American transport policy usually moves slowly enough to ignore for a quarter. Not this autumn. The 2021 infrastructure law expired on 30 September, the FAA wants another $30 billion, a federal rule is pushing truck drivers off the road, and a regulator is testing the biggest rail merger in a generation under rules it has never used. CrossGov.com, a site that covers US government with a federal focus, has published a set of posts that between them map the whole board.

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 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.

Two major freight disruptions in recent years have placed the resilience of the U.S. multimodal freight system under sustained official scrutiny, exposing both the interconnected fragility of modern supply chains and the value of having a federal office capable of coordinating cross-modal responses in real time. On March 26, 2024, a cargo ship departing the Port of Baltimore struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, triggering its collapse and closing a major interstate highway corridor through the city.