The use of the still-operational Erie Canal has skyrocketed. An article in The New York Times reports that traffic during this year's season was nearly triple that of last year's. Officials attribute higher gas prices to the increased use of the Erie Canal.
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Great book on the Erie Canal is Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein. Great to see the increase in use of the canal.
I appreciate the data comparing the energy requirements. Without much actual data we can still consider the case of a single horse pulling a barge on a canal. Assuming a horse working at one horsepower (by definition 550 foot-pounds/ second) this would be equivalent to pulling with 125 pounds of force at 3 miles per hour. (Not out of reason for a strong man’s ability for a brief time.)
Horses pulling plows exert much more than 125 pounds of force, but horses pulling buggies have much less load and can travel at a trot, much faster, say 9mph, about 41 pounds of pull for many hours in a day. I don’t know how many hours a horse could pull a barge, maybe 8 out of 24 hours if staged? Maybe the hooker is that that a human must either lead or ride the horse.
A sound horse can be bought today for $100 so the cost of horses is almost irrelevant.
I am not suggesting a return to muscle power, rather pointing out how dramatic was the change when steam powered railroads so quickly killed off the exquisitely energy efficient canals. A horse could not compete with a very thermodynamically inefficient steam engine locomotive using wood or coal fuel.