At TRB: How high-tech mapping can grow intermodal, and a data reality check

WASHINGTON — Here’s what supply chain stakeholders know for certain about intermodal transportation: It involves freight moving between air, land and sea. Beyond that, well, there are more questions than answers.

The 104th annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board provided a fertile setting for more than 13,000 educators, regulators and private businesses to consider diversified research into how to get from here to there, and the elusive goal of making it all more efficient.

At a meeting of the TRB’s Intermodal Freight Transport Committee, attendees bruited about assorted ideas in free-form brainstorming outside of the conference’s lectern sessions. 

The discussions also underpin TRB mandates that its committees develop research needs statements, as a pathway to funding science-based review.

Dominic Menegus of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) detailed progress on the development of a geospatial layer focused on intermodal freight transportation for BTS’ Office of Spatial Analysis and Visualization. A geospatial layer functions like a legend on a paper map with a specific theme or feature, and can be used to aid land use, planning and development.

Menegus said his current focus is on dry bulk shipping of agricultural products, minerals, and scrap and recycling at

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