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NYC plans 6 new waterfront shipping hubs to replace truck freight with barges

By

Ramsey Khalifeh

Published Feb 11, 2024

Modified Feb 15, 2024

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An aerial view of New York City's East River and Harbor.

 

Dominik Bindl/Getty Images

By

Ramsey Khalifeh

Published Feb 11, 2024

Modified Feb 15, 2024

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New York City officials plan to turn six waterfront locations into maritime shipping hubs as a way to handle the booming number of e-commerce deliveries across the five boroughs.

Details of the initiative were published on Friday through a request for proposals by the city Economic Development Corporation. It marks the latest step in Mayor Eric Adams’ “Blue Highways” plan to shift more of the city’s freight off the streets and onto the rivers and harbors.

The request seeks an engineering firm to design barge landings and access points where e-bikes and small delivery vehicles can transport cargo for the “last mile” of its journey. The locations include:

The EDC in its request estimates the plan would take 6,240 short-haul trucks off the streets, and states the city’s “overreliance on trucks negatively impacts air quality, traffic, quality of life and safety.” The plan would save more than 92 million miles of truck travel and 8.3 million gallons of fuel every year, according to the request. After this story was published, the EDC said those estimates were inaccurate due to a "clerical error." The agency said it was in the process of revising its analysis and did not yet have updated figures.

Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement that shifting freight to waterways would reduce air pollution — but warned it's not totally environmentally friendly.

"Like most on-road transportation, freight boats run on some of the dirtiest fuels in the market," said Tighe. "The only way to meet our emissions reductions goals is by passing a clean fuel standard at the state level, which would put a serious dent in our emissions output and result in cleaner are for New Yorkers on day one."

The release of the EDC's plan comes less than a month after the mayor proposed a new government agency to rein in delivery companies like Amazon. A report published by the city three years ago estimated that 2.7 million e-commerce packages would be delivered in the city every day in 2024 — nearly twice as many as in 2018.

New York City’s waterways were once global shipping hubs, but the bulk of the waterfront jobs disappeared over the last century as most of the region’s large container ports became consolidated in New Jersey. Now, the bulk of the New York City-bound cargo offloaded in the Garden State makes its way across the Hudson River via truck.

Manhattan Rep. Jerrold Nadler has for decades advocated for the construction of a new freight tunnel between New Jersey and Brooklyn to help solve that problem — but that proposal continues to await federal approval. After being stalled for years, the Port Authority restored work on an environmental study for the plan in 2022.

This story was updated to reflect new information from EDC.

Tagged

transportation

manhattan

bronx

brooklyn

Ramsey Khalifeh

Ramsey Khalifeh is a transportation reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the largest transit system in the country. He was previously a general assignment reporter at Gothamist and worked on the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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