With fuel prices edging upward and upward as oil hits $61+ a barrel, some businesses are desperately seeking the path of least resistance for transporting their goods. AP reports that the 180-year-old Erie Canal is being pressed into service again:
As a pair of large turbines made by General Electric make their way across the Erie Canal, state officials are hoping to see more commercial shipping on New York’s canal system. A 90-foot tug is pushing a 300-foot barge carrying the two G-E turbines, one of them built in Schenectady. The cargo left the Port of Albany yesterday and is scheduled to reach Oswego by tomorrow. From there, a Canadian tug will take the load to a nuclear plant in Ontario, Canada. Other turbines are scheduled to be moved through the canal system in September and October.
The state Canal Corporation wants to encourage more commercial traffic with loads such as sand and hay. The agency says with rising oil costs, companies may opt to transport large cargo loads via the waterway because of the fuel efficiency.
Other businesses are finding similar alternative options:
Frustrated by highway congestion and a shortage of trucks, shippers are giving the inland waterways another look. Just last month, for instance, Sappi Fine Paper shipped a load of pulp bound for Europe via the Great Lakes out of the Port of Duluth. It was the first time anyone can remember pulp moving out of Duluth by that mode.Not just in recent times, but ever!
We assume that Americans will find a way out of their oil woes by embracing the latest and most modern energy technology. This didn’t happen with the Roman Empire: 500 years after its fall, its provinces had actually seemed to go backward. In the absence of a strong central authority, the populace reverted back to “Whatever Works, Baby.”
Signs of the times…
“What ever works baby”. . .and isn’t it the damn truth!
The revival of canal traffic seems to be an example of the free market acting to develop a substitute for an increasingly scarce (and consequently expensive)resource.
If you have to move a bulky cargo and speed is not essential waterways are perfectly usable.
(DeWitt Clinton was the Governor of New York who created the Erie Canal.)
Interestingly, you could ship two to three times as much volume of cargo on a typical 19th century canal boat, as you can with one tractor trailer. The Erie Canal shouldn’t even be there today – it was almost shut down around 1900 and then again in the 1970s – but somehow, someone always felt it was worth having around for a rainy day.
Of course, this is actually an instance of a government-owned resource being utilized as an alternative, as opposed to the free market coming up with privatized solutions. The state of New York has always owned and operated the entire canal system.
While the politicians squabble over who gets to hold the reins, while we’re supposed to wait for funding for new ways to run cars and trucks without oil, this is just one small example of how people out in the provinces far away from Imperial Rome are starting to say, “Fuck Washington, we’ll deal with it ourselves.” This is a good thing, but it doesn’t exactly increase pressure for a grand unified national energy policy.
But of course our “leaders” are determined to rid us of that other alternative mode of transport – the railroads.
…the Missouri River is less and less useful for this purpose due to the extended drought. And with global warming underway, the forcast is for more of the same.
🙁
Shipping by barge – nice work, if you can get it…