WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s pick to head the first high-level cabinet office dedicated exclusively to freight
is setting a high bar for the value her office will bring to the nation’s freight markets.
Allison Dane Camden will lead the U.S. Department of Transportation’s new Office of Multimodal Freight Infrastructure and Policy as the first deputy assistant secretary for the office. Camden brings to the office experience she gained at the Washington State Department of Transportation when she served as deputy assistant secretary for multimodal development and delivery. The stakes at the U.S. DOT are higher. Camden is tasked with coordinating national freight policy with all 50 states, creating a National Multimodal Freight Network (NMFN), and overseeing a data portal that has figured out how to get cargo owners and carriers to share their freight data in exchange for a deep look into the country’s supply chains. Camden spoke with FreightWaves to outline her vision of what government agencies and private companies can expect from her office and from that data portal, Freight Logistics Optimization Works (FLOW), which the Biden administration launched in March 2022. [This interview was edited for length and clarity.]
FREIGHTWAVES: Companies involved with moving goods through the nation’s freight networks, along with those that build and maintain those networks, have been anxious to see your office get up and running since it was authorized under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021. What immediate benefits can they expect now that the office is officially underway with its first leader?
CAMDEN: Freight now has a permanent seat at the table. There’s been great work happening at U.S. DOT for a lot of years, but it has often been siloed, as departments can be. So this new office is housed within the office of the secretary and is really meant to lead on freight policy and knit together the good work that has already been happening. So my goal for the freight office is to be a one-stop shop to tackle freight needs, collaborate with the other parts of DOT, with industry partners, and with state and local governments to strengthen the supply chain and ensure goods can move more efficiently. I think folks are going to start seeing that soon. We’ve also got the National Multimodal Freight Network designation that’s part of the mission of this office. [Among the goals of the NMFN, required by Congress in 2015 but never finalized, is to prioritize investment in freight infrastructure.] We want to get that started in 2024. And even before I got here the work of FLOW was underway. And we’re starting to see the fruits of that effort already, and that’s only going to grow with time.
Source: U.S. DOT