Sara Walfoort was part of the inaugural Freight Academy class of 2008 and considers the experience instrumental in achieving legitimacy in her role as a freight planner. When she enrolled in the Academy, she had been working at the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) that had never had a dedicated freight planner. The mandate for freight planning was fairly new, and her job at the time had required her to wear multiple hats.
“I was doing everything, but freight was something I didn’t know much about, and the Freight Academy was the only place I ever found that would help me get freight training,” she said.
The experience was a revelation. She had a strong basis in transportation planning in her own region but had not acquired a feel for how freight worked, nor how to plan for moving freight. Listening to all the voices talking about their problems and issues opened a world she hadn’t understood and didn’t even know existed.
“I was working in an area where multimodal transportation was critical,” she said. “I learned about the rails and aviation. It was all immensely helpful. I got an understanding of freight practices at the time, a comprehensive view of what people were doing in freight planning, trends to watch, and on the organizational side, great exposure to a world of people with different perspectives.”
All of it was valuable and she learned every person contributed significantly to the process. Meeting and listening to the day-to-day challenges of bridge engineers, others in MPOs, and even a million-mile trucker was astounding, and offered her insights into the freight industry she would never have had otherwise.
“I learned to be responsive to the needs of people in all parts of the industry rather than just to highway management personnel,” she said. “I have remained engaged with a whole cohort of people that I met there, and I call on them and ask what they know about this, or who can I talk to about that? They’re more than just colleagues.”
Looking back, Sara remembers enrolling in the Freight Academy as a very big step, but over the years, she’s refined the knowledge she gained at there, and it was critical in her career trajectory.
She’d had a hybrid role at her MPO for many years, but in 2012, her agency became eligible for funding for a full-time bicycle path planner and a full-time freight planner, and she’d been asked which role she wanted.
Although she’s a lifelong bicycle rider, she chose freight planning and never looked back. She was able to create a career path for herself in freight planning based on her experience in the Freight Academy, and she knew she had the training to do it.
“Now I’m Manager of Freight Planning and there was never any question in my mind about where I wanted to go,” she said. “I was able to gain legitimacy with drivers because they knew I understood them, and I could communicate with them. I’m still benefiting from what I learned in the Freight Academy. It boosted my confidence, I understood the limitations of what we had to work with, and I found ways to push boundaries and find ways to do a better job of freight planning.”
