Shipping Coalition, Senator Urge LaHood to Establish Freight Office Within DOT
This story appears in the June 11 print edition of Transport Topics.
A major coalition of freight stakeholders and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) have urged Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to create a high-level intermodal freight office with a director who reports directly to him.
Freight across all modes is expected to grow 27% by 2040, but the movement of goods is hampered by traffic bottlenecks, Cantwell said in a May 31 letter to LaHood outlining her suggestions for a freight office.
“Congestion already costs about $200 billion a year — a number that could grow unless we take action,” Cantwell said.
On the same day that Cantwell sent her letter, the Freight Stakeholders Coalition issued a statement asking the secretary to heed the senator’s suggestion.
“The creation of such an office would go far in reducing current redundancies and has even been recommended by two Government Accountability Office reports as a useful measure in reducing government duplication and increasing cost savings,” the coalition stated.
The coalition represents shippers and public and private transportation providers, including American Trucking Associations, the Association of American Railroads and the American Association of Port Authorities.
“We would like to have a formalized multimodal office in the office of the secretary to give highlighted emphasis to the business of freight transportation,” said Bruce Carlton, president of the National Industrial Transportation League, a coalition member.
“And it’s not rail over highway over ocean; it’s multimodal,” Carlton said. “How can we take the DOT resources and put them to higher and better use for things like multistate, multimodal transportation?”
Except for a statement saying they appreciated Cantwell’s leadership on freight issues, officials at the DOT would not say how the secretary responded to Cantwell’s letter.
DOT has what it calls a working group addressing intermodal freight, but officials declined to provide a staff member to discuss the group’s work product with Transport Topics. The working group, which includes representatives from DOT’s maritime, highway and rail agencies, is headquartered in the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Freight Management Operations. FHWA is currently advertising for a new director for that office.
Cantwell sent her letter to LaHood after the Senate passed a transportation reauthorization bill, which calls for creation of a national freight policy and would provide money to states for such freight-related projects as better highway connections to ports and rail hubs and truck-only lanes on interstate highways.
The Senate bill is currently in a House-Senate conference committee trying to iron out a compromise reauthorization plan.
Cantwell said in her letter that LaHood already has executive power to create a freight office and does not need to wait for congressional approval. “Bringing more focus to the federal role in freight will help the United States address the competitive challenge our ports and other freight stakeholders are facing from Mexico and Canada,” she said.
She also said Canada’s decision to make freight mobility a priority is “the reason behind the emergence of Canadian ports as serious competitors for U.S.-bound cargo.”
