Follow-up: "Autoroutes maritimes", aka marine highways

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Matthieu Desiderio

Mr. C. Kenneth Orski sent Transport Expertise some more details about the Marine Highways Program, that we mentionned in our French article “Des autoroutes maritimes pour décongestionner les routes américaines” (Marine Highways to unclog American’s roads).

Please find below an excerpt from Vol. 19, No. 19 of Innovation NewsBriefs : Ports Infrastructure: Competing with Highways for Investors’ Attention.

America’s Marine Highway Program

“The Maritime Administration has launched a demonstration program intended to identify promising marine highway corridors. The program was authorized in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The routes will be eligible for up to $25 million in capital grants. The James River from Norfolk to Richmond has been designated as the first such marine highway corridor. It is expected to shift some 4,000 trucks-worth of cargo off the I-64 onto the waterway. However, some economists contend that the economics of this logistical alternative remains to be demonstrated.”

Source: Vol. 19, No. 19 – Innovation NewsBriefs, C. Kenneth Orski

What’s the situation in France?

Quite briefly, we provide you with a quick review of the marine highways projects in France, and with references to find more information about these different initiatives. We will publish more detailed articles about intermodal transport, and marine highways issues in the future months.

the Ministry for Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning (Ministère de l’écologie, de l’énergie, du développement durable et de l’aménagement du territoire, MEEDDAT) provides a page dedicated to Marine Highways: Les autoroutes de la mer, under its intermodal section.

Four Marine Highways projects are detailed in this section, and are available through the following links:

Marine Highway between France and Portugal: two initiatives are launched on the Altantic and Mediterranean borders. Read here for more details (in French).
Marine Highway between France and Spain: project to launch several marine highways between France and Spain from the Atlantic, Channel, and North Sea coasts. Read here for more details (in French).
Mediterranean Marine Highways MEDA-MoS-Autoroutes de la Mer en Méditerranée project has been launched by the European Commission in 2006 to better link Europe and Southern countries through maritime intermodal transportation solutions. Read here for more details (in French).
North Sea Marine Highways: this project is the second call for proposals to operate a marine highway in the North Sea region. See here for more details (in French).

More generally about intermodal transport (marine and rolling highways), a report has been published by a technical center of the MEEDDAT and is available freely for download: Autoroutes maritimes et ferroviaires – Critères de choix par les entreprises pour le transport non accompagné. Also, an English version of the presentation given by Matthieu Desiderio during the European Transport Conference in Leiden, NL can be downloaded here. You might find interest in reading the Intermodal Transport page on the MEEDDAT’s website: see here for more details (in French).