Water ferry services for homeland security and National Defense - Commentary

Army Logistician, March-April, 2004 by Eugene C. Bonacci

The rail and highway infrastructures in the United States, especially Interstate 95 and other interstate traffic corridors along the east coast, are becoming increasingly congested. Improvements to rail choke-points and highway bottlenecks are not economically feasible and, if they were, would take many years to complete. Therefore, it is critical for our Nation to develop a coastwise domestic water ferry capability that can be implemented quickly when needed for homeland security and national defense purposes.

Coastwise domestic water ferry service would offer an immediate, workable alternative if bridges or tunnels along major interstate or other coastal highways or rail networks were compromised, making the routes impassable. Halting or slowing down commerce on these major interstate routes would wreak great harm to our Nation's economy and security. Suitable alternate supply routes are desperately needed now.

Government officials and others responsible for developing solutions to the increasingly acute highway and rail infrastructure problems should consider coastwise domestic water ferry service as a viable transportation option and provide appropriate funding for its development and implementation.

Controversy exists among water ferry proponents about the use of roll-on-roll-off (RORO) versus lift-on-lift-off (LOLO) service in domestic coastwise operations. LOLO service offers economic benefits because more containers can be moved at a lower cost per container on a single vessel; however. LOLO service requires substantially larger infrastructure capital investments than RORO service by both the origin and destination ports to load and unload the vessels, and the LOLO process takes significantly more time. Because of the additional port terminal time required, LOLO vessels cannot compete with direct, over-the-road trucking operations in providing the fastest delivery service possible to the military services or other customers in the event of a national emergency.

However, transport by RORO vessels can be competitive with direct, over-the-road truck service in certain traffic lanes if an adequate number of vessels are used. their departure and arrival times are scheduled to ensure consistent on-time delivery, and they maintain the proper speed while underway. RORO transport would permit the water ferry service to be competitive during normal operations as well as during a crisis, making it more appealing to domestic shippers and consignees in their everyday business operations.

In a RORO container-on-chassis operation, containers could be discharged from an international containership and loaded immediately onto waiting chassis, The containers on chassis then could be loaded onto specially designed "transfer carriages." These transfer carriages then could be loaded on a coastwise vessel as soon as it arrived, reducing vessel turnaround time. The port terminal operation would be simplified by not having to stack the containers when they are offloaded relocate them later, and lift them onto the coastwise vessel when it arrives, which would be the case in a LOLO operation.

In a domestic RORO operation, the 53-foot over-the-road trailers with containers permanently attached could be moved onto transfer carriages and loaded immediately onto the coastwise vessel when it arrived at the port. This would reduce vessel turnaround time and simplify loading operations at the origin port terminal.

The 53-foot trailers with attached containers are not conducive to LOLO operations and would be excluded from domestic LOLO coastwise water ferry operations. However, they represent over 95 percent of the current over-the-road truck traffic. Therefore, shippers who use these 53-foot trailers would benefit most from having RORO water ferry service available to provide for continuity of commerce in a national emergency.

When a domestic coastwise vessel arrives at its destination port, the RORO operation would be reversed for unloading. As soon as the transfer carriages were unloaded from the vessel, the delivery truckers could pick up the containers on chassis or 53-foot trailers and deliver them the same day. Using transfer carriages when unloading would reduce the coastal vessel turnaround time and simplify operations at the destination port terminal.

A LOLO operation requires a substantial capital investment in a sophisticated fixed-port infrastructure. By contrast, a RORO operation could be conducted at a remote shallow-draft location with very little capital investment. What's more, a shallow-draft RORO operation, unlike a LOLO operation, could be shifted to another location quickly and easily in an emergency, which IS an important benefit of coastwise domestic water ferry service.

RORO domestic water ferry service clearly is a viable solution to the daunting rail and highway infrastructure problems. The funding required to develop and implement these water ferry services is a relatively small fraction of the funding that would be needed to improve the current rail and highway infrastructure. RORO flexibility is crucial to our homeland security and national defense.