Plan To Prevent Ships Colliding

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 14

Plan To Prevent Ships Colliding

(X.Z.P.A.-Reuter)

NEW YORK. A series of buffer zones separating maritime traffic leading to and from the port of New York is at the heart of a plan under consideration to reduce the risk of shipping collisions.

Envisaged are three main two-way traffic patterns, i radiating from the Ambrose lightship at the entrance to | the harbour. Wide zones ’would keep incoming and outgoing ships safely apart. The concept is not new. It has been used for many years in the English Channel and other heavy shipping areas. But New York would be the first ocean port in the United States to adopt it. A variation I has been in force in the (Great Lakes since 1911.

j The plan was drawn up by > the Coast Guard in New York [and the maritime industry. It involves an ocean super-high- [ way for shipping to and from ■ the north Atlantic, another ■ for South American, African and West Indies traffic, and a third for ships moving along the United States coast south of New York.

A fourth two-way lane covering traffic along the United States New England coast north of New York was also proposed by the maritime industry, but it is not part of the plan submitted by the Coast Guard in New York to the Coast Guard headquarters in Washington.

All lanes would fan out from a seven-mile circle surrounding the Ambrose lightship. At the circle, the lanes would be three miles w’ide — a mile for traffic in each direction and a mile for the buffer zone.

| The traffic .patterns would gradually widen as they moved out from the lightship until each lane in each direction would be five miles wide, and the buffer three miles wide. ,

According to the Coast Guard, the ocean highways would naturally not completely eliminate the danger of collision as ships plied to and from New York, one of the busiest harbours in the world. The patterns would only be suggested and not compulsory'. But such collisions as the Andrea Dorea-Stockholm tn 1956 and the Shalom-Stolt. Dagali a year ago occurred in areas covered by the new traffic patterns.