DOT Advances National Multimodal Freight Network Toward Formal Designation
The Department of Transportation is moving through the final stages of establishing the National Multimodal Freight Network, a federally designated system of highways, railroad lines, maritime routes, airports, and ports that together form the critical infrastructure backbone of U.S. commercial goods movement. The network, mandated under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act and carried forward under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, is intended to serve as the baseline framework for assessing freight system performance and directing federal investment.
In April 2024, DOT published a request for information on how best to identify the critical freight facilities and corridors that would constitute the network. A draft designation followed in January 2025, incorporating responses from that solicitation and inviting further comment with a February 2025 deadline. As of December 2025, the Multimodal Freight Office was in the process of reviewing feedback received from that comment period in preparation for the next phase: formal input from individual states on the network’s composition.
The network spans the full range of U.S. freight infrastructure. DOT’s freight system encompasses approximately four million miles of highways and roads, 140,000 miles of rail lines, 25,000 miles of inland and coastal waterways, 2.8 million miles of pipelines, and more than 5,000 public airports. The capital assets comprising this system were valued at $11.1 trillion in 2023. Trucking alone accounts for 64.6 percent of total freight volume and 72.6 percent of total freight value, yet nearly one-third of all shipments measured by ton-miles travel more than 2,000 miles and require multiple modes to reach their destination — the precise coordination challenge the network designation is designed to address.
The National Freight Strategic Plan, which must reference the Multimodal Freight Network as a performance baseline, was undergoing final internal review as of February 2026. The plan, last updated in 2020, solicited public comment in July 2025 and received 69 responses. Both documents are expected to be released in 2026, providing the first integrated update to federal freight policy in five years. The network designation, once finalized, must be redesignated every five years under statute, establishing a recurring federal commitment to mapping the infrastructure that keeps the American supply chain operational.