Continued coordination between public and private entities through data sharing, as well as meaningful dialogue between federal, state and local officials over issues such as land use, are necessary conditions for the U.S. freight transportation network to thrive, according to panelists speaking at a Jan. 7 session at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, D.C. The session was entitled “Gaps and Opportunities in Multimodal Innovation in Freight.”
Ensuring that the U.S. freight transportation network has sufficient capacity is key not only for transportation providers but also for consumers and shippers who depend on getting their goods delivered on time and in a safe manner. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. freight network transported 20.1 billion tons of goods worth about $18.7 trillion in value.
One of the greatest challenges in ensuring a healthy freight transportation network is needing to constantly manage disruptions—most of which are unpredictable—while still aiming toward long-term capacity growth. The Houthi attacks on ocean vessels in the Red Sea, a work stoppage at East and Gulf Coast port terminals last October, Canadian freight rail strikes, the March 2024 collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore resulting in the temporary closure of the Port of Baltimore: All these disruptions required freight transportation providers to pivot accordingly and nimbly to meet demand.
“If I’ve learned anything in this job, it’s that there is a constant series of disruptions,” said panelist Allison Dane Camden, who serves as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy within the Office of the Secretary of Transportation.
However, there is also “just a lot of good opportunity for efficiencies and good collaboration and improvements, because there’s always going to be some sort of disruption,” Camden said.
One way to ensure a more efficient multimodal transportation network is to engage multiple stakeholders when discussing land use, panelists said. This means getting federal, state and local governments on the same page, as well as helping shippers understand the importance of having multiple access options to nearby infrastructure. Coordinating this engagement between local and state officials should occur as state departments of transportation draft their long-range transportation plans that they submit to the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to Camden.
“Local land use decisions that get made by local governments impact everything,” Camden said, adding that she’s often encountered situations where a warehouse will be approved for construction without much consideration on multimodal transportation options.
While better coordination among local, state and federal actors should be a goal, a persistent challenge has been how to handle situations involving interstate movement. For instance, insufficient parking options for trucks is a big issue in trucking. However, it’s unclear who has the authority to address this issue because of the interstate nature of trucking, according to Melody Drummond Hansen, chief counsel for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA).
In these instances, it’s the private sector that must end up taking charge, Hansen said. “If you’re a driver who doesn’t have anywhere to park and you’re traveling through that state, you may not be a constituent of that state. Writing your congressman in Washington about parking doesn’t seem to work,” she said. Meanwhile, FMCSA “may not always have the regulatory authority, funding or capacity to address that concern, so the question becomes whether there are opportunities to influence and incentivize the private sector.”
Another way to ensure a more efficient multimodal transportation network is for stakeholders to take advantage of underutilized freight transportation options, panelists said. This includes inland waterways, such as the St. Lawrence Seaway, which farmers and manufacturers in the Great Lakes region can use to ship products to Europe, Camden said. It also includes encouraging the buildout of infrastructure for multimodal transport, maximizing capacity despite space constraints, as seen through capacity expansion projects at the ports of Virginia and Savannah, and the greater utilization of short line railroads.
“Freight moves on every mode, and a collaborative partnership, I think, is really important,” Camden said. “A train is never going to deliver, in my mind, from a box to a store to a house. Trucking is always going to be important. But how do we help and mode-shift so that for that long distance, when you’re trying to get from L.A.-Long Beach to the middle of the country or beyond, how are we getting more out of rail because it’s better for the environment?”
On short line railroads, Oregon State University professor and panelist Salvador Hernandez said he worked with state and local shippers to look at whether underutilized short lines in the Pacific Northwest can handle heavier commodities such as gravel to specific locations. The discussions over the past few years have been about where “additional routes could be making sense for moving timber or rock, whatever it is, at a lower cost, and also making opportunities for these short-line companies to grow their business,” Hernandez said. “What commodities make sense? What short lines made sense, and what companies are willing to collaborate. It was very useful for our freight folks to use it in their planning.”
These underutilized portions of the network, as well as the projects that seek to develop or enhance multimodal connections, have seen the benefit of grant funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Camden said.
“We delivered this big infrastructure bill [signed into law by President Joe Biden in November 2021], and now we’re talking about an infrastructure decade. So, all of these grants are being awarded. Much of that money’s been awarded. There’s still more to award, and we’re going to see the fruits of that labor over the next decade as those projects get built on the rail side too,” Camden said.
A third way to ensure a more efficient multimodal transportation network is through data sharing and information sharing, panelists said.
Efforts at the federal level to encourage data sharing took off after the COVID-19 pandemic through the formation of the White House’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force, according to Camden. These efforts continue through the data exchange Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW), which was established by the Office of Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy. FLOW enables the private sector to share proprietary information, which the multimodal freight infrastructure office anonymizes and share back out, according to Camden. This provides companies that deal with intermodal freight, such as Wal-Mart, Target, Lowe’s and Home Depot, with another data point to inform their transportation and logistics decisions.
“It’s a real public-private partnership. We have a board of members who help us make decisions on where to go, but we’re focused right now on container imports,” Camden said. “Different members benefit from this visibility that FLOW provides. Member ports have a better sense of what’s coming because ocean carriers are sharing their bookings with us 60 days out. That’s not data that was ever shared before. Member companies that are importers are also sharing their purchase orders, so other members can see what orders are going to factories in India and China 40 to 60 days out. Chassis leasing companies can also use the data to move assets around, while warehousing companies use the data to see where they might need to build more warehousing. Rail and trucking companies are also members.”
“This is just a cool example of seeing a problem and then not thinking that the federal government must be the solution. It’s really pulling the private sector together using lessons learned from COVID to create an innovative, low-cost solution,” Camden said.
