New York City’s plan to move thousands of freight deliveries out of trucks and onto the waterways took a small but important step forward when a boat docked in the Bronx to pick up 800 pounds of produce.
The 55-year old boat that used to ferry people and cars across the Long Island Sound is the start of what city planners hope is a shipping revolution.
“The idea is that hopefully once this is developed, it’ll connect with this blue highway site here, where more containerized international produce that comes in gets transported through New York Harbor up to Hunts Point,” said Ilana Mayid-Dennis, president of U.S. Coastal Service, the company operating the freight boat. “Then it can get transloaded, where it’s then distributed throughout the city using the waterways.”
For the last two years, the city Economic Development Corporation has worked on a“blue highways” program, which aims to reduce air pollution and street congestion by replacing thousands of trucks with maritime shipping. The agency now seeks proposals for a barge service between Red Hook in Brooklyn and the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. Officials want it to run at least once a day with the capacity for at least 100 containers per trip. The service could begin by 2030…