09/03/20 CAGTC: USDOT Finalizes National Freight Strategic Plan

Dear CAGTC Members,

On September 3, USDOT published the final National Freight Strategic Plan (NFSP) as mandated by the FAST Act. The full plan can be found here and the announcement webinar (approximately 35 minutes long) can be found here.

As a reminder, the full plan was due by December of 2017. In December of 2019, USDOT issued a Request for Information (RFI) asking a number of questions, with the goal of informing the NFSP development. In consultation with its membership, CAGTC provided comments and the final NFSP addresses many CAGTC priorities and concerns and, in several sections, contains language directly taken from CAGTC’s comments. While we encourage you to review the NFSP document, please find some key takeaways below. We are continuing to analyze the document and, recognizing that the NFSP will be an evolutionary process, we ask our members to share their impressions with us.

Key Takeaways

  • The NFSP outlines four principles to guide USDOT’s efforts to support safe, efficient, and reliable goods movement:
    1. Modernize or eliminate unnecessary or duplicative regulations that inhibit supply chain efficiency, reduce incentives to innovation, delay project delivery, or raise costs to shippers and consumers, while protecting safety and environmental outcomes.
    2. Improve cross-sector, multijurisdictional, and multimodal collaboration to enhance intermodal connectivity and first- and last-mile connections, streamline interstate policies and regulations, and support multistate investment.
    3. Provide targeted Federal resources and financial assistance to support freight projects that provide significant benefits to the national economy.
    4. Invest in freight data, analytical tools, and research to enhance the abilities of State, regional, and local agencies to evaluate and address freight issues.
  • USDOT identifies strategic goals and objectives for national freight policy, grouped into three categories:
    1. Safety
      This section includes objectives to: support the development of automation and connectivity technologies; increase freight system resiliency; reduce regulatory oversight barriers to freight safety and efficiency; and separate freight and passenger traffic where possible.
    2. Infrastructure
      USDOT acknowledges that Federal freight transportation funding must be “sustained, multimodal, cross-jurisdictional, reliable, and specifically dedicated to freight transportation projects,” utilizing a combination of formula funding, competitive grants, and innovative finance programs. USDOT aims to support the prioritization of freight projects in the planning process by improving data to assess a project’s costs and benefits at the local, regional, and national level. Additional infrastructure objectives include: prioritizing projects that improve freight intermodal connectivity and enhancing freight flows on first- and last-mile connectors and at major trade gateways; developing a methodology to identify freight bottlenecks across modes to inform funding decisions; and mitigating the impacts of freight movement on communities.
    3. Innovation
      Innovation goals and objectives include: improving freight data, modeling, and analysis tools and supporting vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technologies.
  • Freight research: USDOT expects to designate a final National Multimodal Freight Network reflecting the trends, challenges, and strategies identified in the NFSP by the end of this year. Additionally, USDOT emphasizes investment in freight research is needed to gather comprehensive data across modes and jurisdictions to ensure funding is directed toward projects that address current and future freight system needs. Medium to long term goals (4+ years) include: analyzing real-time data to improve freight decision-making and long-term planning; improving the ability to collect performance information at ports; and releasing an updated NFSP 2.0.
  • Additional components of the NFSP
      • The U.S. Freight System: summarizes data for each mode and sector of the industry, including major trade gateways and intermodal freight movement.
      • Freight Corridors: provides an overview of freight movement and primary freight corridors for the agriculture, energy, natural resources, and manufacturing sectors. The NFSP incorporated CAGTC’s recommendation to include the retail sector along with manufacturing.
      • Key Trends: identifies changes in freight demand and supply such as population and economic growth, diversified global supply chains, the rise in e-commerce, and workforce changes.
      • Challenges: discusses freight system challenges pertaining to safety, network efficiency, infrastructure condition, and barriers to freight system performance. Of particular interest to CAGTC, this section addresses: challenges associated with congestion and bottlenecks (for trucks, ports and intermodal connectors, land ports of entry, inland waterways, and rail); infrastructure and supply chain resilience; and financial and institutional barriers, particularly for multimodal and multijurisdictional projects.

Thank you,

Cecile

Cecile Entleitner
Manager, Member Communications & Policy
Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors
1625 K Street NW
Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006
tradecorridors.org
T: (202) 828-9100
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