Examining the U.S. inland waterways’ national economic return on investment
The National Waterways Foundation (NWF) has commissioned and released a two-year study to examine the U.S. inland waterways’ national economic return on investment and the need for and benefits of an accelerated program of waterways system improvements that sustain and create American jobs.
Inland navigation has traditionally played a vital role in what is a uniquely American transportation landscape. Navigations history is long and storied. Nonetheless, the waterways future function as a freight resource is still unclear. Demands for surface freight transportation capacity seem to be changing in ways that point to an increased role for waterborne commerce. But the continued reliability and consequent economic value of inland navigation depends on a new generation of supporting infrastructure. These investments will require fiscal resources to be marshaled and combined into a national policy that capitalizes on the comparative efficiencies of all freight transport modes.
Evaluating the desirability of a forward-looking federal policy that supports inland navigation requires information that has, heretofore, been incomplete: reliable information describing the current value of inland freight transportation as well as information describing the likely economic impacts of renewed investment in navigation infrastructure. The goal of this current research is to partially address this information shortfall.
The work contains two elements. The study first evaluates the total economic importance of commercial inland navigation to the country in navigations present form and assumes only sufficient investment to maintain current system performance. This is followed by a scenario that considers the economy-wide impacts of proposed improvements to navigation system capacity and performance under traffic demands that are similar to current freight flows. Ideally, a third element would be added.
Truly understanding the value of revitalized inland navigation requires clear predictions of the demands that coming generations will place on freight transport. At present, we see enough of this future to suspect these demands will be different than today and that they will add further value to available navigation, but the data needed to validate this (or any) view of the future are not available.
You can read the study by clicking on the image below:
Source and Image Credit: National Waterways Foundation
