Cargo and Freight

A focus on serving the logistics sector is in part responsible for the business expansions and additions that have brought record job growth to Kentucky in recent years, a state transportation official told attendees at the CSG National Conference in December.

This month marked the one-year anniversary of the announcement by Amazon that the company would seek a location for a second headquarters somewhere in North America, bringing with it $5 billion in investment and 50,000 jobs. The announcement sparked an intense competition among communities hoping to land HQ2 and resulted in 238 proposals that earlier this year were narrowed down to 20 finalists. With Amazon now expected to announce a winner before the end of the year, it’s time to check in on where things stand with the search, who’s most likely to come out on top and whether we know any more about the criteria the company will use to make their final decision.  

A wide variety of reports have come out in recent works that provide a glimpse of the state of the nation’s infrastructure. And while state governments are doing what they can—often working within severe fiscal limitations—there is also plenty of evidence of just how daunting the task will be to shore up that infrastructure and get it ready for the future. Here are some recent updates on infrastructure conditions, state and local funding strategies being deployed and other infrastructure-related news.

There have been a variety of activities in the world of autonomous vehicles this spring and summer. Here’s a roundup of the most recent federal, state and local policy actions, industry developments and research reports on the topic.

Thursday, October 19 marked the deadline for cities to apply to become the home of Amazon’s second corporate headquarters, a $5 billion project that is expected to eventually employ 50,000 people with average salaries of more than $100,000. The competition, which the company announced last month, sparked a bidding war that demonstrated the growing importance of ecommerce and logistics to the nation’s economy and that allowed many parts of the country to tout their infrastructure assets and, in some cases, to recognize the infrastructure challenges they may need to face in the future.