WASHINGTON — Here’s what supply chain stakeholders know for certain about intermodal transportation: It involves freight moving between air, land and sea. Beyond that, well, there are more questions than answers.
The 104th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board provided a fertile setting for more than 13,000 educators, regulators and private businesses to consider diversified research into how to get from here to there, and the elusive goal of making it all more efficient.
At a...
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Port operations were on the radar as maritime stakeholders held an encompassing conversation ranging from harbor dredging and anchorage development to sustainability and alternative fuels infrastructure.
The free-flowing discussion on Tuesday came at the 104th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, where thousands of academics, researchers, government officials, and private sector entities braved a rare snowstorm to absorb the latest research, exchange ideas,...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/at-trb-costly-issues-weigh-on-port-efficiency
WASHINGTON, D.C. — American railroads are facing an employment crisis in a time of epochal change, urgently looking to attract young jobseekers to replace an aging workforce while competing with other supply chain businesses for scarce talent.
It’s a quandary that was explored Monday during a panel discussion at the Transportation Research Board’s 104th annual meeting. The five-day multimodal conference which hosts hundreds of researchers, academics, and representatives from the public and...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroads-dilemma-the-good-jobs-no-one-knows-about
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Transportation stakeholders are taking a lesson from the pandemic and taking steps to ensure a resilient supply chain, so future disasters don’t turn into catastrophes.
“There’s a difference,” said Jose Holguin-Veras, director, Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “A disaster assumes a region has the resources to respond within three days.
“A catastrophe wipes out the local capacity to respond.”
Holguin-Veras...
While battery-electric and hydrogen-powered locomotives have received the lion’s share of coverage when it comes to North American freight railroads and sustainability initiatives, a railroad seeking to adopt sustainability or climate resiliency measures need not spend vast amounts of money.
Indeed, implementing sustainability initiatives may consist of determining where to adjust existing procedures to align with the goal of reducing carbon emissions, according to panelists who spoke at the Tran...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/freight-rail-panel-sustainability-neednt-break-the-bank
Shoring up the struggling Highway Trust Fund (HTF) using a mileage-based user fee regime for cars and trucks may take longer than anticipated based on a new federal oversight report.
That’s because the Federal Highway Administration has so far not determined how to scale up various state and regional pilot projects around the country, according to the report, issued this week by the Government Accountability Office.
The GAO stated that since 2016, federally funded mileage-fee pilot projects were...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/watchdog-pushing-feds-to-move-on-truck-user-fee-pilots
WASHINGTON — After a now-familiar recap of the problem of truck parking, a panel at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board faced the sobering fact that from the perspective of the public sector, it isn’t easy to fix.
The thrust of the panel was to discuss what could be done about the inadequacy of truck parking from a public perspective; private developers of parking, like truck stops, will be expected to add spaces, as they usually do.
Doing it again: @LovesTravelStop to...
With an unprecedented $567 billion it will be receiving from the new bipartisan infrastructure law — much of it to help unclog supply chain bottlenecks — the U.S. Department of Transportation is girding itself for the increased scrutiny it expects to receive to ensure against waste, fraud and abuse.
Katie Thomson, who was named director of bipartisan infrastructure law implementation in December, will focus on working with the White House and other federal and state agencies to “get things done...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/infrastructure-money-science-informed-risks-to-guide-rollout
WASHINGTON — A panel on rail consolidation at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board here weighed in on the proposed merger between Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern, with one member suggesting the deal faces significant scrutiny despite success in the initial stages.
With the merger now awaiting federal approval, where the KCS-CP (NYSE: CP) combination fits on the spectrum of rail mergers was a key topic for the panel. Rail consolidation, it was pointed out, is a sector...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/panelist-kcs-cp-merger-will-still-get-a-long-look-by-stb
Rail competition, connectivity, network speed and reliability are some of the big freight rail issues on the minds of shippers like Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD), according to the company’s director for logistics.
Because Home Depot sells products from all across North America, from forest products in western Canada to more localized building materials like drywall and concrete, good rail network connectivity “is really important,” said Robin Baggs, director of logistics for Home Depot. Baggs was a...
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/home-depot-offers-shipper-wish-list-for-rail-infrastructure