COLUMBIA COASTAL STARTS INLAND EXPRESS BARGE SERVICE

COLUMBIA COASTAL STARTS INLAND EXPRESS BARGE SERVICE    Columbia Coastal Transport, a provider of U.S.-flag container barge services, will offer a new inland express barge service linking the Port of New York and New Jersey with Albany, N.Y., starting March 31.
   The new service, developed as part of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Port Inland Distribution Network, is intended to ease port and highway congestion and shift cargo to inland hub ports by using all-water service.
   Bruce A. Fenimore, president of Columbia Coastal, said the company’s twice-weekly Albany Expressbarge sailings would bring “more than 200,000 containers expected to throughput over the port to and from sites in the Northeast … even closer to shippers and consignees in Canada, New England and upstate New York.”
   Columbia Coastal’s service will access six terminals at the New York-New Jersey end, including Maher Terminals in Elizabeth, N.J., Howland Hook Container Terminal on Staten Island, N.Y.; APM Terminal in Elizabeth and Port Newark Container Terminal, both in New Jersey; Red Hook Container Terminal in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Global Marine Terminal in Jersey City, N.J.
   In Albany, the barge service will call at Federal Marine Terminals Inc.