The Heart of Illinois Regional Port District (TransPORT) is pleased to announce that its Peoria Illinois-Gulf Container on Barge proposal has been designated by the US Maritime Administration (MARAD) as a component initiative of the America’s Marine Highway Program.  This is a new, federally supported effort to shift more cargo from the congested Interstate highway system to the coastal and inland waterways of the nation.  U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently announced his selection of marine highway corridors to be eligible for federal assistance under the program, and MARAD has allocated up to $7 million in dedicated funding for the 14 projects selected.
TransPORT Director Steve Jaeger says his agency will use the funding to “to develop a Marine Highway service that will help stimulate and support regional industrial production and will operate between the Gulf Coast and Peoria Illinois via the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.  The focus will be on containerized cargoes as well as rolling stock such as truck trailers and road building machinery.”
 “Making better use of our rivers and coastal routes offers an intelligent way to relieve some of the biggest challenges we face in transportation – congestion on our roads, climate change, fossil fuel energy use and soaring road maintenance costs,” said Secretary LaHood.  “There is no better time for us to improve the use of our rivers and coasts for transportation.”
TransPORT’s initial thrust under this initiative will be assembly of a business plan for commercializing container-on-barge service design, surveying and recruiting cargo owners and participating river towing firms and making infrastructure improvements to existing terminal facilities in TransPORT’s six county service region.