Barge Fuel Efficiency Claims are Bogus

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably read the Nicollet Island Coalition 2010 report Big Price – Little Benefit: Proposed Locks on the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Rivers Are Not Economically Viable. In Big Price, the Coalition tackles claims by the Corps of Engineers and navigation industry that expensive new locks on the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers are justified because inland towing is “the most fuel efficient mode of transportation” based on the following data[1]:



In the 2010 report section “Superior Barge Fuel Efficiency Claims are Questionable,” the Coalition discusses 1. How navigation industry conveniently uses inappropriate railroad fuel efficiency data and 2. How circuity reduces the fuel efficiency of navigation. To recap what the Coalition said in 2010:

1. Railroad fuel efficiency

The railroad figure above is actually the average from all railroads and does not accurately represent the railroads in direct competition with inland towing. Unit trains carry bulk commodities long distances and compete with navigation for export traffic. Unit train fuel efficiency is 640 ton-miles per gallon – significantly higher than inland towing.

2. Circuity

Inland navigation is confined to rivers, which are squiggly. Both road and rail can increase their fuel economy by constructing direct routes. The Universities of Illinois[2] and Iowa[3] evaluated how much further barges have to travel to export goods from the Midwest to New Orleans and found that on average, barges travel 1.3 to 1.38 times further than rail.

Adjusted fuel economy data[4]:



Take the above realities into account and you see that navigation is not the most fuel efficient mode of transportation. Since the report was published in 2010, I've found two additional studies to bolster the Coalition’s criticism of navigation fuel economy claims.

The university studies referenced in the 2010 report did not evaluate truck fuel efficiency because trucks do not carry a significant portion of bulk commodities over long distances like trains and barges. But a recent study published by the Maritime Administration[5] does look at carbon emissions between trucks and barges for a hypothetical container-on-barge route between Peoria, IL and New Orleans, LA. They found that, due to circuity, inland towing would emit 23,906 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. While trucks, carrying the same load to and from the same port, would only emit 13,739 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.

But, circuity is hard to generalize. This is why the Coalition has been searching for river segment specific fuel efficiency data. Rivers are like roads – your car’s fuel efficiency is better on the interstate than in town. Locked rivers are like driving in town – all the stop and go decreases fuel efficiency. To get regional inland towing fuel efficiency data, I started trying to calculate it from the regional fuel tax revenues provided in a recent National Academy of Sciences report[6] (I know the fuel tax is $0.20 per gallon and I know the ton-miles carried on each river segment). But the revenues were provided as a graph, so I didn’t have accurate figures for a calculation. Like a good academic, I followed the citations in hopes of finding the regional fuel tax receipts. What I found instead: The Tennessee Valley Authority[7] already did this calculation!

The fuel efficiency for the Mississippi River according to the TVA:



275.8 ton-miles per gallon on the locked portion of the Mississippi River! That means the navigation industry has a fuel efficiency error of more than 300 ton-miles per gallon! Holy crap! Just this month, Hyundai and Kia agreed to pay a $360 million settlement because they sold cars with posted average fuel economy 1 to 6 miles per gallon above the actual fuel efficiency. Meanwhile, taxpayers are forking over about $700 million annually to maintain navigation infrastructure – and most of that money goes to locks and dams where towing is the least efficient. If anyone from the Corps is reading this now, I hope you’re doing a face-palm. It’s time to rethink our water resource investments.

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[1] Texas Transportation Institute – Center for Ports & Waterways, December 2007 (amended March 2009), “A Model Comparison of Domestic Fright Transportation Effects on the General Public Final Report,” prepared for the U.S. Maritime Administration and the National Waterways Foundation.
[2] Anthony V. Sebald, 1974, “Energy Intensity of Barge and Rail Freight Hauling,” CAC Document No.27, University of Illinois.
[3] Baumel, C. Philip, Charles R. Huburgh, and Tenpau Lee, 2008, “Estimates for Total Fuel Consumption in Transporting Grain from Iowa to Mayor Crain Countries by Alternative Modes and Routes,” Iowa State University.
[4] Circuity figures are based on the 576 ton-miles per gallon provided by the industry.
[5] U.S. Maritime Administration, 2013, “America’s Marine Highway Program Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement.”
[6] Committee on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Water Resources Science, Engineering, and Planning; Water Science and Technology Board; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Research Council, 2012, “Corps of Engineers Water Resources Infrastructure: Deterioration, Investment, or Divestment?”
[7] Bray, Larry G., et al. July-August 2002, “River Efficiencies, Fuel Taxes, and Modal Shifts: Tennessee Valley Authority Model Assists Policy Makers.” TR News issue 22.