Barging down the Erie and questioning my readers
Friday, July 6, 2007 at 12:10AM For those of you wondering about the essay drought of the past few weeks, the answer is simple: Even minor heretics go on vacation now and then. And we do it in style. Witness the mode of transport – the hybrid vehicle of the future known as the replica 1862-class sailing canal boat Lois McClure.
I call it the hybrid vehicle of the future because 1) it has hybrid propulsion: wind, mule, and diesel tugboat, and 2) canal barges have the lowest total energy expenditures per ton-mile of any inland cargo carrier. The Lois is a 40-ton wooden boat that could, like its predecessors a hundred and fifty years ago, carry upwards of 120 tons. That 160-ton gross load could be moved at a walking pace by two or three mules, perhaps three horsepower. Imagine three tractor-trailers being moved by an electric trolling motor and you have the idea. It isn’t the speediest vehicle ever developed, but as the prices of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium knock a hole in the shingles, speed will be less important than fuel economy.
I recently read an article about the resurgence of rail cargo carriers. As the price of diesel hovers around $3.00 a gallon, more businesses are deciding to put cargo on rails instead of roads. 2006 was a record year for cargo rail. Rail volume has dipped in 2007, apparently due to a slowing economy rather than transfer back to trucks.
The history of the canal boat losing out to rail is instructive. In the first half of the 1800’s, canals were the way to go. The building of the Champlain and Erie canals dropped shipping costs by 95%. It created an economic boom that populated the Midwest and made New York the premier city of America. As rail lines spread across the country and rail service became more regular, the canal boats started losing out on shipments of manufactured goods. These shipments paid the best per ton. Canal boats started slipping down the cargo food chain. Eventually bulk fuel and stone products were their primary cargoes. Rail ruled for a while, and then with the creation of the interstate highway system, trucks started skimming the cream off of the rail business. In the eastern U.S. today barge traffic is almost nonexistent, rail carries bulk cargo, and trucks carry the finished goods. This is an over generalization, but accurate enough for this argument.
As the price of transportation fuel increases, I can see this scenario shifting into reverse. More and more cargo will shift to rail, cutting into trucking volume from below. Eventually, the bottom end of the rail cargo will start shifting back to the canals, the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the Mississippi, where possible. The inconvenience of intermodal transportation will be trumped by energy costs. The canal barge will rise again.
On a completely different subject, I’d like to solicit a response from my readership. I send out a notification of new essays to about a hundred friends, acquaintances, and friends of friends. I have estimated from my website statistics that something like 450 people regularly and deliberately visit my site. Another 10-15% find it through searches or come in through links from other sites. I’d like to address a few questions to those few hundred regular readers:
Where are you from?
How did you find my site?
(If you are on my list then of course there’s no need to answer the first two)
Why do you keep coming back?
What would you like to read about in the future?
I may get a few responses and I may get inundated. If the latter, I won’t be able to respond. Please click the comment link below if you’d like to answer. Indicate at the top of your comment whether you want your response to remain private – I won’t let it go on the site.
And thank you, from the bottom of my heretical heart, for reading my work.
Reader Comments (1)
from Troy NY - enjoyed your essays on water transportation
please see www.nysmarinehighway.com and youtube - "tug boat Tim"
Two entreprenuers who have started a shipping business and finding themselves to be very busy because they are uniquely set up for canal shipping. Many tugboats and barges are not suited to the canal dimensions.
Understand that the boats cannot leave the water though- and transfer to truck is inevitable. So some of your point to point cost analysis may need reworking unless you only consider the miles travelled on the interstate parallel to canal.