TRB Turns Sights to Intermodal

LONG BEACH, Calif. — The federal government’s efforts to improve intermodal freight transportation were scrutinized by rail, highway and ocean carriers and officials from a host of government agencies last week at a National Academy of Sciences conference on national and global intermodal freight movement.

The conference, held Feb. 23 to 26 by the academy’s Transportation Research Board, came nine years after Congress first recognized the need for trucking, railroads and ocean carriers to work together toward a seamless transportation system. The 1991 Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act created a National Commission on Intermodal Transportation to develop recommendations on public sector involvement in development of the nation’s intermodal transportation system. TRB held a conference in 1994 to help the commission develop its recommendations.

The goal of the conference is to develop recommendations for Congress and the Department of Transportation as both organizations contemplate an update of surface transportation laws, which expire in 2003.

“ISTEA was the first time the public sector became aware of what the private freight sector had known for a long time — there are significant cost savings and systems efficiencies to be had if modal biases are replaced with an intermodal perspective focused on the overall mobility of the traveler or freight,” Stephen Van Beek, director of the Department of Transportation’s Office of Intermodalism, said in his Feb. 23 keynote speech.

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