Strategic investments in US inland waterways should focus on maintaining locks and facilities
2015-06-16
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON - While the U.S. inland waterways system covers a vast geographic area, its freight traffic is highly concentrated, and the system needs a sustainable and well-executed plan for maintaining system reliability and performance to ensure that its limited resources are directed where they are most essential, says a new report from the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board. More targeted operations and maintenance (O&M) investments informed by an asset management approach would prioritize locks and facilities that are most in need of maintenance and for which the economic impacts of disruption would be highest.
The federal inland waterways infrastructure is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and funded through USACE's navigation budget. The system moves nearly 7 percent of all ton-miles of domestic cargo, primarily coal, petroleum, food and farm products, chemicals, and crude materials. It consists of more than 36,000 miles of commercially navigable channels and about 240 working lock sites. The chief and most expensive component is the installation and maintenance of lock and dam infrastructure to enable the upstream and downstream movement of cargo.
While many locks are more than 50 years old, lock performance correlates poorly with age since many locks have been rehabilitated. Navigation could be improved by directing O&M resources toward major facilities with high volumes of traffic, and where the time lost to shipping delays is significantly higher than the river average, the report says.
About 50 percent of barge cargo moves on six major corridors -- such as the Mississippi River, Illinois River, and the Ohio River -- which represent 16 percent of the total waterway miles, while many inland waterway segments have minimal or no freight traffic. The distribution of funding toward more essential facilities is already occurring in USACE's budgeting process, but a standard asset management approach to O&M spending is not fully developed or deployed across all USACE districts.
Commercial navigation users pay a share of the system's construction costs through a fuel tax, but pay none of the roughly $650 million annual cost of O&M, which is funded through general tax revenues. A system more reliant on user payments would provide needed revenue for maintenance and promote economic efficiency while being more consistent with the federal posture toward other freight transportation modes that are more dependent on user fees, the report says.
"Debates about funding for the inland waterways system and the roles of the federal government and users in paying for the system deserve renewed attention in light of shrinking federal budgets, declining appropriations, and increasing maintenance needs for its infrastructure," said committee chair Chris Hendrickson, Hamerschlag University Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Without a funding strategy that emphasizes system preservation, maintenance projects may continue to be deferred, which would result in further deterioration and in a less cost-effective and less reliable system."
INFORMATION:
The study was sponsored by the Transportation Research Board and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council make up the National Academies. They are private, independent nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology, and health policy advice under a congressional charter granted to NAS in 1863. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. For more information, visit http://national-academies.org. A committee roster follows.
Contacts:
Dana Korsen, Media Officer
Christina Anderson, Media Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
national-academies.org/newsroom
Twitter: @NAS_news and @NASciences
RSS feed: http://www.nationalacademies.org/rss/index.html
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalacademyofsciences/sets
Pre-publication copies of Funding and Managing the U.S. Inland Waterways System: What Policy Makers Need to Know are available from the National Academies Press on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu or by calling 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
Transportation Research Board
Committee on Reinvesting in Inland Waterways: What Policymakers Need to Know
Chris T. Hendrickson* (chair)
Hamerschlag University Professor
Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and of Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh
Leigh B. Boske
Professor of Economics and Public Policy
LBJ School of Public Affairs
University of Texas
Austin
Michael S. Bronzini
Independent Consultant
George Mason University
Fairfax, Va.
James J. Corbett Jr.
Professor
School of Marine Science and Policy
College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark
G. Edward Dickey
Independent Consultant
Baltimore
C. James Kruse
Director
Center for Ports and Waterways
Texas Transportation Institute
Texas A&M University
Houston
B. Starr McMullen
Professor of Economics
Oregon State University
Corvallis
Leonard A. Shabman
Resident Scholar
Resources for the Future
Washington, D.C.
Thomas H. Wakeman III
Deputy Director
Center for Maritime Systems
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, N.J.
STAFF
Melissa Welch-Ross
Study Director
*Member, National Academy of Engineering
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-06-16
Although most citizens tend to believe that big business owns Washington D.C., a team of researchers suggests that business may have a less dominant and more complicated relationship with government than previously thought.
In a study of randomly selected federal policy decisions between 1998 and 2002, the researchers found that when citizen interest groups and other competitors opposed businesses on policies, businesses had roughly an equal chance of success as the citizen group. When the researchers examined a shorter time period, businesses were only successful about ...
2015-06-16
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have located a new - and likely more promising, they say - target for a potential vaccine against malaria, a mosquito-borne illness that kills as many as 750,000 people each year.
The findings, published June 15 in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, detail how the researchers created a 3-D crystal structure of the protein believed central to the transmission of the malaria parasite through mosquitoes. In looking anew at the AnAPN1 protein, an enzyme in the gut of the Anopheles mosquito, ...
2015-06-16
Cancer and type 2 diabetes are two of the most significant public health burdens facing the world today, and currently available data suggests their prevalence is expected to continue to increase. Nut consumption has long been hypothesized to have a role in preventing both of these diseases, but until now evidence has been inconsistent. A new systematic review and meta-analysis published in Nutrition Reviews on June 16 shows that nut consumption is, indeed, associated with a decreased risk of certain types of cancer, but not type 2 diabetes.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic ...
2015-06-16
This news release is available in French. Quebec City, June 16, 2015--People whose chromosomes contain the DNA of the roseola virus are three times more likely to suffer from angina, according to a new study by researchers from the Université Laval Faculty of Medicine, the CHU de Québec Research Center-Université Laval, and the University of Washington. Details of this finding are published in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Roseola, also known as "sixth disease," is a very common childhood infection caused by ...
2015-06-16
The SAMT project of the European Union will work together with leading industrial actors from the cement, oil, metal, water, waste and chemical industries and review the latest scientific developments within the field of sustainability assessment. In the first phase of the project, a total of 90 methods and tools were reviewed. In the second phase, the best performing methods and practices will be tested with real-life case studies.
'The industries can learn from each other by sharing information on their methods and tools to evaluate sustainability. The SAMT project ...
2015-06-16
Protected forested areas in Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia and Thailand have prevented the release of more than 1,000 million additional tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, an economic service provided by nature worth at least $5 billion, according to new research by Georgia State University economist Paul Ferraro with alumnus Merlin M. Hanauer and colleagues.
In an article published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors use this finding to show how conservation research methodology is improved by joining its two distinct ...
2015-06-16
A study conducted by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has revealed the importance of single males in small, threatened populations. Results from a study of endangered New Zealand hihi birds (Notiomystis cincta), published this week in Evolutionary Applications, showed that bachelor males who don't hold breeding territories, known as 'floaters', could help maintain genetic diversity and decrease the likelihood of inbreeding by sneakily fathering chicks.
These underestimated individuals are vital to the long-term survival of small populations, such as in the hihi, ...
2015-06-16
Researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) in the Helmholtz Association, in collaboration with the National Heart Research Institute Singapore (NHRIS), have gained new insights into the regulation of disease-associated genes. They used a new technique that enables them to observe gene regulation at the level of protein production. They could thus capture more individual gene regulations than with traditional methods that only capture gene expression and transcription (Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/ncomms8200)*.
When a gene is read, ...
2015-06-16
Researchers from North Carolina State University have created stretchable, transparent conductors that work because of the structures' "nano-accordion" design. The conductors could be used in a wide variety of applications, such as flexible electronics, stretchable displays or wearable sensors.
"There are no conductive, transparent and stretchable materials in nature, so we had to create one," says Abhijeet Bagal, a Ph.D. student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work.
"Our technique uses geometry to stretch ...
2015-06-16
Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University have discovered that suspended sediment damages fish gills and can increase the rate of disease in fish.
"Suspended sediments result from flood plumes, coastal agricultural and industrial development and from dredging operations and are increasing in coastal waters worldwide," says study co-author, Dr Amelia Wenger.
"Fish gills are in direct contact with their environment and are the first line of defence in the animal's immune response, which makes them the perfect place ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Strategic investments in US inland waterways should focus on maintaining locks and facilities
