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Mid-America Freight Coalition

Kansas Creates Multimodal Transportation and Innovation Division

Kansas DOT is responding to changes in travel and freight movement to ensure their agency supports the existing and expected changes in transportation, communications, and IT technologies. Secretary Lorenz of Kansas DOT recently announced they are establishing the Multimodal Transportation and Innovation Division at KDOT. She added, this division, led by Cory Davis, will contain the Bureau of Multimodal Transportation and the Bureau of Innovation (previously the Division of Innovative Technologies). Secretary Lorenz added that they seek to demonstrate KDOT’s commitment to multimodal transportation and innovation and are excited to elevate that work. We are confident that the Division will pay big dividends to the citizens of Kansas.

(Picture from the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Boyhood Home. Abilene, KS.)

Can Home Delivery Help Pay the Bills?

With the continued tension between infrastructure needs and available funding, Colorado’s Senate Bill 260 looks to a least partially remedy the situation through a unique tax that captures the infrastructure use by home delivery, courier and driver services.  For example, each Amazon or UPS delivery will cost an additional 27 cents.  For services like Uber and Lyft, each ride will cost an additional 30 cents.  As transportation changes, with electric vehicles, or alternate logistics chains, or modal changes, governments will need to identify creative and new ways to ensure continued user funding for transportation infrastructure. 

See the article at: https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/news/21272470/co-ordering-from-amazon-or-taking-a-lyft-ride-youre-about-to-kick-in-money-for-roads-transit-and-electric-vehicles

MAFC Annual Meeting Update

Join MAFC in Des Moines, Iowa, at the MAASTO Annual meeting to talk freight! Session topics include freight vehicle electrification, freight corridor resiliency, soy and ag transport, FACs, and a MAFC working session. 

After 3-years of virtual meetings, the group is looking forward to meeting face to face and we hope you will join us in De Moines.

Meeting registration can be found at: https://maasto2022.com/

 Will FLOW provide Better Supply Chain Data?

The Biden-⁠Harris Administration announced a new initiative to improve supply chain data flow that could provide information to support freight corridor and multimodal planning. FLOW, the Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW) is intended to speed up delivery times and reduce consumer cost through greater coordination and information sharing across key logistics and industry players.

Ten tractor trailers parked in a row. View is from rear.

Truck Parking

What do current supply chain challenges mean for truck parking shortages? While the world of logistics is seeing new pressures exacerbated by an “…online shopping boom, lower inventories and federal mandates on driver rest…”, truck parking and related driver safety issues persist. A recent article from Bloomberg highlights continued truck parking issues in light of continued supply chain disruption. The article, “Sleepy Truckers Get Forgotten in Supply Crisis Choking Economy”, is available at this link.

MAFC logo text in rectangle
Photo from: https://www.americanpatriotholdings.com/ is a rendering of shipping containers on a container barge on the Mississippi River with surrounding landscape of trees, water, and blue sky dotted with small puffy white clouds.

A Marine Freight Renaissance?

Many major cities around the world were founded on marine transportation corridors. St louis lays claim to this history and is working towards revolutionizing container freight movement in the region. Read about the promising and long-awaited Container on Barge (COB) development for the Mississippi River in the KSDK.com article “New St. Louis port bringing container ships up the Mississippi will revolutionize Midwest shipping, officials say”. The article is available at this link. (Photo credit: American Patriot Holdings, LLC.)