’s Marine Highway Program is indeed unique. As opposed to other DOT and federal grant programs which often place funds directly in the hands of private sector operators to achieve specific goals, the AMHP acts as a sort of free market liaison that funds state port authorities and regional development agencies who in turn contract with private operators at the “ground level” where they can more clearly see and directly meet market needs than somebody at a desk in Washington. More grant programs should be run this way. Without the federal oversight and coordination authorized by Congress, however, the program risks repeating the same market failures on the water that other policies have created on land. In other words, relying on the “pull” of individual market actors prevents the DOT from being able to “push” the system in a way that fulfills its above goals to the benefit of the whole.
You can find the full paper here.