Improving the Federal Role in Marine Transportation
The federal government provides a wide array of services to the marine transportation system (MTS), which it does through a variety of federal agencies in several cabinet-level departments. The MTS itself is varied and immense. It consists of thousands of miles of navigable channels, hundreds of port complexes, and thousands of terminals located along the nation’s lakes, rivers, and coastal waterways. The federal government today has a large and influential role in the MTS. It helps pay for the construction and maintenance of navigable channels, helps manage the traffic operating on the waterways, and provides aids to navigation, charts, and information on water and weather conditions. It regulates vessel safety and environmental compatibility, and it responds to marine accidents and oil spills. And now more than ever, it is seeking to enhance the security of waterborne commerce. 
Although the federal responsibilities are substantial collectively, they are widely dispersed across agencies and not well coordinated. They are fulfilled by many federal programs administered by multiple federal agencies that are governed by multiple federal statutes. In general, the federal institutional roles and responsibilities, many with decades of tradition behind them, do not correspond well with how the MTS operates today.
The committee that examined the federal role in marine transportation concluded that an urgently needed first step in rationalizing the federal role would be to have a much better measure of how well the MTS is performing (Special Report 279: The Marine Transportation System and the Federal Role: Measuring Performance, Targeting Improvement; TRB 2004). Federal policy makers should have some metrics to inform them of whether the many programs funded with billions of tax dollars annually are working collectively in the national interest. The committee’s main recommendation was that the federal government begin to systematically assess and report on the performance of the MTS so that public investment can be better targeted to problem areas. A similar monitoring and analysis occurs on a biennial basis for surface transportation, and the results of that work have been highly influential over Congressional policy decisions about overall funding levels and priorities. Another main recommendation was to ensure that user fees collected from marine industries are reinvested in the system and not constrained by the spending limits imposed to manage the federal budget deficit.
A separate committee, working with The National Academies’ Water Science and Technology Board, examined the federal role in a 
very specific element of the MTS: the Upper Mississippi River–Illinois Waterway, the largest riverine system in the world and the world’s third-largest drainage basin (Review of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Mississippi River–Illinois Waterway Restructured Feasibility Study, NRC 2003). Acting through the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal role in this context includes both ecological protection and enhancement and maintenance of a navigable waterway. Of particular interest in this study are the feasibility and cost of expanding outdated locks to expedite commercial movements while enhancing the system’s ecological integrity. The committee supported the Corps’ interest in expanding the project to address flood management, navigation, and ecosystem restoration. At the same time, it questioned the forecasts relied upon by the Corps in developing its cost–benefit analysis of lock improvements and urged the Corps to place far greater emphasis on nonstructural alternatives to manage congestion.
TRB committees have conducted other important studies on marine freight-related topics. One committee reviewed a broad range of federal policies that influence the efficiency of marine transportation of containers (Special Report 236: Intermodal Marine Container Transportation: Impediments and Opportunities, TRB 1992). Another examined problems with road and rail access to ports and made recommendations for changes in federal, state, and local policy to facilitate improved access (Special Report 238: Landside Access to U.S. Ports, TRB 1993).