Highway H20 could be a go

HAMILTON, Ont. — The dream of a “short sea” shipping strategy via the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway remains afloat, according to the Hamilton Port Authority (HPA).

The HPA, which in 2004 began exploring the possibility of a truck-only ferry across Lake Ontario between Hamilton and Oswego, N.Y., is now looking at an Atlantic connection by establishing a weekly container cargo ferry service between Halifax and Southern Ontario via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The service, says HPA President Keith Robson, would allow container shippers and truckers to directly bypass rail to and from Halifax and Central Canada.

Officials in Hamilton, one of the country’s largest steel-producing regions located in the middle of Ontario’s busy Golden Horseshoe industrial corridor, have been musing about a ferry service via the Great Lakes for years.

In an interview with Today’s Trucking, Robson said the plan calls for strictly a roll-on tractor-trailer or container chassis service. He admitted that parties involved want to avoid issues that have consumed other cargo transporters like Marine Atlantic, which is constantly battling to prioritize drop-on cargo from big carriers and roll-on units from mainly owner-ops. “We’ve had that debate. We think it takes longer and is more expensive to have lift-on, lift-off,” he says.

Robson says the marine service could be competitive with rail

Up to four vessels could eventually sail the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes. The largest ship would have capacity for about 1,050 TEUs. The HPA is currently reviewing the costs and talking to a number of shipping lines. He said that he’s received interest from shippers and container haulers that like the idea of bypassing congested rail terminals in Toronto.

Robson is confident the marine service could be competitive with rail, even knowing full well that trains are much faster than boats. “Obviously, if you put a box on a train in Halifax it can be in Brampton [Ont.] in two days. But you have to get it on the train in Halifax and off in Brampton. Information coming from a lot of freight forwarders is that the average time for the whole process is a total of five days. We think we can at least match that.”

Bob Gauthier, owner of Seaway Express, a small, specialized LTL carrier that sits off the St. Lawrence in Cornwall, Ont., says he’s intrigued by the possibility of an H2O cargo corridor. But with no infrastructure in place in small cities west of Montreal, he wonders how he’d take advantage.

“Even if the [vessel] were to make stops along the route, there’s no capacity to load or unload,” explains Gauthier. “The port in Cornwall is minimal at best. I would think Brockville and Kingston are the same where the infrastructure is more for tourism than an actual working port.”

The plan currently calls for a direct Atlantic-Hamilton connection (perhaps a stop in Montreal). But even with such infrastructure some day in place in his backyard, Gauthier isn’t sure the service would be worth investing in the winter months when the St. Lawrence Seaway is closed.

Robson admits the winter could pose a challenge. But that’s where the HPA’s prior blueprint for an Oswego, N.Y. service could play a part. He suggests containers could be transported from Halifax up the Hudson River to Albany, N.Y., then hauled to Oswego and loaded onto a drop trailer ferry destined for Hamilton.

“We don’t expect everybody to take advantage of it and it’s not going to fit everybody’s operations,” he says. “But we think there’s enough [interest] out there. Midsize companies, especially, are finding it difficult to get the attention they need to move boxes in and out.”