Freshly back from our summer travels, we moved into our new apartment by the East River in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this October. In the empty apartment, we had nothing but the East River and all the wonderful characters atop it to wander upon. We had only been in the apartment for a couple of hours when we became completely transfixed by the number and variety of ships that pass through the river. We had never noticed anything more than the usual ferry in the last 2 years we have lived in the area. But now we were seeing everything, from cargo ships to sailboats. It soon became clear that the East River was a fairly important transportation medium for New York City.
The East river, contrary to the river in its name, is not your standard river. It is actually a saltwater estuary formed from a former valley that drowned during the Ice Age. The river conveniently connects NYC boroughs to the Atlantic ocean. The highways in New York City as expected are very busy with almost 120,000 trucks passing through everyday so the waterway is a great alternate medium of transportation for goods. The East River itself has a rich history in waterway trade. Many factories such as the Domino Sugar Refinery built on the waterfront of Williamsburg transported sugar throughout the US from this river. In the mid-19th century, the refinery produced 98% of the sugar consumed in the United States (!!) and the 4 million pounds of sugar produced everyday was transported via the East River.
New York’s prominence as a commercial hub can be credited to its geography which is highly suited for maritime trade. Its coastline stretches longer than Miami, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined. However, as different modes of transportation became dominant like railway in the 19th century and later containerization and road transportation in the 20th century, the waterway system in New York City fell on the backburner.
Roadways are the primary medium of transportation of goods in New York City. 90% of the city’s freight transportation is delivered through trucks, well above the national average of 70%. As e-commerce has boomed, package deliveries have added new pressure in traffic congestion. “Heavy, oversize trucks deliver more than 2 million packages to New Yorkers every single day — and this e-commerce traffic is crumbling our roads into the ground,” said State Senator Andrew Gounardes. According to the Trucking Association of New York, we can expect the freight tonnage to increase 68% over the next 20 years which would put even more pressure on our roads.
The issue of existing congestion and future pressures from the inevitable rise of e-commerce has made the problem front and center for the city. In recent years, the city has launched multiple programs to revitalize and improve maritime trade in NYC. In July 2018, Mayor De Blasio launched a program called Freight NYC through which the city planned to focus on increasing waterways and rail transportation. As of Nov 2023, the city seems to have sharpened its focus towards a new program specifically targeting waterways transport called the “Blue Highway Initiative” (Love it when politicians rename initiatives once they are elected into office lol; but I will have to hand it to Adams admin for a catchier name).
Waterways today carry less than 10% of freight in the city. So, expanding waterways wouldn’t just mean simply increasing the flow of cargo ships; it also means significantly improving the marine terminals or other waterfront properties for marine freight movement. So far, the city with the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) has invested $5M in revitalizing terminals in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Bronx. But we will need far greater investment if we are to really make a dent. This recent project will divert 350,000 truck miles annually onto the water but this is still a tiny fraction of the 7 billion annual truck miles on the city’s roads.
I am excited by this initiative to address congestion and pollution in the city. The NYC metropolitan area is one of the biggest consumer markets in the country and it is imperative we focus on infrastructure development which has really been on the backburner in the country. However, improving waterway trade is definitely a hefty task that will inevitably take major investments and creative solutions.
There are three main challenges I forsee for the city and some thoughts on how to address the issues –
- First is the challenge of building high capacity loading terminals given how scarce land is in New York City. The waterfront areas have become highly sought after residential and commercial spaces so the city will have to be strategic in its infrastructure development. Potential solution to this could mean utilizing areas of Staten Island, Bronx or Long Island that have more acreage to offer or renovating existing distribution centers in eg like the Hunts Point Terminal Center to be better suited for the volume of freight.
- Second is the changing nature of freight composition as e-commerce continues to accelerate. Package deliveries have become a big component of freight transportation so it won’t be enough to only build loading stations. We will also need distribution centers to process the packages. This is an area that I believe could benefit from Public-Private partnership with the likes of UPS, Amazon who also have vested stake in improving their freight transportation.
- Third is the challenge of addressing freight transportation only through waterways. If the objective of the city is to reduce overall road congestion, it will be important to increase the scope and improve railway systems for freight transportation as well. This way the city could also benefit from distribution centers in neighboring states like in New Jersey which have more space and facilities to offer.
There has been some good news on the investment front recently. New York City has received massive funding of $110M from the federal government for Hunts Point Terminal Produce Market Redevelopment. The new produce market will be an approximately 1 million-square-foot, state-of-the-art intermodal freight facility with more than 800,000 square feet of refrigerated warehouse space and 200,000 square feet of ancillary space. The produce market distributes over 2.5 billion pounds of produce a year to New York City and the New York metropolitan region so this will be the right step in addressing the issue of building proper distribution centers.
The ships we see on the East River today are examples of some progress the city has made in improving the waterway freight transportation. With the additional funding from the federal government, it will be interesting to see how maritime transportation changes in the city overtime. And, notably, if it will have an impact on congestion, pollution and even prices of goods. Despite many usual gripes with the city, New York City is still one of the best cities I have ever lived in and this pursuit for the city to be at the cutting edge of yet another achievement is positively exciting.
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