AASHTO publishes freight report

Emphasizes needs for trucks

Jon Boyd, Jul 09, 10.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) published “Unlocking Freight,” the second in a series of reports on national transportation needs, which predicts long-term growth in freight demand, and a need for building new multi-modal freight infrastructure. The report’s specific recommendations appears to favor trucking over other means of moving freight.

The AASHTO Journal characterizes the findings of the report, “The transportation system that supports the movement of freight across America is facing a crisis. The nation’s highways, railroads, ports, and waterways require investments well beyond current levels needed to maintain—much less improve—their performance. Millions of jobs and the country’s long-term economic health are at risk.”

“Unlocking Freight” (pdf) predicts that the share of freight tonnage carried by truck will decrease from 62% to 59%, this would imply trucking tonnage will increase because AASHTO also says overall freight demand will double by 2050.

The AASHTO report also predicts shippers will grow more “time-sensitive,” meaning they will place a higher premiuim on transit time. Since trucks almost always have shorter transit times than other means of moving freight, AASHTO thinks this is another reason to continue our investment in infrastructure for trucking.

The Interstate Highway System alone has 160,000 lane miles. Over the last ninety years, virtually all of our national investment has been in roads, and relatively little investment has gone to freight rail; there would need to be a dramatic structural change in transportation investment to change the mode split between truck and freight rail.

“Unlocking Freight” proposes an allocation of $3 billion of annual funding of freight rail from the estimated $375 in annual revenue from the National Highway Trust Fund, and another $7 billion annual investment from new user fees. The report recommends adding 52,000 highway lane miles, including additional lane miles for the interstate system, another 14,000 for NAFTA corridors, and 8,000 lane miles for truck-only toll facilities.

Phillip Longman, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, examines maritime freight in his recent article for the Washington Monthly, via Off the Kuff:

Every four days, a 4,200-horsepower tugboat, having crossed the Gulf of Mexico from Brownsville, Texas, slips into the ship channel off Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay. The vessel pulls a single barge. On board are stacks of metal containers ranging in length from twenty to fifty-three feet. Few of the bathers along the beaches of nearby Fort De Soto Park are likely to take much notice of such a routine sight, much less associate it with a green-energy future. But there is a connection, and it will help protect places like the Gulf floor from the sort of drilling that now threatens the region with environmental catastrophe.

The tug and barge are operated by a privately held company called SeaBridge Freight. If you hire SeaBridge to move a container between northern Mexico and the southeastern United States, a truck will pick the container up, and a truck will deliver it to its final destination. But rather than use a truck to make the entire journey, the company will load your container onto a barge and ship it across the Gulf of Mexico. This water route saves 690 miles of driving, takes no longer than trucking door to door, and consumes much less oil.

This anecdote indicates an alternative to the NAFTA corridors proposed in the AASHTO report. In addition, ships offer a fuel-efficient alternative for shipping within the United States:
According to a study prepared for the U.S. Maritime Administration, even a minimal rise in energy prices would dramatically increase the cost of trucking while only marginally affecting the cost of water transport. For example, when crude oil costs $55 per barrel, the cost of moving a forty-foot container one mile by truck is about $1.75. But if crude oil goes up to $91 a barrel, the trucking cost jumps to $2.28 per mile. And if oil reaches $157 a barrel, the trucking cost jumps up to $3.24. By comparison, even if oil is at $157 a barrel, the cost of moving that same container one mile by barge is only twenty-eight cents, less than a tenth of the trucking cost.

(Photo credit: futureatlas.com)