# Plain Language Summary: National Multimodal Freight Network Improvement Act

This bill makes a technical change to how the federal government identifies and tracks important ports across the country. Right now, the government has a system called the National Multimodal Freight Network that's supposed to identify the most critical transportation routes and ports for moving goods around America. The problem is that the current system doesn't have a clear way to measure how much economic value these ports actually handle. This bill fixes that by requiring the government to include ports in this network based on a specific financial metric: ports that handle at least one billion dollars worth of cargo annually.

The practical effect is that major commercial ports—the ones that are genuinely important to the economy—will now be officially recognized and tracked as part of this national freight network. This matters because when ports are officially designated as part of this network, they become eligible for federal funding, planning resources, and infrastructure improvements. By using cargo value as the measuring stick, the bill ensures that the ports handling the most goods and generating the most economic activity get the attention and resources they deserve. Shipping companies, port workers, and communities that depend on port activity could benefit from improved infrastructure and better coordination between different transportation methods like trucks, trains, and ships.

The bill also clarifies that when the government updates this freight network in the future, it must include all the components that are supposed to be part of it—essentially making sure nothing gets accidentally left out. This is a relatively small but important fix to make the government's freight planning system work more effectively and fairly.

National Multimodal Freight Network Improvement Act

Brownley, Julia

National Multimodal Freight Network Improvement Act This bill revises the network components of the National Multimodal Freight Network (NMFN). Specifically, the bill requires <ul> <li>the interim NMFN to include public ports of the United States that have a total annual cargo value of at least $1 billion, and </li> <li>the final NMFN to include all specified interim network components when the Department of Transportation designates or redesignates the network. </li></ul>