The American Short Line and Railroad Association (ASLRRA) on June 10 submitted comments in response to a U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Request for Information (RFI) on “Goals, Criteria, Thresholds, and Measurable Data Sources for Designating the National Multimodal Freight Network (NMFN).”
The NMFN was created under the 2015 FAST Act and amended in the 2021 IIJA. According to ASLRRA, there have been several efforts to create and update this designation framework. “The NMFN is already a criterion within the INFRA grant program, though not an exclusionary one, and could potentially be integrated into statute or regulation governing other federal assistance programs,” the association wrote in its June 12 Views & News newsletter.
ASLRRA in its comments (download below) “expressed concerns that the NMFN, particularly if designation thresholds are set based on national quantitative and objective metrics, as is required, could exclude many if not all short line operations from participation due to our typical inherently smaller scale.”
“We proposed that DOT consider short line inclusion in the NMFN through various dimensions that capture the unique beneficial characteristics of short line services and the value provided by our operations, particularly to rural areas and small communities,” the association wrote.
DOT intends to publish a new draft of the NMFN this year and there will be a process for states to propose NMFN segments, such as Critical Rural Freight Corridors.
