USDOT’s MARAD makes $7.5 million in investments in nine Marine Highways projects; Michigan, Oregon, Kentucky, Louisiana among recipients

By Bruce Abbe, strategic advisor for trade and transportation

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) announced last week that it has approved funding grants totaling $7.5 million for nine projects under its Marine Highway program, which aims to shift more freight from congested land highways to the nation’s navigable waterways.

Container on barge projects have been among a number of the public/private start-up efforts in recent years under the program.

Among the nine projects receiving funding in this round of the grant program were:

Michigan – Lake Erie Shuttle
The Port of Monroe, Michigan was awarded $1,101,735 to support the Lake Erie Shuttle Service, a project that aims to use existing vessels as a feeder service to move containers and freight between Monroe and the Port of Cleveland in Ohio, which offers regular service to Antwerp, Belgium through Spliethoff Shipping line. Cargo from the Ford Motor Company supports the project. The funding uses include purchasing and installing a crawler crane. Detroit and Buffalo might also be added to the shuttle’s rotation.

The Port of Monroe has also made steps to offer international shipping from its own facilities, but has run into difficulty getting service lined up from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency’s offices in Detroit, according to Port Director Paul LaMarre III. He’s enlisted the support of Michigan U.S. Senator Gary Peters to unlock the service bottleneck.

Oregon – Port of Morrow
A grant of $1,623,200 was awarded to main sponsor Port of Morrow, located on the Columbia River in north central Oregon. The funds will be used to support expansion of barge services from the Port of Morrow to Portland, Oregon; and Vancouver, Washington and Longview, Washington. Two marine terminals will be expanded.

SSGA members United Grain and Scoular Company are among sizeable export shippers from the Columbia and Snake River basins. Here’s a link to information about the Port of Morrow’s grant.

Kentucky
Paducah and McCracken County, Kentucky were awarded $480,000 to support purchase or lease of transportation equipment at a Baton Rouge Facility to be used for loading and unloading containers on barges.

Louisiana
An existing container-on-barge service between Port Allen and New Orleans operated by SEACOR AMH was awarded $1,040,000 to expand its capabilities by purchasing six purpose-build barges and to leasing a towboat. The SEACOR service started in 2016. It has moved containers from Memphis, a container surplus area to Louisiana to support the rapidly growing resin export business. This was the fourth MARAD grant for the project.

The Journal of Commerce notes that over the last 30 years, efforts to launch container-on-barge services have often struggled to compete with intermodal rail. Yet the resin business has been growing quickly and may help provide some sustaining business at least in the southern Mississippi River barge corridor. Resin exports were up 31 percent through New Orleans and 57 percent through Houston in the first six months of 2019. SEACOR moved 50,000 TEU in 2018.

Go here for more details on the nine MARAD grant recipients.

Here’s a link to MARAD supported Marine Highway project descriptions.