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LOGISTICS Corps of Engineers estimates that more than 95% of overseas trade produced in or consumed by the United States moves through our ports, while the inland waterways carry the equiv- alent of about 51 million truck trips each year, it’s not hard to see the threat to the economy, and to our competiveness on the export stage, that an aging and badly underfunded infra- structure poses. As explained by the ASCE’s 2012 companion study, “Fail- ure to Act: The Economic Impact of Current Investment Trends in Airports, Inland Waterways, and Marine Ports Infrastruc- ture,” those infrastructure issues boost the cost of shipping and goods, costs that “reverberate” through the economy, causing exports and GDP to fall, and ultimately threatening more than 1 million U.S. jobs and causing a drop in personal income. Costs attributable just to delays in the nation’s inland waterways system were $33 billion in 2010, and the ASCE expects that will increase to nearly $49 billion by 2020. The report claims that if the marine funding shortfall is fi lled, by 2020 that investment will serve to protect $270 million in U.S. exports, 738,000 jobs and $697 billion in the GDP. With each Report Card, the ASCE estimates the investment needed in each infrastructure category out to 2020, to main- tain a state of good repair, i.e. a grade of “B.” For the inland waterways and marine ports combined, the ASCE assessed a need of $30 billion, and with an estimated funding of $14 bil- lion, we’re looking at $16 billion funding gap. But, laments the ASCE, even as the various port authorities and their private sector partners “have planned over $46 billion in capital improvements from now until 2016, federal funding has declined for navigable waterways and landside freight con- nections needed to move goods to and from the ports.” New Orleans Cranes 46 I Maritime Professional I 2Q 2014 34-49 Q2 MP2014.indd 46 5/20/2014 9:49:21 AM
