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.

The Department of Transportation’s Freight Logistics Optimization Works program, known as FLOW, represents one of the more operationally significant efforts undertaken by the Multimodal Freight Office since the office’s establishment in September 2023. The initiative operates as a public-private data partnership, collecting purchase order information from importers alongside logistics supply, demand, and throughput data from participating companies, then returning to participants an aggregated daily view of overall logistics network conditions that exceeds what any individual firm could observe from its own operations alone.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office has concluded that the Department of Transportation failed to meet a core statutory obligation tied to its Office of Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy: periodic reporting to Congress on the office’s activities, staffing, and program administration. The finding, released April 20, 2026, carries immediate weight as lawmakers prepare to deliberate on the reauthorization of federal surface transportation funding, which expires at the end of fiscal year 2026.

The authorization underpinning federal surface transportation programs expires at the end of fiscal year 2026, placing Congress in the position of deciding not only the funding levels for the next authorization cycle but the institutional structure through which freight policy is conceived, administered, and coordinated across the federal government. The Multimodal Freight Office, established under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and still in an early operational phase, sits at the center of that decision.

The nationwide shortage of safe and accessible commercial truck parking has surfaced as one of the more concrete and actionable freight challenges facing the U.S. transportation system, drawing attention from the Department of Transportation’s Multimodal Freight Office as a problem that crosses modal boundaries and resists single-agency resolution. A recent GAO review of the Multimodal Freight Office found that representatives from three of five transportation associations interviewed specifically identified truck parking as an area where the office could drive meaningful progress through improved coordination.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in 2021, directed the Department of Transportation to conduct a travel demand data and forecasting study by November 2023 — and to repeat it at least once every five years thereafter. The study was supposed to produce best practices and guidance for states and Metropolitan Planning Organizations to use when forecasting travel demand for future transportation investments. As of the GAO’s March 2026 review, the study has not been completed.