Tens of thousands of truck trips are being taken off the roads each year in the New York-New Jersey region through a barge operation floating rail cars from Jersey City to Brooklyn. Plans are taking shape to create similar operations to convey freight cleanly and efficiently to many other waterfront locations. This use of the region’s “marine highways” was the focus of presentations at the NJTPA’s Freight Initiatives Committee meeting on August 19.
Kyle McGraw, Manager of Port Infrastructure Planning in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Port Department, told the committee that the Cross Harbor Carfloat at Greenville Yard in Jersey City uses two barges to float 18 railcars at a time to the 65th Street terminal in Brooklyn. In 2023, 5,000 railcars were moved, with each trip carrying the equivalent of 72 truckloads.
The operation, he said, is the last of the once extensive freight barge services in the region. Until the 1950s when goods movement by truck became dominant, cargo was transferred from several major railroads terminating on New Jersey’s “very active and working waterfront” to floats bound for Manhattan and Brooklyn. “Hundreds of these transited the harbor and then the river on a daily basis,” he said.
With the help of federal grants, in recent years the Port Authority has invested $100 million to upgrade and modernize the Greenville facility. It includes a hydraulic bridge to raise tracks to accommodate tides. Still, weather—particularly wind and fog—can hamper operations, McGraw said. At the 65th Street terminal, arriving railcars are transferred to a street track and then are picked up by the New York and Atlantic Railroad for transport to New York City and Long Island destinations.
Complementing the car float, New York City is embarking on its own efforts at expanding waterborne freight distribution, called Blue Highways. It is part of a larger “Harbor of the Future” initiative of the mayor’s office which includes economic development along the waterfront to create technology and other jobs. The intent of the Blue Highways is “reactivating the waterways for freight transportation—kind of going back to where New York Harbor was in the 19th and 20th centuries,” said Chris Canary, Assistant Vice President of Ports, Waterfront, and Transportation at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. But, he said, it has a “21st century twist,” seeking to use zero emission vehicles for much of the movement.
A key component of the program, said Kerry Goleski, Freight Mobility Program Lead–Sustainability Initiatives at the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), is building infrastructure to allow goods to be conveyed to waterfront locations and then moved upland to public or private facilities where goods can be transferred to non-polluting vehicles for final delivery. That last leg can include electric cargo bikes and electric vans. While cargo bikes have much less capacity than vans or trucks, they can travel faster on congested city streets. A city “microhub” program is providing locations where goods can be transferred to cargo bikes for local distribution.
To support the marine aspect of the program, the federal Maritime Administration has provided a grant to upgrade waterfront landings at six locations, which can be accessed by barges and ferries. Yet, the program faces a “chicken and egg” problem: the city wants to find the best places and ways to invest while many businesses are hesitant to commit without the investments in place. The city’s solution is to actively engage with industry while setting up pilot operations using some existing waterfront landings. One effort is the delivery of beer from Red Hook suppliers to Governor’s Island via ferry and cargo bikes. The city also issued a Request for Expressions of Interest to solicit ideas for other pilots.
One of the nation’s largest freight carriers, UPS, is also eyeing the waterways. Chris Lutick, Director of State Government Affairs at UPS, said the company is exploring transporting packages from Bayonne to Brooklyn via barge. The intent, he said, is getting goods from Newark airport into Manhattan without “being caught up in all the congestion of New York City and getting through the tunnels.”
He said the concept could use roll-on-roll-off barges or high-speed ferries to travel between the UPS facility in Bayonne to Red Hook in Brooklyn. The complication is that UPS packages are often time sensitive and bad weather could limit deliveries up to 75 days a year. Also, the travel time to Red Hook could be 45 minutes to an hour, with additional time for final delivery, which may not be competitive with highway transport—though he noted that the George Washington Bridge corridor has consistently been ranked the most congested corridor in the nation and is subject to crashes and closures.
Even with the potential complications, UPS over the past five years has “been doing a lot of due diligence” to launch a viable maritime alternative to truck transport in the New York-New Jersey region, similar to what has been accomplished in Virginia. The company’s initial goal is to move 24 trailers, one round trip a day.
As the Blue Highways program develops other waterfront locations for barge access, Lutick said the UPS effort could be the “springboard” for other companies to create or use similar waterborne services for supplying New York City. The real “home run” from an environmental standpoint, he said, will be when electric barges and tugs, now under development, can be put into service.
Reflecting on the history of waterborne freight movement in the region, he said “the wave of the future is by going back in time and I think it's a very exciting thing for us.” A video of two presentations on marine highways is here.