Short sea shipping is a developing transportation solution where goods are shipped via barges from large ports to smaller regional ports for end distribution. Short sea has been in place in Europe for more than 20 years, and now due to increasing road congestion along I-95 and the North East corridor, the method is attracting serious attention here in the U.S.

A group of short sea shipping experts recently toured Providence Harbor. On the tour was Robert Kunkel of Coastal Connect, a short sea shipping start up company. Below are blueprints of the short sea drop trailer roll-on-roll-off ships that Coastal Connect would operate.  Each ship could take 100 trucks off of the busy I-95 corridor: