Starting next month, a barge carrying up to 128 containers each one 20 feet long will slowly make its way up the James River to Richmond from Hampton Roads.
The barge trips are part of the “Marine Highways” program undertaken by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Maritime Administration that was announced yesterday. The program would make up to $25 million in construction funds to make greater use of inland waterways to haul materials, such as the Mississippi River system and Chesapeake Bay.
With the world’s economies becoming more global, Virginia’s Hampton Roads’ port is a major transshipment point for thousands of goods-filled containers that arrive daily atop huge ships.
Yet very few containers actually are transshipped along America’s extensive inland waterways from big ocean ports to their final destinations. Instead, most finish their journeys via trucks or railroad trains.
The point of Marine Highways is to make better use of inland routes to take containers off trucks which contribute to pollution, global warming and traffic congestion. By shipping containers by barge to Richmond, the containers avoid clogged roads in Tidewater and will have easy access at the Port of Richmond to north-south Interstate 95 and east-west Interstate 64.
The Richmond port will get about $2.25 million in state and federal money for infrastructure improvements and the Port will spend $2.6 million to pave five acres to handle the containers shipments which could expand up to 25,000 units a year.
At least one shipping firm has enjoyed a good business taking containers up and down Chesapeake Bay. Columbia Coastal Transport, a firm based in Liberty Corner, N.J. has been moving container shipments by barge in most major ports along the U.S. East Coast and some on the Gulf of Mexico. The firm has 16 barges specially-configured to carry up to 950 containers which can come in different sizes.