Inland Navigation System Planning The Upper Mississippi River-Illinois Waterway (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Improving Waterway System Planning
Improving Waterway System Planning
Pages 61-85
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From page 61... ...
Infrastructure improvements, such as larger locks on the Upper Mississippi River, are designed to expedite river traffic for the next century or more. In evaluating the social benefits of these improvements, the benefits 20-100 years into the future are important.
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From page 62... ...
They are therefore more consistent with strategies for the sustainable development (promoting improved traffic flow and environmental restoration) of the Upper Mississippi River and tributary system.
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From page 63... ...
About a decade would be required to extend the locks on the Upper Mississippi River-~linois Waterway, after which they would be expected to last perhaps a century, with periodic maintenance. No one can know or predict with confidence the demand for water transport—or almost anything else 50 or more years in the future.
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From page 64... ...
a value for the crucial variables, and then explores the implications of lock extensions. In this sense, scenario analysis is a development of sensitivity analysis where particular values for each crucial variable are specified by sketching a particular future on the basis of some stated assumptions.
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From page 65... ...
amount of future traffic, it would be prudent to seek a construction program that provides significant benefits for a range of future traffic levels, even if it is not optimal for any single amount of waterway traffic. Robust policies those that produce favorable outcomes under the full range of plausible scenarios should be sought.
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From page 66... ...
SHORT-TERM (NONSTRUCTURAL MEASURES Congestion Problems on the Upper Mississippi On the Upper Mississippi River-TIlinois Waterway, towboats arrive randomly at locks.
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From page 67... ...
Although one would almost always arrive by ~ a.m., on many mornings one would arrive at the office by 7 a.m., and much of the time it would be closer to 6 a.m., depending on traffic levels. Clearly this would involve a substantial waste of time and resources.
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From page 68... ...
This increase in the hours per year during which the towboat was productively deployed would allow towboat operators to amortize their equipment costs over a larger traffic base and could reduce commercial cargo shipping rates on the UMR-~:WW. Unless the introduction of traffic management schemes changes the market structure of the barge industry a change not likely to occur, based on both theoretical arguments and historical experiences the reduced costs will be at least partially passed on to the consumer.
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From page 69... ...
Operators would respond, for example, by increasing the training of deckhands to speed recoupling, by adopting new coupling techniques or, when appropriate, by paying another operator for assistance in clearing locks. It must be expected that operators would experiment with methods than are now not currently used to see if there would be savings in lockage times.
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From page 70... ...
These nonstructural options for improving waterway traffic management hold great promise for helping alleviate waterway congestion quickly at relatively low costs, and in a manner that is more consistent with the long-term environmental sustainability of the Upper Mississippi River ecosystem than large-scale, structural changes. There are benefits and costs associated with each nonstructural option, the careful assessment of which was beyond this committee's scope and resources.
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From page 71... ...
The first step is to forecast world import demands and U.S. grain export demands, as nearly all grain shipments on the Upper Mississippi River are destined for export markets.
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From page 72... ...
5. The final step is to estimate the net benefits of transportation infrastructure investments.
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From page 73... ...
om all origins to all destinations was because of a lack of adequate data. This section outlines the data necessary to run a disaggregated spatial equilibrium model for grain.
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From page 74... ...
These constraints must be built into the export projections. Developing a Disaggregated Spatial Equilibrium Mode} for Grain Transport A spatial equilibrium mode!
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From page 75... ...
This should include all areas that ship grain on the Upper Mississippi River at least once a decade. These geographic areas should be subdivided into the largest number of (grain)
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From page 76... ...
These rate data from the past give perhaps the best indication of whether actual shipping rates will lie above or below long-run marginal social costs in the future. Step 7: The effects of nonstructural improvements on the cost of barge freight should be incorporated into the long-run marginal private and social barge costs.
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From page 77... ...
Nonetheless, several elements of the UMR-TWW and the navigation feasibility study suggest that an adaptive management framework could help provide unity and cohesion to the feasibility study. One principle of adaptive management is to avoid premature foreclosure of management
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From page 78... ...
In the Corps' feasibility study, the extension of locks is contemplated. Conducting an assessment of the benefits and costs of nonstructural options before considering lock extensions would provide the Corps additional time to study and learn more about the environmental effects of society's activities on the Mississippi River and throughout the river system.
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From page 79... ...
Given the potential for an adaptive management strategy to help manage the multiple resources in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, the Corps should pursue the navigation feasibility study within the principles of an adaptive management framework. The Corps should seek the authority and funding from Congress necessary to conduct the study within an adaptive management framework.
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From page 80... ...
System wide Analysis of Environmental Effects There has been a Tong history of ecological research and analysis for the Upper Mississippi River basin, and the Environmental Management Program has established the Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP) , yet gaps in knowledge of the large, complex Upper Mississippi River ecosystem still exist.
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From page 81... ...
A cumulative effects analysis accounts for these multiple causes. In the Upper Mississippi River Basin, the navigation system, and the operation and maintenance of its locks and dams, are affecting river ecology in multiple and complex ways.
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From page 82... ...
An inadequacy of the feasibility study is the lack of analyses that consider cumulative effects of increased towboat traffic. There is a need to establish how elements of the proposed navigation system improvements—when coupled with increases in waterway traffic might combine to produce a total environmental impact greater than the sum of its individual parts.
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From page 83... ...
The cumulative effects and other analysis should build upon the numerous, significant research efforts on Mississippi River navigation and ecology, including the Corps' draft Environmental Impact Statement. Toward Better Integration: Interagency Coordination Since the ~ 986 Water Resources Development Act, considerable progress has been made in improving ecological understanding of Upper Mississippi River ecology.
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From page 84... ...
if engineering plans call for winter construction, seasonal impacts of that construction should be an element of integration. These are just three of many possible examples that could be cited as needed integrative analysis in the feasibility study.
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From page 85... ...
This phenomenon should be incorporated in the analysis of project alternatives, which should explicitly model and quantify the relationships between recreation use benefits for boating and fishing and changes in commercial barge traffic levels. River-related recreation benefits in the study area represent significant economic benefits provided by the Upper Mississippi River and are likely to be affected by many of the navigation project alternatives.
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