WORLD STANDARDS FOR SHIPBORNE BARGES

Abstract Agreement on world standards for shipborne barges may be worth the cost in view of the sizable niche for a barge-carrier system. Conventional containerships need costly ports but barge carriers can pick up and deliver barges in a river mouth, bay or roadstead; they can call briefly at minor ports and even deliver van containers via barge to inland destinations, and the large scale of the barges makes them better than the van containers for some kinds of cargo. The unification of ocean and inland water routes that began with the LASH and Seabee systems will be better if relevant standards are agreed upon. It may be time to consider how such agreement might be reached.