Policy Platform

Reducing deaths on our roads requires slower speeds. Higher speeds can make sense on interstates and limited access highways. The fundamental problem with the design of our roads is that we try to make the streets and roads that go through our cities, towns, and villages function at highway speeds. Intersections with cross streets, driveways, pedestrian crossings and street parking all become dangerous conflict points at high speed.

The United States, in comparison to every other developed nation, is an outlier in terms of the safety of people walking, biking, and rolling. State highways in particular, which are funded by the federal government, are deadlier than ever before. When our state, local, and federal government is spending this much, it should result in safe streets, not a 40-year high for pedestrian fatalities. 

Federal funding should require approaches and designs that put safety first.

Click here to download a one-pager about this principle.

In transit, formula funds are focused on maintenance, but highway funds are not—and our roads and bridges are deteriorating despite unprecedentedly high funding levels. This is because Congress has allowed states to neglect their maintenance needs in favor of costly roadway expansions with no clear plan to keep them in good condition.

This wasteful cycle has resulted in a system with a staggering maintenance deficit and no plan for managing these costly liabilities. The numbers paint a dire picture. Approximately 43,000 U.S. bridges are in poor condition, and there is a $830 billion backlog for repairing existing highways alone. This does not even account for the costs of maintaining and preserving the additional roads and bridges that continue to be built. And the intensifying effects of climate change will create new pressures on all of our infrastructure, further exacerbating our maintenance needs.

An approach that values fixing what we have before adding to the system would produce jobs and bring our roads to the highest standard of repair in rural, urban, and suburban communities alike.

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America is a country of freedom and choice, but not when it comes to how we’ve invested in transportation. For more than half a century, we have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into building a sophisticated highway system that attempts to connect everyone to everything—but only by car. In most cases, we’ve done this to the exclusion of every other way of getting around, and the results are unmistakable:

Today’s costly road expansions bring diminishing returns and fail to reduce congestion or improve our quality of life. Past road projects often destroyed walkable communities and even eliminated walking as an option. More lanes have resulted in more driving and more congestion, with few options for opting out of it. Few Americans live near streets safe enough for their kids to walk or bike to school. Most of the country has little to no access to high quality transit or intercity rail.

The U.S. has developed a highway system that is the envy of the world. Our new principle, Invest in the Rest, calls on federal leaders to imagine what we could achieve if we applied the same level of funding and energy into investing in more options to get people where they need to go.

Click here to download a one-pager about our newest principle.