Short Seas Shipping one step closer?

Last night while having dinner with some friends in coastal Maine I mounted my soap box and started preaching my sermon on the necessity of Short Seas Shipping. This concept was a wholly new idea to my friends who had never contemplated a cheaper, more efficient, pollution reducing, infrastructure preserving means of transporting the goods of life apart from the tractor trailer trucks that clog I-95 and pollute New England's air. It seems that the the largest road block to getting our domestic cargoes on ships is peoples complete lack of information about this mode of transportation.
Above is my current fantasy dream job. Why should we have to drive to New York or Baltimore. Why not utilize coast wise ro/ro's like this ship in Northern Europe? Below is an excerpt from Professional Mariner magazine about an issue pertaining to the second biggest road block (The Harbor Maintenance Tax) in freeing up our aged highways and bolstering our Merchant Marine, shipyards and working ports and enabling my dream job:

BrownWater News
by Carlo Salzano

Bill would free coastwise shipping of non-bulk cargo from HMT

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has introduced a bill that would exempt coastwise shipping of non-bulk cargo between U.S. ports from the Harbor Maintenance Tax (HMT). Specifically, the bill (S. 3199) provides that no HMT would be imposed on non-bulk commercial cargo “that is loaded at a port in the U.S. mainland and unloaded at another port in the U.S. mainland after transport solely by coastal route or river, or unloaded at a port in Canada located in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System.” Furthermore, the bill provides that no HMT would be imposed on non-bulk commercial cargo that is loaded at a port in Canada located in the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System and unloaded at a port in the U.S. mainland. Strong support for the legislation was voiced by Charles G. Raymond, chairman, president and CEO of Horizon Lines, who said the bill would “eliminate both the tax and associated paperwork burdens that discourage shippers from routing U.S. cargo by sea. By removing these barriers, the legislation would encourage use of the fuel-efficient marine mode to move cargo along our nation’s coast, helping ease highway and rail congestion and the demand for imported oil.”