The Jones Act Exacerbates Northeast Traffic Woes

Colin GrabowThe Northeast United States is choking on traffic. According to data analysis firm INRIX, the regionis home to six of the ten most congested roads in the United States as well as two of the five most congested citiesin the world (New York City and Boston). That ’s an obvious problem for motorists trying to get to work (or anywhere else) as well as truckers hauling freight through the region. But this raises a question: why not instead move freight using more efficient, moreenvironmentally ‐​friendly ships plying the coastal waters that parallel I ‑95? The answer is largely found in the protectionistJones Act, a  1920 law that restricts domestic waterborne commerce to vessels that are U.S.-registered, U.S.-built, and mostly U.S.-owned and crewed.As anarticle in theConnecticut Post points out earlier this week, the lack of coastal shipping to bypass gridlocked highways isn ’t for a lack of trying. Maritime industry veterans Per Heidenreich and Bob Kunkel went so far as to design a roll ‐​on/​roll‐​off ship for exactly that purpose, envisioning a  fleet of four such vessels that would sail up and down the East Coast. The cost of building such a ship in the United States to comply with the Jones Act, however, proved fatal to the idea.Heidenreich along with Bob Kunkel designed what they called a “compact RO-RO,” a low‐​emission ship that could carry 80 trailers at a time. The plan was to build four of them together carrying about 400...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs