WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation published on Friday a draft version of its National Multimodal Freight Network (NMFN) map, a project required by Congress in 2015 to help states prioritize federal money for infrastructure projects.
The interactive draft NMFN, which consists of approximately 175,000 miles of highways, railways and waterways, 140 seaports and 65 airports, is informed by comments received on a notice published by DOT in April 2024.
“The Network was designed to promote intermodal connectivity, based on measurable data assessing the significance of freight movement, including origins and destinations of freight movements,” according to a DOT notice.
DOT was also directed by Congress to consider a list of 12 factors in designating NMFN’s route miles and facilities.
“While, as required by statute, DOT is considering all of the statutory factors in its designation, DOT was particularly interested in how respondents [to the April 2024 notice] would prioritize these twelve statutory factors,” the department noted. Priorities cited by commenters were distributed across all the factors, with each of the 12 ranked in the top three that were mentioned at least twice.
“Nevertheless, a clear theme emerged, with a plurality of commenters expressing a clear preference that DOT prioritize ‘Intermodal links and intersections that promote connectivity.’
“This aligns with the second most frequently cited factor, ‘Major distribution centers, inland intermodal facilities, and first- and last-mile facilities.’”
Other factors of note, according to DOT, included “Access to major areas for manufacturing, agriculture, or natural resources” and “Facilities and transportation corridors identified by [states] as having critical freight importance to the region.’”
An Interim NMFN was authorized by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in 2015, followed by two comment periods between 2016 and 2018 that generated a total of 126 comments.
Commenters on the interim plan “overwhelmingly supported increasing the highway component of the NMFN and many suggested including the entire [National Highway System],” DOT stated in a separate National Freight Strategic Plan published in 2020.
“It is worth noting that the highway component of the 2024 draft Network is approximately 28% larger than the 2016 interim network, prior to any additional designations that may follow this notice,” DOT stated in its notice on Friday.
The public will have until Feb. 27 to comment on the new draft NMFN.