A mechanism is provided to configure a plurality of transport trees in a transport network, each of which correspond to a native tree (e.g., a bidirectional multicast tree). In embodiments of the present invention, each of the plurality of transport trees has a unique root node so that in the event of a failure of any root node, the transport trees with surviving root nodes can be used to transport traffic from the native tree. The present invention provides for each transport network edge router being independently responsible for selection of a transport tree that the edge router will use to transmit a datastream, while also being capable of receiving packets from any transport tree. Through the use of such configured transport trees along with independent selection of a transport tree, the present invention provides a reduction in the disruption of datastream transmission due to a root node failure. Aspects of the present invention further provide a capacity for root node load balancing by permitting data transmission over any of the configured transport trees on a source-by-source (or edge router-by-edge router) basis.