A team of RIT professors hopes to get Great Lakes freight shippers to look beyond considerations of cost and time when determining how to deliver products. They want shippers to look at the environment, too.

Researchers are studying three modes of freight transportation in the Great Lakes: trucks, trains, and boats. They plan to use their data to develop a Mapquest-like program for Great Lakes shippers that lets them look not just at traditional factors like time and cost, but environmental impact, as well, says James Winebrake, a public policy professor at RIT.

The researchers will look at greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution for each mode of shipping. They'll also focus on energy use. RIT's Laboratory for Environmental Computing and Decision Making received a $60,000 grant from the Great Lakes Maritime Research Institute to do the study.

Nationwide, transportation generates 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, Winebrake says. Shipping generates a quarter of that - just under 8 percent, he says.

The study's ultimate goal is to give the shipping industry a better tool to evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of each mode of transportation. Trucks, for example, move cargo the fastest - an important feature considering "people want their products and they want them yesterday," Winebrake says - but they also generate the highest amount of greenhouse gases. Trains tend to be cheaper and cleaner than trucks, though not as fast, Winebrake says.

Ships have the cheapest per-unit cost, but generate the most particle pollution, Winebrake says. That's because their fuel is not heavily regulated and typically contains more sulfur than truck fuel contains. That may soon change. The International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency that regulates shipping, is considering new fuel standards for large boats.

If ships start using lower-sulfur fuel, it's possible that researchers could show ships are generally cheaper and contribute fewer emissions than land-based transportation. In that case, shippers may be willing to move goods deeper into the Great Lakes region, instead of unloading at coastal ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, or Halifax, says Jonathan Daniels, executive director of the Port of Oswego Authority.