Cargo containers traveling between Richmond and Hampton Roads will soon be moving off trucks and onto river barges.

The new service will move cargo on the James River, initially shifting about 4,000 trucks worth of cargo a year off crowded Interstate 64 and onto the waterway.

"It's environmentally friendly to the highways," said M. David McNeel, the Port of Richmond's executive director.

Traveling between marine terminals in Hampton Road and Richmond's port, the Norfolk-based James River Barge Service is expected at first to transport 60 to 70 containers on the once-a-week run, starting in November.

According to McNeel, the barge service will receive about $2.25 million in federal and state funds from the Richmond Area Metropolitan Planning Organization to help get it started.

The Port of Richmond will spend $2.6 million next year to add 5 acres of paved storage area for the containers, McNeel said. The barge service could expand to up to 25,000 containers annually.

Richmond's effort is related to the U.S. Department of Transportation's plan for a national network of "marine highways" to move cargo while cutting congestion on some of the nation's busiest roads.

Such routes -- and the Richmond-Hampton Roads corridor is expected to be one of those designated -- will be eligible for up to $25 million in existing federal funds. The program was announced by U.S. Deputy Transportation Secretary Thomas Barrett yesterday in Norfolk.

"These highways have no stoplights, traffic or potholes," Barrett said. "Sometimes transportation solutions require new concrete, but other times the answer is as simple as using existing water."

A container-on-barge service that currently operates between Baltimore and Norfolk relieves the busy Interstate 95 and I-64 corridors of almost 2,000 trucks a week, according to the Transportation Department. That cargo traffic equals three lanes of bumper-to-bumper trucks 8 miles long moving on about one-eighth the fuel the trucks would use.

Located in south Richmond, the port on the James River handles about 25,000 cargo containers annually for waterborne, rail and truck shippers in the mid-Atlantic states.

Cargo passing through the port includes chemicals, pharmaceuticals, forest products, machinery, consumer goods, frozen seafood, produce, bottled water, recreational campers, steel and aluminum products, vehicles, wire coils and rods, pipe, granite and livestock.

The city of Richmond owns the 120-acre facility, which is managed by the Port of Richmond Commission and operated by Federal Marine Terminals Inc., a private company.

Independent Container Line, the port's anchor tenant, operates four container vessels on a weekly schedule between Richmond; Chester, Pa.; England and Belgium.

Eimskip Shipping Line, Iceland's major shipping company, offers a container service every two week to Canada and Iceland.