Investment could create jobs, alleviate traffic and be good for the environment.
This blog post was authored by Noah Musto and Libba McGraw.
The running joke that it’s Infrastructure Week has been around for so long that it has ceased to be a joke anymore.
But hey, there is one place where it’s always infrastructure week: The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee!
And on this particular Infrastructure Week, the panel’s Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation looked why a major infrastructure package is needed not just for America’s roads and bridges, but for our waterways.
Specifically, the Wednesday hearing examined the need for Short Sea Shipping, which is loosely defined as moving cargo via the sea along a coast, rather than across an ocean (you also might have heard it referred to as “marine highway”).
Using Short Sea Shipping as a mode of transportation for cargo cuts down on traffic congestion, as it allows goods to be moved around on the ocean rather than on already crowded roads and highways. But while there’s been a lot of attention paid to the need for an infrastructure plan for things like roads, the importance of America including a maritime strategy in that plan is less clear.
In his opening remarks, Subcommittee Chairman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) called for a national infrastructure plan that includes a maritime plan, noting that “our friends in Europe have placed Short Sea Shipping at the center of their transportation policies, moving over 40 percent of all European freight on oceans and rivers.”
Short Sea Shipping also would improve air quality and cut down on emissions, Maloney noted, a point echoed by James Weakley, president of the Lake Carriers Association, which represents U.S.-flag vessel operators on the Great Lakes.
Weakley said that carriers represented by his association can carry one ton of cargo for 607 miles per gallon of fuel. That’s far more efficient than rail, which can carry that same cargo 202 miles a gallon, or truck, which can carry the cargo 59 miles.
Emissions-wise, a carrier will produce 19 tons of CO2 to transport 1,000 tons of cargo over 1,000 miles, while rail will produce 55 tons of CO2, and a truck which will produce 190 tons.
“Short sea shipping is also green shipping,” said Larry Willis, president of the Transportation Trades Department at the AFL-CIO.
The importance of short sea shipping goes beyond environmental concerns, Willis said — it also has the potential to provide America with thousands of good paying jobs.
If the government prioritizes short sea shipping via a major infrastructure package, it will create a demand to build ships and increase the American shipbuilding industry — so long as the ships are built in the United States.
Across the maritime industry, unfair competition with “unscrupulous foreign-flagged shippers” has hit the U.S. sector hard, Willis said. These companies “evade responsibility by registering in countries with no labor or environmental protections, pay their mariners poorly, and are known to simply abandon injured or sick mariners in foreign ports with no way back home.”
But because most short sea shipping would take place between U.S. destinations on vessels flagged by U.S. law, the Jones Act would apply. This law regulates maritime commerce, requiring goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships built, owned and operated by U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
Thus, investment in short sea shipping is likely to “guarantee thousands of good paying mariner jobs in this country, an excellent step in the right direction,” Willis said.
“Increased demand could also result in orders for new barges to replace the 28,000 aging Jones Act barges currently in service,” Willis added. “These orders could alleviate difficult circumstances for the shipbuilding industry, which employs over 100,000 workers across the country. Many shipyards are struggling…in no small part due to the impossibility of trying to compete with foreign shipyards in China and Korea that are deeply state-subsidized.”
Willis pointed out that currently these foreign shipyards don’t comply with labor protections that we value in this country and, obviously, do not care about hiring Americans. So, an increase in demand for our shipyards will be a win across the board for American workers.