The General Accounting Office issued a report last week examining ways to improve freight mobility and reduce congestion.

The report, “Freight Transportation: Strategies Needed to Address Planning and Financing Limitations,” says "major challenges to freight mobility share a common theme – congestion." The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee requested the report.

The study recommended comprehensive transportation planning and a multifaceted funding approach. It also said user-pay systems, performance measures and incentives for adopting best practices in planning agencies would be needed.

Meanwhile, freight traffic on roadways has increased fourfold the past 20 years, and rail and highway congestion is severe in urban areas, GAO said.

The agency found that transportation planning and financing practices are not well-suited to freight transportation projects and that "fundamental changes are needed to take a broader, system-wide approach to planning freight projects and ... foster active participation by the private sector in the process."

Without such action, GAO says increasing congestion, with doubled freight volume in the next 20 years, "could overwhelm the capacity of our nation's transportation infrastructure and thereby severely impede goods movement."