More than two billion tons of freight worth $1 trillion annually moves through U.S. ports and waterways.  The St. Lawrence Seaway is the international shipping gateway to the Great Lakes, offering access and competitive costs with other routes and modes to the interior of the country. As trade increases, ensuring unimpeded access to ports for commercial vessels traffic will be increasingly important to the national economy.

Performance Goal:

Reduce the amount of disruption to maritime commerce caused by impediments to around-the-clock, all weather navigation.

Performance measures:

 

External Factors:  Growth in the containership industry and vessel size is driving many harbor improvement projects in the United States.  To handle these ships, ports need to provide channel depths of at least 50 feet, cranes that can fully cover ships’ increasing widths, highly efficient terminals, and superior inland connections.  These changes increase safety and environmental risks and depend on efficient traffic flow.  Similar growth in other commercial traffic (ferry service, cruise ships, oil and chemical tankers), coupled with increased use of waterways for recreation tends to drive waterway congestion up.

Strategies and Initiatives to Achieve 2004 Target: DOT resources attributable to this performance goal are depicted below:

 

DOT, through MARAD and SLSDC, seeks to improve maritime navigation by developing congestion relieving commercial practices, and by providing for international navigation to and from Great Lakes ports. 

The delivery of nearly all goods is on a time-definite basis – product consignees (manufacturers or retail operations) – require that shipments arrive on a certain date and even by a specified time.  A modern information system is crucial to understanding the challenges to efficient marine traffic movement.  DOT has extensive outreach to private industry, States, port authorities, and shippers at a regional and local level, and will work in partnership to develop tools needed to be successful.

MARAD acts as a catalyst to stimulate cooperative ventures and partnerships among the marine freight industry’s public and private sectors to adapt new technologies and intermodal networks.  These efforts will increase capacity in container ports to meet expected long-term increases in demand, including introduction of marine-rail intermodal systems with potential to double or triple existing port throughput capacity.  Such a marine-rail interface project will be demonstrated at the Port of Tacoma in FY 2003.

SLSDC will continue to focus on increasing the safety, security, reliability, and efficiency of the U.S. navigation facilities each shipping season, reducing the risk of vessel delays due to lock equipment failure, and improving maintenance and inspection systems.  Specifically the SLSDC will:

▪          operate and maintain the locks and related navigation facilities for the U.S. portion of the St. Lawrence Seaway.  To maintain reliability, SLSDC will improve lock structures, including recommendations from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, during annual winter maintenance;

▪          continue coordination with its Canadian counterpart agency to ensure consistency in the vessel inspection procedures of the two agencies and implement joint projects aimed at improving the safety, security, and efficiency of the waterway and the two Seaway agencies.  SLSDC will continue to work with the U.S. Coast Guard in performing security-related risk assessment inspections in Montreal as part of the traditional vessel inspection program, thus reducing transit time delays for users; and

▪          use Automated Information System (AIS)/GPS technologies to more efficiently manage vessel traffic control and vessel transits at the U.S. Seaway locks.

Other Federal Programs with Common Outcomes: The Army Corps of Engineers dredges channels to maintain charted depth and width; and both the Corps and the Department of Commerce (NOAA) provide navigation charts of U.S. ports and waterways.  NOAA provides real-time environmental information on weather, tides, and currents to ships maneuvering in the Nation’s waterways.  The Coast Guard maintains navigation systems and vessel traffic systems to mark safe water and to facilitate safe vessel traffic.

The Canadian St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation carries out counterpart programs.  The SLSDC exchanges information with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates locks on U.S. inland waterways, and closely coordinates with Transport Canada, and with the International Joint Commission and St. Lawrence Seaway River Board of Control regarding water level conditions.