Operational Development of Marine Highways to Serve the U.S. Pacific Coast

Abstract

This paper examines the market volumes, service times, vessel characteristics, and economics for marine highways that would serve the U.S. Pacific Coast. This work was performed under contract to the Center for Commercial Deployment of Transportation Technologies. Market volumes were assessed by routes of interest and by filtering for cargo that would be eligible for marine highway service on the basis of the drayage distance and other factors. Sufficient daily truckload volumes exist in the Northern California to Southern California route to justify marine highways with multiple daily sailings of vessels with capacities of 450 to 700 trailers, should service times and economics prove to be competitive enough to divert cargo. Market volumes in the California to Pacific Northwest route are sufficient for daily sailings of smaller vessels with capacities of approximately 150 to 200 trailers. A door-to-door supply chain perspective was maintained, and discrete-event simulation was used to assess the service times and the vessel speeds required. The resulting voyage analysis served as input to both a parametric analysis of vessel characteristics and an economic analysis of marine highways by considering all maritime and land-side cost elements associated with the door-to-door movement of trailers. It was concluded that current truck rates are not high enough for marine highways to compete on the basis of cost in short next-day-turnaround markets, such as Northern California to Southern California. Marine highways are viable for longer routes such as those from California to the Pacific Northwest, where truck rates are higher and both distance and trucking hours-of-service regulations permit vessels to be time competitive at lower speeds.