A newly released report delineates the modal and environmental advantages of using marine shipping to transport goods in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway region. 

The Environmental and Social Impacts of Marine Transport in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway Region study was conducted by transportation consultants and peer reviewed by independent experts. It found that Great Lakes ships are more fuel-efficient and emit fewer greenhouse gases per thousand cargo-ton miles than land-based alternatives. 

The study also found that the shift from marine to road and/or rail modes of transport would lead to increased societal impacts, including additional traffic congestion, higher infrastructure maintenance costs and significantly greater noise levels.

In terms of energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions, the study finds that: 

• The Great Lakes-Seaway fleet is nearly 7 times more fuel-efficient than trucks and 1.14 times more fuel-efficient than rail.
• Rail and trucks would emit 19 percent and 533 percent more greenhouse gas emissions, respectively, if these modes carried the same cargo the same distance as the Great Lakes-Seaway fleet.

The study also emphasizes the role that marine shipping plays in reducing congestion on roads and railways: 

• It would take 3 million train trips to carry the total cargo transported by the Great Lakes-Seaway fleet in 2010, as much as double the existing traffic on some rail lines in Canada and at least a 50 percent increase in traffic on some of the busiest lines in the United States.
• It would take 7.1 million truck trips to carry the total cargo transported by the Great Lakes-Seaway fleet in 2010. That would increase existing truck traffic by between 35 to 100 percent, depending on the highway.
• Shifting Great Lakes-Seaway marine shipping cargo permanently to trucks would generate $4.6 billion in additional highway maintenance costs over 60 years.

The study measured the long-term efficiency and emissions performance of Great Lakes vessels after meeting new regulatory standards and achieving improvements with new technology and the use of low sulfur fuels in the period from 2012 to 2025. The Great Lakes-Seaway fleet would record decreases in emissions as follows:

• Greenhouse gas emission reductions of 32 percent
• NOx emission reductions of 86 percent
• SOx emission reductions of 99.9 percent
• Particulate Matter emission reductions of 85 percent

Click here for the report’s executive summary and here for photos and B-roll video.