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Three opportunities to work with incoming USDOT Secretary Duffy

Last Wednesday (Jan. 15), former Congressman Sean Duffy faced questions from the Senate Commerce Committee, tasked to vet the next Transportation Secretary. Here are three things T4America gleaned from the hearing as opportunities for working with Secretary-designate Duffy.

Image Source: CSPAN (37:13)

While it’s difficult with almost any eventual USDOT Secretary to try and anticipate precisely how they’ll choose to run the department, these confirmation hearings (and the nominee’s record to some degree) can help give a rough sense of what they care about before they are confirmed. And the limited amount of time to prepare in this specific case might mean that this hearing is more of a look at Duffy’s priorities and interests rather than revealing what he may be directed to prioritize by the president and the executive branch.

As one example of how these differences are already emerging, Duffy responded to questions about future spending under the infrastructure law (the IIJA) by pledging to follow that law and see those funds spent. Yet, on day one of the Trump presidency, President Trump issued an executive order aimed at suspending all IIJA funding for 90 days. (This could be challenged in the courts, as those spending decisions are determined by Congress and existing law.)

It won’t be clear for quite some time what the Trump administration wants to accomplish in transportation—which appears to be farther down their list of priorities. But with that in mind, here are three areas where some doors could be opened to collaborate or work with USDOT over the next four years.

1) Safety

Mr. Duffy strongly affirmed his desire to leave a legacy at USDOT on safety. We suspected this could be an area where he brings a strong interest due to his personal connection to the issue: His wife Rachel was critically injured in a traffic crash years before they were married, he was on an Amtrak train that crashed in West Virginia that killed a truck driver, and has frequently spoken about safety issues.

Questions from the committee touched on various safety issues, from autonomous vehicles, to passenger and freight rail (including the issue of blocked railroad grade crossings impeding traffic and emergency response), and briefly on active transportation safety. On that note, Duffy said he would be willing to explore and engage in advancing and eventually implementing the Sarah Langenkamp Active Transportation Safety Act, which would make changes to the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program to help spur states to build and complete protected bike and pedestrian networks. Mr. Duffy even spoke about the need for proactive federal rules on autonomous vehicles that would focus on safety, which is not the direction Congress has tried to go in over the past few years. With roadway fatalities continuing to rise, despite advances in vehicle safety technology and innovation that the committee spent extensive time on, this area could be an opportunity to work with the incoming USDOT Secretary. Automated vehicles should not be tested without greater transparency and safeguards. With a legacy emphasis on safety, Secretary-nominee Duffy also provides an opening to focus on addressing existing standards for the nation’s roadways that are inherently Dangerous by Design and need to be fundamentally reworked.

2) Multimodal transportation investments

Members from both parties of the committee raised issues that touch on a wide spectrum of different modes of travel, including passenger rail, the resilience of public transit operations, and rural community connectivity.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) reminded Mr. Duffy that he is up to “be the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, not just the Department of Cars.” Mr. Duffy expressed support for a multimodal transportation point of view, in addition to supporting a robust and innovative automotive market that is inclusive of electric vehicles. (This is another area where differences with the President are already emerging: the President is trying to reverse incentives and mandates for electric vehicle adoption.)

Senators Baldwin (D-WI) and Duckworth (D-IL) also highlighted the need for Mr. Duffy to not forget and integrate the mobility needs of 70 million Americans with disabilities, who may be mobility, cognitive, vision, or hearing impaired. Light on details, Mr. Duffy did repeat on multiple occasions the need to support a transportation network that facilitates consumer choice. This leaves room for advocates and others to help USDOT understand their charge to promote safe and efficient movement of all Americans, regardless of ability and the community they live in.

3) Transparency and streamlining

This could be one of the areas of common ground for making much-needed reforms to the (arduous) process of how transportation projects get approved and built—especially transit projects—and how much they cost. Nearly every Senator touched upon implementing the 2021 infrastructure law and other related congressional mandates, project delivery, the NEPA process, and how to speed up efficient and cost-effective transportation projects. Over and over we find transportation projects held up over onerous permitting and review processes, which rightfully slow down highway boondoggles, but also hold up solid public transit and zero-emission mobility projects. There’s a dire need to shake up the status quo to streamline beneficial community-led projects and hold back projects that divide by design.

Senator Fischer (R-NE) requested that Duffy tackle the issue of guidance consistency, when USDOT headquarters says and interprets a policy or guideline, then FHWA division offices use unique, creative interpretations of the same policy or guideline. Senators Cruz (R-TX), Capito (R-WV), and Cantwell (D-WA) requested firm commitment for transparent delivery of information to the committee, especially on how USDOT is evaluating projects for discretionary programs and program effectiveness.

A constant concern from transportation stakeholders has been if existing infrastructure laws would be undercut by the incoming administration. Mr. Duffy has indicated he intends to abide by congressional mandates and laws if confirmed as USDOT Secretary. There is an opening to engage Secretary nominee Duffy on the standardized reporting, oversight, and efficient use of federal transportation dollars.

Looking ahead

Mr. Duffy is likely to enjoy a relatively smooth confirmation process. With the next surface transportation reauthorization looming, Duffy’s USDOT will be charged with helping Congress understand what can or should be changed with the overall transportation program to produce better outcomes. While it will take some time for their agenda to emerge, these openings in safety, multimodal transportation investments, and transparency revealed in Mr. Duffy’s confirmation hearing could provide some possible pathways to make a substantial impact on U.S. transportation.

Time’s up! What wins has Biden notched and what has he left incomplete on transportation?

In November 2020, we sent the incoming Biden administration a memo outlining immediate and longer-term actions we urged the new president to initiate. Four years later, while modest progress has been made on some, it’s hard to say that the transportation system or the most important outcomes by which we should evaluate it are significantly better or different than four years ago.

Image Source: The White House

As the Biden administration comes to a close, it’s time to take stock of what President Biden and his team accomplished. (You can read our recaps of the Biden administration’s progress after their first, second, and third years.) There are certainly some tangible wins and progress to point to, like new programs focused on climate change and electrification, USDOT advancing smarter projects with their discretionary programs compared to the previous four years, and some positive administrative changes. There was also a massive infrastructure bill that did have some notable but small wins, though they all came alongside the IIJA’s historic amount of funding. Overall, the status quo on transportation that was in place when the Biden administration arrived is largely unchanged, though it is far better funded.

Before we get into the good and the incomplete, let’s look at the table of specific requests we made in November 2020.

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In truth, our hope was that many of these requests could be tackled in the first hundred days or over the first year. We were hoping to be able to check things off this list and add more ambitious tasks for the intervening years as time went by. But as you can see, four years later, most of the initial list is either undone or incomplete.

Beyond this list, it’s hard to say that the most important measurable outcomes for transportation overall—safety, state of repair, emissions, access to destinations, delay or congestion—are significantly better today than four years ago or are on track to improve significantly in another four or eight years, even after the IIJA’s $643 billion is completely exhausted. The IIJA overall is advancing projects that will increase emissions. Many of the new grant programs could either go dormant, be defunded by Congress, or be used by Trump’s USDOT to fund radically different kinds of projects—like when President Obama turned grant programs like TIGER over to the Trump admin eight years ago.

While Congress writes the laws that determine where most transportation dollars go, USDOT did not take full advantage of the tools at its disposal to make the kind of binding, institutional, structural changes that will move the needle and can’t be easily undone by a future administration.

The good:

Greenhouse gas rule

Resurrected from the Obama administration, a measure to assess the greenhouse gases coming from transportation projects was introduced in 2022 and finalized in 2023 (only to be ultimately overturned after challenges in the courts and Congress). While the administration certainly deserves credit for this attempt, they did slow-walk the development and implementation of the rule primarily due to fear that the opposition would block it versus swiftly developing and implementing the program and navigating opposition along the way.

Small steps for safety

Steps were taken to elevate the conversation on roadway safety as a national crisis and the need to fundamentally change the trajectory of the United States. This included the development of a National Roadway Safety Strategy, an overhaul of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and new vehicle safety rules aimed at addressing the safety of all users of our streets. However, those changes are modest and unlikely to be enough to overcome the entrenched auto-dominated culture.

Important though limited steps on reconnecting communities

One of the biggest highlights of the IIJA was the new Reconnecting Communities program, which funds projects that seek to repair past damage from infrastructure projects, such as divisive highways.1 While USDOT can only choose from the projects that do apply, it’s fair to say that their track record has been mixed at best. As America Walks noted in 2024, more than $1 billion of the 2024 awards is going toward a) accommodating people while preserving damaging roads or b) mitigating some of the damage of actively expanding highways. Trying to mitigate brand new damage to Portland from expanding Interstate 5 is not what this small program focused on repairing past damage should be for.2 USDOT should prioritize more inspirational, best-in-class examples for other states and cities to see what’s possible, like Syracuse removing I-81 and replacing it with a street grid.

Ample offerings for technical assistance

The administration did create numerous enhanced technical support offerings, such as the Thriving Communities program, which helps local communities and stakeholders access and navigate federal funding programs, and the (long-delayed) Reconnecting Communities Institute, designed to help communities plan and advance Reconnecting Communities projects. These new programs (and others like them) have been a smart way to help communities navigate the sea of new competitive grant programs created in IIJA.

Incomplete at best, bad at worst

The IIJA will increase emissions overall and fail to move the needle on other measurable outcomes. It should not be viewed as a major accomplishment.

The Biden administration will be leaving office continuing to hail the 2021 infrastructure law (IIJA) as “once in a generation,” “climate-friendly” legislation that will transform the status quo on transportation. Unfortunately, both the IIJA as written and the Biden administration’s implementation of it have been a boulevard of broken dreams. It was always unwise for this administration to sell the IIJA’s massive climate, equity, or state of repair benefits when those benefits have to be delivered by states that don’t share the administration’s goals or preferred outcomes.

Equity investment outcomes muddled

Equity was a core component for the Biden administration, which introduced the Justice40 executive order aimed at ensuring 40 percent of federal funds flowed to and benefited historically marginalized communities. However, it has yet to be seen whether this policy initiative truly targeted benefits towards marginalized communities or just directed funding to areas and projects that just happen to also have a notable marginalized population. The future of such initiatives is in doubt due both to the challenges they’ve had in implementing Justice40 during their time and the fact that Justice 40 can be easily undone by future executive orders.

All-in on electrification only

The Biden administration put all their eggs in the single basket of electrification to tackle transportation emissions. The flaws in that strategy are becoming more obvious by the day, with President Trump and Speaker Johnson signaling their intent to claw back money for new charging infrastructure and repeal mandates requiring more electric vehicles in the future. Transportation electrification is important for decarbonizing transportation, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. The administration’s emphasis on climate change was far out of sync with the reality of how IIJA funding was being used: many states using their formula funds to expand highways and spur more vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Even discretionary grants that USDOT had control over were also still contributing to more VMT. Meanwhile, under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, onerous requirements directed funds toward highway-oriented development and away from communities, helping to undercut the economic development benefits and potential rural support for a program almost certainly to be targeted for cuts or elimination by President Trump.

Failure to modernize street design guidelines

After more than a decade of waiting for a promised update, the release of the most recent edition of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices promised to shake up roadway design standards. But as we noted upon release, the cautious and overall incremental update “falls short of the kind of major paradigm shift required to protect vulnerable users at a time when the United States leads the developed world in roadway fatalities.” Future updates may still happen, but this administration failed to take advantage of the potential of long-term, structural changes like these, perhaps not grasping the long-term impacts.

No changes to traffic models and measures

While Congress sets the policy and states have enormous flexibility for spending transportation dollars, USDOT and FHWA determine what models and measures states can use in conceiving and advancing new roadway projects. On day one, we hoped that USDOT would make moves to require the measurement of “induced demand” and use their bully pulpit to kickstart a long overdue conversation about the inaccuracies of current traffic models, perhaps starting to compare past projections with actual outcomes. USDOT could have delivered guidance on measuring time savings benefits, emissions reductions, and transit access to ensure that projects meant to achieve these goals are set up to succeed. Unfortunately, there was no real movement on the small but powerful changes that would outlast this administration.

Amtrak oversight and staffing

Appointing a full Amtrak board that’s representative of the people the passenger rail system serves would have been a notable, easy win for the administration. But rather puzzlingly, “Amtrak Joe” took a year to nominate anyone to the board. The administration and Congress have only recently finally filled all board slots, but as composed, it still doesn’t fully represent the full network that Amtrak serves. The overall lack of oversight has led to declining service reliability and customer satisfaction, further hurting Amtrak’s reputation with the public and Congress. Further, at a time when there is historic funding for passenger rail, the funding is not being spent due to slow movement in the program and a failure to get sufficient staff in place at the Federal Railroad Administration quickly after the IIJA’s passage to create and implement these new programs.

Closing reflections

The question for an incoming administration hoping to have an impact should not just be “How can we steer the money we control toward good projects?” but instead, “What changes can we institutionalize to disrupt the status quo and produce better results for years to come after we’re gone?” Modest progress has undoubtedly been made during Biden’s time in office, but so much of it is of the first variety—temporary and potentially undone by any future administration. This administration also spent an inordinate amount of time soliciting feedback and research before taking any action on rulemakings that help interpret laws like the IIJA—and, in many cases, never acted on the comments at all. And if the cost of creating valuable but small new climate-focused programs (a la the IIJA) is doubling the size of the blank check programs that are damaging the climate, that’s a bad deal for everyone except concrete and asphalt contractors.

For the incoming Trump administration, we’re working on a to-do list for their first 100 days and the following years to reduce wasting limited resources and ensure that every dollar works towards advancing safety, economic opportunities, and better state of repair.

Another milestone: Major funding announced for Gulf Coast passenger rail

Map showing the stops of the restored route from New Orleans to Mobile, making stops in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula along the way.

Earlier this week, the Federal Railroad Administration announced a significant investment of $21,117,115 in Restoration and Enhancement (R&E) grant funding to Amtrak. This funding will support the restoration of intercity passenger rail service with two daily roundtrips along the Gulf Coast, connecting New Orleans, LA, to Mobile, AL.

We want to share special thanks to Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker and his dedicated staff, who have championed the establishment of the R&E program and the return of passenger rail in the Gulf Coast for more than a decade. This milestone would not be possible without their continued commitment to passenger rail service restoration and expansion along the Gulf Coast.

In recognition of recent progress for passenger service in the Coastal South, we released a four-part series exploring how unified regional and national approaches, supported by local advocacy and sound policy, can help create a successful passenger rail network. Read part one on the history of passenger rail, part two on building momentum for change, part three on converting support into action, and part four on next steps for a national network.

Transportation for America supports the Southern Rail Commission to champion the efforts to return service in the Gulf Coast and across the Deep South.

Helping communities at every stage

Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s technical assistance services help communities at all different stages of their efforts to improve transportation in their communities. In a suite of projects funded by AARP this year in communities across the country, we helped partners work on policy, planning, advocacy education and relationship building.

Smart Growth America technical assistance in Rhode Island, provided in partnership with AARP Rhode Island

Transportation for America does its work through technical assistance, thought leadership and advocacy. As part of our technical assistance work, for the past seven years, we’ve been supported by AARP to do small technical assistance projects helping partners improve transportation in their communities, whatever stage they may be in. This year was no exception. Projects in six different communities: Vermont; Albuquerque, NM; Fort Wayne, IN; San Diego, CA; Georgia; and Hawai’i; showcased the many different ways we can help.

Policy and funding in Vermont

The green mountain state is rural, and has snowy winters, as well as state highways running through hundreds of special, walkable small towns with unique character. AARP Vermont, in partnership with the Vermont Agency on Transportation and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is exploring options to address state highways that pass through cities and towns throughout the state. These highways may have originally been built for higher speed car and truck traffic which is incompatible with more walkable environments that many communities wish to foster in their downtowns.

Vermont’s “Class 1 Town Highway” (C1TH) program has been in place for years to help cities take over management of state highways within town limits in order to implement more walkable designs, but challenges around maintenance costs, particularly for snow removal, have held the program up. To help address this T4America conducted research on policy and funding solutions that other northern states and Canadian provinces have used to address this challenge. Recommendations include state legislative action to address funding challenges, greater flexibility for localities to raise funding, VTRans support for design changes as part of the highway reclassification process, and quick-build demonstration projects to help communities envision the possibilities. AARP Vermont plans to use our research to inform conversations in Vermont’s next legislative session on how to address this challenge.

Policy and planning for an age-friendly Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico is motivated to become a more age-friendly city. They have dedicated staff working on an Age-Friendly Action Plan (AFAP) with domains in public engagement, housing and transportation, and annual progress reports. For two years, T4America has provided analysis of this plan in relation to other city plans, and helped Albuquerque to focus its efforts on near-term wins that can build a foundation for longer term change and a paradigm shift.

T4America’s recommendations included updating the cities Complete Streets policy, integrating housing and public transit plannings, and looking for opportunities to encourage public transit ridership and awareness.

Getting folks on the same page in San Diego

In T4A’s work with the San Diego region, AARP asked us to help with more general education on Complete Streets. With many engaged advocates ready to work on this issue, AARP planned an educational series of workshops to activate local partners and agencies to advance strong Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies in more jurisdictions in the region. Staff from our Thriving Communities team were able to provide level-setting information on what makes for a strong Complete Streets policy, while encouraging local jurisdictions to develop policies or improve the ones they already have.

Full blown advocacy in Fort Wayne

Last year, we worked with Fort Wayne, Indiana, doing something very similar to what we did this year with San Diego. Having provided an analysis of Fort Wayne’s Complete Streets resolution, which doesn’t carry the force of law, advocates in Fort Wayne were ready this year to work with their council and a new mayor to get a strong Complete Streets policy adopted. They already had the technical tools to develop a strong policy, but needed help with how to win the political support of the mayor and council, and how best to work with city staff with mixed views about a policy change.

In this case T4America developed an advocacy framework to help local advocates identify the steps toward building power and support for the policy change they sought. This included plans for building relationships with decision-makers, powermapping to identify channels of influence, and recommendations for developing effective messages and communications to undergird the advocacy effort.

Relationships, commitment and power in Georgia

Our project in Georgia this year was a little different than the rest. Our Associate VP for Transportation Steve Davis moderated a panel of leaders convened by AARP Georgia. Getting major leaders talking publicly about the improvements they plan to make in their communities can build their commitment to follow through with their plans and build closer relationships with the advocates who convened them. AARP Georgia has been using this approach to grow the number of cities in the peach state committed to age-friendly policies like Complete Streets, better public transit and housing options.

Beyond transportation

Our parent organization, Smart Growth America, uses transportation and land use strategies to support thriving, healthy communities. As part of our technical assistance projects supported by AARP, our Land Use and Development Director of Research Michael Rodriguez analyzed the affordable housing supply in Hawai’i. The work culminated in direct testimony to the Hawai’i Senate Committee on Housing. Learn more here.

Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s technical assistance offerings include work similar to that described above and much more. If you think we can be of assistance in your community in a way that fits with our mission and yours, and you have a source of funding to support the work, get in touch!

Five for ’25: What to expect on transportation in the new year

January will bring in a new presidential administration and a new Congress for the run-up to the reauthorization of the country’s transportation law in 2026. Though uncertainty prevails as power and leadership shifts in Washington, there are a few things we’re expecting to see in 2025. Here are five:

  1. The status quo trade groups will start producing their (typical) wish lists for the next five-year reauthorization
  2. The trust fund that pays for transportation will inch closer to bankruptcy
  3. Expect policy moves like ending federal funding for transit, or slowing down transit capital spending
  4. Discretionary grant programs will fund different winners
  5. Existing or pending regulations will be repealed or shelved

1. Trade groups will assemble their (typical) wish lists for the 2026 reauthorization

If you can believe it, we’re already nearing the end of the “infrastructure law” passed by Congress in November 2021. The five-year Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) will expire on September 30, 2026, so the incoming Congress will hold hearings and develop a proposal for the bill to replace it. That means that the big-monied machine of trade groups and interest groups, which count on perpetually increasing federal infrastructure dollars, are already spinning up their efforts.

You can already see some of their letters calling for more funding for the same programs and same results. In the new year, the transportation policy/funding “wish lists” will start to emerge from groups spanning the spectrum from old-guard trade groups like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which represents the interests of state DOTs, to groups like the American Highway Users Alliance (founded by GM!), which are primarily interested in building more highways in all places. (Your grandkids can worry about the maintenance.)

AASHTO is already halfway through their timeline for the next reauthorization though one can already predict what they’ll be asking for in the next five year authorization, as it’s changed very little:

  1. More money distributed to state DOTs through guaranteed formula programs
  2. More flexibility to states in how those funds are spent
  3. No requirement to produce any particular outcome — no reward for performing well and certainly no punishment for doing poorly

To be fair, our platform is pretty simple too, but instead of focusing on money, ours is focused on common-sense outcomes that have broad and significant support from the people who depend on our transportation network: Stop expanding at the expense of repair, make safety the actual top priority, and prioritize investing in the transportation we’ve neglected for over 50 years.

Unlike a platform of “give state agencies more taxpayer money without any accountability,” our priorities have broad support with the taxpayers who cover the full cost of this program…which brings us to #2.

2. Without further giveaways from taxpayers, the transportation trust fund will inch closer to insolvency

The most important thing to understand about funding for transportation is that the bedrock idea of “the user pays” for the transportation system through fuel or gasoline taxes has been dead for a long, long time. The federal program currently spends ~$20 billion more per year than the gas tax brings in. Because the gas tax has not changed for more than three decades as the fuel efficiency of vehicles has improved and inflation has reduced purchasing power, the highway “trust fund” has stayed solvent only because we have taken more than $280 billion in extra tax dollars from all Americans since 2008—whether they drive or buy gas or not.

This is why the Congressional Budget Office currently projects that in 2028 the federal government will only bring in enough funding for the Highway Trust Fund to cover a fraction of the transportation program authorized in the IIJA. And it’s why the first thing you’ll hear Congress (and most transportation industry groups) talking about in 2025 won’t be policy, or outcomes, or accomplishing anything specific with this $500B program. Instead, the reverberating refrain will be the need to “find more money.” (We’ll have more on the trust fund in a future post but this short explainer by the Peterson Foundation is a great place to understand the history and where things currently stand. But notice that the cities they list as the most congested are some of the best places.)

The two bookend options for addressing this structural imbalance are:

Take billions more from all taxpayers or rack up debt to prop up a federal program that is failing to move the needle on repairing our crumbling infrastructure, reducing congestion, reducing emissions, and improving safety,

OR

Scale the program down to the size of what the gas tax brings. This second option has been suggested before, including a 2014 proposal by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and 28 Senate Republicans to defund the nation’s transportation system—except for a small interstate maintenance fund—and leave it to states to make up for the lost funding.

3. Transit could face significant cuts (only partially because of the looming insolvency)

About 20 percent of the federal highway trust fund goes to transit each year. This 80/20 split was conceived during the Reagan Administration in the 1980s as part of a compromise to raise the gas tax. To get support, a deal was made to devote a portion of the increase to transit and provide stable support. (Imagine a day when members of Congress and advocates would demand bold change in policy and approach before they supported more funding for the existing program.) This funding split has become the historical practice, supported in a bipartisan fashion over the years. But not always.

When the Republicans controlled the House during the Obama administration in 2012, they proposed addressing a funding shortfall for highways by kicking transit out of the trust fund for what eventually became the MAP-21 two-year authorization law in 2012. T4America organized opposition from an enormous spectrum of more than 600 groups, from chambers of commerce to labor, and the proposal was abandoned in the face of bipartisan opposition when it was clear it would fail on the House floor. (However, MAP-21 was only two years long instead of the usual five because there wasn’t enough support for the additional deficit spending needed to cover a longer bill.)

There certainly could be a similar proposal in the next year, though it’s worth noting that this idea did not resurface during the last Trump administration.

Another possible development is a repeat from the first Trump administration: using their authority to call for needless and repetitive studies or analysis to slow down the process of awarding transit funds, costing local communities millions in delays (all while calling for relaxation of federal community protection regulations to speed highway projects). A different Congress could also certainly decide to cut the funding for expanding or building new transit, which is almost entirely discretionary rather than protected like formula programs.

(This was our progress report on awarded transit funding a year and a half into Trump’s first term—less than a third sent to projects in the pipeline.)

4. Changes to competitive grant programs

Every administration puts their own stamp on discretionary programs by choosing who/where to award them within the criteria created by Congress. For example, during the last Trump admin, the RAISE program shifted toward projects that states could fund but had deprioritized (largely rural road projects and fewer multimodal projects) rather than encouraging more innovative and multimodal projects. This will almost certainly be the case once again.

There has also been some chatter about de-funding some competitive programs in the next Congress, many notable ones are likely to survive as T4America Director Beth Osborne notes in this Q&A with David Zipper from November:

Switching toward highways, Project 2025 proposes terminating competitive grant programs like RAISE that allocate billions of dollars to state and local governments for high-priority projects. How realistic is that?

I don’t think Congress will let the Trump administration get rid of competitive programs, because legislators get so much credit for that spending. Federal formula programs just go to the states, and the states do what they want. But for the competitive grant programs, Congress gets a notification about new awards, and they have three days to do whatever event around them that they wish. Basically, Project 2025 was suggesting that Congress never get credit for federal spending in infrastructure again. Maybe that sounded good to the Heritage Foundation, but there’s a lot of Project 2025 that is divorced from the reality of how anything happens in the real world.

Some are also concerned that grants announced but not locked in by a grant agreement or obligated (meaning legally committed) could be revoked. The Trump Administration might try to do that for grants to projects they don’t support. But to do that, they would have to let the Congressional delegation know that a project they likely announced is now being taken away.

Congress could also look to unobligated funds to pay for the next transportation bill or a tax bill, and this has happened in the past with unspent earmarks. But generally this has occurred only after communities have had many, many years to spend their funding and it has become clear that they are unlikely to get their projects into the ground. One risk is that a Republican Congress decides to defund a program, like the passenger rail program, by saying the funding isn’t moving and needs to be put to a different priority that can use that money now.

5. Administrative actions will stop and change

USDOT has a lot of latitude to create and enforce rules and regulations to improve the effectiveness and safety of the transportation system, so it’s reasonable to expect that many good existing or pending rules will be shelved or reversed.

First, NHTSA’s proposal to create new requirements to finally consider the safety impacts of larger vehicles on people outside of the vehicles is almost certainly not going to be finalized. It will either be pulled completely or weakened. Second, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards which require more efficient vehicles will likely be frozen or even rolled back. (There are already a number of loopholes which allow automakers to trend toward larger, fuel-inefficient trucks and SUVs.)

And third, while companies are currently testing autonomous vehicles with almost no oversight in several states, we could see a resuscitation of the AV Start Act (read our archives here), the industry-led move to codify that practice into law nationwide. That would usher in widespread testing of autonomous vehicles across the country with almost no guardrails to ensure their safety, no requirement to collect and report data on their performance, no notifications to the public about when and where those tests are happening, and no oversight other than the voluntary oversight of the manufacturers and testers.

There will certainly be some negative developments over the next two to four years that we will need to organize and fight. And some hoped for actions that will not come to pass. But anyone who thinks that Republicans seizing control of the presidency and Congress means only a destructive reauthorization in 2026 fails to understand that past few reauthorizations—including the IIJA—that caused plenty of damage were fully supported by the majority of Democrats and how programmatic changes were put in place by the Biden administration over the last 4 years (check out Fueling the Crisis; additional analysis that will be out in the next few weeks). As we said during negotiations over the IIJA, Democrats and Republicans regularly join forces “to undermine their own goals for the sake of ‘bipartisanship,’ consistently passing bills that make U.S. transportation inefficient, expensive, unsafe, unsustainable and in poor condition. They both favor flexibility and deference over accountability for good outcomes and guaranteeing the taxpayer a good return for their investment.”

There will almost certainly be some negative developments ahead but on the whole, expect the same status quo to prevail. Which is not good news either.

Meeting the moment after the 2024 elections

We are heading towards a budgetary cliff on a transportation program that has failed to deliver on every one of its promises, from congestion and emissions reduction to improved safety and access to work. Strong leadership is needed to ensure our transportation system is able to meet the needs of average Americans.

The Biden Administration championed and delivered to us the 2021 surface transportation reauthorization, a massive investment in U.S. transportation that the administration claimed would modernize our infrastructure and address environmental concerns. As we wrote in our report Fueling the Crisis, this law failed to achieve its goals.

Traffic, emissions, and safety for people walking all worsened over the first half of this federal investment, and the next reauthorization will likely face the biggest budgetary cliff the program has ever seen. Before we discuss how to fill the coffers, we need a totally new approach to transportation investment and strong, visionary leadership to help turn these trends around.

The 47th president, Donald J. Trump, fashions himself as a disruptor. The transportation system is in need of disruption, as the current approach has failed the American people for decades. Taxpayers are driving further to accomplish less, and if they are unable to drive, they have few (if any) alternate options for travel.

However, if the president’s idea of disruption is to return us to the 1950s and 60s, his efforts will not be useful or effective. Stripping our transportation system down to the 1956 highway bill is no strategy to modernize our system to meet the needs of the day. Instead, this wasteful approach would only further entrench a system that is already failing to deliver for the American people.

The success of local ballot measures confirms what we have always known: everyday Americans need and desire a transportation system that safely and conveniently gets them where they need to go. Across the nation, voters made their voices heard on traffic safety, state of good repair, and above all, the need for more transportation options. Now, as always, we stand ready to support their goals, and we hope that Congress and the Trump Administration will be ready to do the same.

Voters across America show support for more transportation options

Throughout the United States, various measures for funding transportation improvements were approved, advancing efforts to invest in the rest at the local level.

An electric Central Ohio bus arrives at a stop with a nearby bikeshare station
Columbus, Ohio voters supported funding for improved bus service in the recent election. (Central Ohio Transit Authority)

In addition to the presidential, Senate, and House races that occurred during this tumultuous election cycle, American voters recently decided on a variety of transportation and housing measures for their communities. (See our recent post on success for transit in Nashville here.) No matter the outcome of the federal elections, these measures represent a desire to invest in the rest of our transportation system and secure more travel options. Here are four major highlights from the many measures that were voted for around the country.

Columbus, Ohio

Issue 47 raises the sales tax for the Central Ohio Transportation Authority (COTA) from 0.5% to 1% in order to fund LinkUs. The plan calls for 45% more bus service, the creation of five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines to create faster and more efficient bus service. This includes dedicated lanes, priority at signals, and 14 new bus routes. The plan would also provide eight new COTA//Plus zones, which provide subsidized rideshare in neighborhoods of Columbus without bus service.

Money from the new sales tax will also be used for pedestrian infrastructure to support walkable neighborhoods near the new transit lines. LinkUs will create opportunity and access for Columbus, which is expected to grow to over three million residents by 2050.

Durham, North Carolina

The Durham Streets and Sidewalk Measure authorizes the city to issue $115 million in bonds for street and sidewalk projects. This money will be used in a variety of projects, such as adding 12.4 miles of sidewalk, repaving an estimated 100 miles of streetscape, and continuing an ongoing project to pave the remaining 10.5 miles of unpaved streets in Durham. The success of this measure shows that voters in cities like Durham understand that fixing it first is vital to support a well-functioning transportation network.

A yellow line metro train arrives at an underground station
WMATA Yellow Line at L’Enfant Plaza Station. (Photo by author: Maxwell Reinisch, Transportation for America)

Fairfax County and Arlington County, Virginia

Both the Fairfax County and Arlington County transportation bond measures provide millions of dollars of bonds for public transit. Fairfax County provided $180 million in bonds for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to assist with capital costs of acquiring land for transportation facilities, new train cars, and more. Arlington County also provided $72 million in bonds, including $44.3 million in funds for WMATA capital improvements, $22 million for improving local streets, and $1.5 million for sidewalk and curb maintenance, and $1.3 million for street lighting and miscellaneous transportation projects.

WMATA has made great strides in recovering ridership since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these funds will allow WMATA to keep providing frequent, reliable service throughout DC and its surrounding counties.

Denver, Colorado and surrounding counties

Measure 7A allows the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) to collect and reinvest revenue from sales tax above the originally approved levels in 1999. Removing the limits from decades prior allows the RTD to continue to improve service for the Denver Metropolitan Area for the three million residents in Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Jefferson Counties as well as portions of Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Weld Counties, which rely on RTD’s bus, light rail, and regional rail lines.

Why it matters

Municipalities around the country voted to invest in the rest in this last election, including funding for a more balanced transportation system that designs streets for safety over the speed of private automobiles.

While not every transit or transportation investment measure was passed, the majority were approved by voters. And where transportation measures failed, like in Charleston County’s Special Sales and Use Tax ballot measure, voters rejected funding for projects that would have gone to a highway expansion and negatively impacted the local environment.

It is important to acknowledge the progress that forward thinking communities in the country have made towards making our transportation system more equitable and sustainable for everyone. When determining how to support our nation’s transportation system, we hope that the incoming administration takes note of these trends.

Three transportation policy recommendations for state legislators and governors

As new and returning governors and legislators prepare to take office, Transportation for America urges them to consider key transportation policy recommendations in this transition memo.

Come January, thousands of new and returning elected officials across the country will return to legislative and executive offices, with a task to represent their constituents and make responsible decisions. If they want to ensure they get transportation right, we have three major recommendations to help newly elected and returning governors and state legislators ensure that communities have access to a safe, sustainable, and well-connected transportation system.

Fix it first

Despite major infusions of federal funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, states are still not prioritizing responsible management of their transportation assets. We are falling behind when it comes to maintaining the condition of our roadways, perpetuating an expensive backlog of roads in poor condition that will cost significantly more to repair in the future. As a result, drivers are forced to travel over miles of deteriorating bridges and highways, which can decrease fuel efficiency, damage their vehicles, and expose them to increased safety hazards. 

To prevent this problem from worsening, states need to assess whether they have sufficient funding to maintain any new infrastructure they plan to build while simultaneously being able to make progress on existing infrastructure. Setting and implementing aggressive repair goals, as well as publicly tracking them, creates visibility for constituents and bolsters the case for increasing funding for repair. The pressure to build more highways is strong and may sound more glamorous than maintenance, but an approach that values fixing what we have will deliver on high standards of repair, and key social, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Build more transit and more housing near it

Public transportation offers numerous benefits to communities, from saving hundreds of dollars a month by not having to maintain a private vehicle, to expanding economic growth for localities. Proper investments in transit can reap these benefits and more through creating more livable and efficient communities. However, states have often left the responsibility of managing transit services to local governments, creating an imbalanced approach to transit planning and spending. State-level funding for transit services is just as imperative as it is to building out highway systems, and should be treated as such.

The benefits of public transit can be further enhanced when housing access for all incomes is built near transit hubs. This allows individuals the opportunity to live in well-connected communities without the burden of owning a car. Current approaches to zoning encourage building single-family homes rather than allowing developers to respond to the market demand. States can address this by updating zoning codes to allow cities and developers to respond to market demand and build more housing near transit, rather than according to a decades-old zoning ordinance.

Build Complete Streets in all communities

We are in the midst of an alarming increase in pedestrian fatalities, with the number of people who are struck and killed or injured while driving reaching record highs in 2022. This epidemic continues to worsen because our nation’s streets are designed to move cars quickly, which comes at the expense of keeping people safe. Complete Streets offers an alternative approach to planning, building, and maintaining streets that provides safe access for all users, including pedestrians, motorists, bicyclists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities. This approach enables greater access for communities and increases economic activity, all while avoiding the costs associated with traumatic roadway crashes.

State DOTs can create and adopt Complete Streets policies that are designed to respond to your community’s unique needs and dedicate funding, staff resources, and accountability measures for its implementation. Historically, states have considered active transportation initiatives as local issues. Yet some of the most dangerous roads for walking and biking are owned and managed by state DOTs. State leadership in designing, funding, and maintaining active transportation infrastructure can make a big difference for improved safety and mobility outcomes.

While these recommendations stand on their own as common sense policy, it’s important that your politicians know that these policies are supported by you, their constituents. That’s why we strongly encourage you to share our transition memo yourself with your newly elected and re-elected officials. Doing so helps ensure that they know what matters most and how they could make sure their offices’ transportation policy would have the greatest impact for your community.

If you’re a new or returning legislator, we encourage you to review and share our recommendations to guide state transportation efforts memo.

 

A pause for TransportationCamp DC

backs of people at tcamp sticking sheets of paper with session proposals on the board

After careful consideration, Transportation for America is announcing that we have decided to pause TransportationCamp DC this coming January. For years, we’ve enjoyed hosting the event and particularly enjoyed bringing together all of the dedicated transportation leaders and advocates to share ideas, shape the future of mobility, and tackle pressing challenges like emissions reduction and street safety.

While it was a hard decision, it ultimately came down to two things: timing and resources. With the New Year’s Holiday falling on the Wednesday before TCamp, there’s not sufficient time for our staff to conduct the intense preparations that make this event so successful. Additionally, hosting the event requires significant funding and venue flexibility, which have been harder to secure in recent years, and this year in particular.

We understand that this year’s pause may be disappointing, but it offers a chance to reimagine how we can sustain the “unconference” in Washington, DC. If you or your organization would like to support future TransportationCamps through sponsorship or other contributions, we’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for being part of the TransportationCamp community. We look forward to working together to advance the conversations and new ideas that make this event so special.

We’ll see you soon!
Transportation for America

New tool to visualize transportation emissions—and how much we have left

A screenshot of a tool looking at the budgeted amount of GHG emissions through the lens of Business as Usual, Vehicle miles traveled reduction, and EV adoption Percentiles

Transportation’s role in emissions

According to the EPA, transportation was responsible for more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than any other sector of the economy in 2022—more than the agriculture, commercial, and residential sectors combined. Light-duty vehicles, such as the cars we use for daily trips, are responsible for 57 percent of these emissions—over 660 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent annually.

We have a finite amount of CO2 to emit to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and if the transportation sector continues to produce emissions at our current rate, even as we push for electric vehicle adoption, the damage will have already been done. 

Where we stand: The carbon countdown

When looking exclusively at the transportation sector, a conservative estimate suggests that as of 2020, only 26,000 million tonnes of CO2 emissions remain if we are to stay within 1.5°C of warming. Our new tool illustrates that if we continue to proceed with a business-as-usual (BAU) approach, we will exceed our budgeted transportation emissions by 2041—or by 2044, even with 50 percent EV adoption.

CO2 emissions from transportation must not exceed available limits. If we exceed our carbon budget at any point—even if the US ultimately achieves net-zero emissions—we will lock in global warming beyond 1.5°C, making future mitigation efforts moot. The consequences of delay will be felt for generations.

We can only realistically avert the worst effects by achieving the lofty goals of 1) achieving 100 percent EV adoption by 2040 or 2) getting halfway to 100% EV adoption while cutting people’s vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in half per capita, which will we reduce emissions enough to prevent catastrophic warming.

Check out the tool

This tool looks at scenarios exploring expected emissions and when the transportation sector will meet and surpass no-turning-back levels for 1.5°C of warming, even with different levels of VMT-reduction and electric vehicle adoption. 

Our tool uses a business-as-usual model to evaluate when we’ll run out of emissions. Our new report, Fueling the Crisis, finds that transportation projects funded by the 2021 infrastructure law are expected to increase emissions by an additional 77 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions over what would have occurred without these investments due to VMT-increasing projects—further locking us into a trajectory that exceeds out carbon budget. 

Transportation is responsible for more GHG emissions than any other sector of the economy. Why don’t we start acting like it? 

For many, the only answer to reducing transportation emissions has been to transition to electric vehicles—but continue to invest in a system that requires more driving and more vehicles to reach essential needs. The US government set aside $7.5 billion of funds from the IIJA to develop EV charging infrastructure (a fraction of what has already been spent on emissions-increasing projects), and the Inflation Reduction Act has created dozens of tax credits and programs to help support the creation of a competitive electric automotive industry to compete with Chinese manufacturers who have already mastered cheap EVs at scale. 

Electrifying the vehicle fleet is essential to decarbonizing the transportation system. But it is insufficient. Even as we have seen support from governments and an industry committed to the change, the average vehicle on the road today is over a decade old and increasing in age. Many combustion engine vehicles, which made up 84 percent of vehicles sold in 2023, will, by all indications, be on the road well into the 2040s.

If we electrify on time, but in the meantime, people continue to drive further, our transportation emissions will rise too quickly, and we will still exceed our carbon budget. And we’re far from on track currently: the EV transition appears to be taking longer than hoped and the transportation system we are building will force people to drive more often and for longer trips than ever before.

The way forward

To decarbonize transportation, we need aggressive EV adoption and investments in walking, biking, and transit infrastructure.

The main barrier to solving this issue is not fiscal but political, driven by leaders and bureaucrats whose imaginations have been limited by unrealistic models, unscientific standards, and outdated assumptions about people. With the IIJA set to expire in 2026 and the next transportation reauthorization facing a funding crisis, it is essential that our nation’s leaders modernize the approach to funding transportation projects.

Thank you to the Rocky Mountain Institute for their support of the tool, which pulls assumptions from RMI’s Smarter MODES calculator. Their calculator’s methodology can be found here.

Perseverance pays off for Nashville

A purple WeGo Nashville bus travels down a city street

After well over a decade of effort, fast-growing Nashville finally passed a transit funding referendum, proving that patience, perseverance and learning from mistakes leads to success.

A public bus in Nashville, TN (WeGo Transit)

The November 2024 elections will leave a lot to unpack in the coming weeks and months. So it’s understandable that you might have missed that Nashville’s $3.1 billion “Choose How You Move” transit referendum passed resoundingly on Tuesday with 66 percent support. This half-cent sales tax increase for consolidated Nashville-Davidson County will fund bus rapid transit expansion, transit service and the construction of 86 miles of sidewalk, as well as safety improvements and Nashville’s first opportunity to meaningfully invest in smart traffic signals.

Nashville’s success comes after many years of work and a previous loss at the ballot box.

Back in 2015, Transportation for America (alongside TransitCenter) led a Transportation Innovation Academy with leaders from Indianapolis, Raleigh and Nashville to share knowledge, visit cities with inspiring success stories, and help develop the local leadership to advance their transportation and transit plans. Key business leaders from each region participated, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

Both Indianapolis and Raleigh went on to pass transit funding measures in 2016. But Nashville’s first attempt—the “Let’s Move Nashville” referendum—failed hard in May of 2018, with 64 percent opposition. TransitCenter’s in-depth analysis of the ballot measure’s failure identified several key factors: The measure was developed in an insular fashion within the mayor’s office without broad community input, rushed forward without solid plans or robust public engagement, took African American support for granted, and failed to prioritize improving the city’s limited bus service.

This time was different!

Strong leadership and a good plan

Mayor Freddie O’Connell took ownership and took the lead, developing a plan that distributes benefits across the county. This included an emphasis on bus service that could deliver more transit to more neighborhoods, and synergistic improvements such as sidewalk infill, traffic signal upgrades and safety improvements that directly benefit non-transit riders.

Passengers in a shaded bus stop board the bus in Nashville, which is driving in a designated lane
Passengers make use of public transit in Nashville (Choose How You Move)

A large, diverse coalition of support

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, a Transportation for America member, was a leading supporter just as they were in 2018. “This significant vote represents decades of work and is a triumph for Nashville’s future,” said Ralph Schulz, President and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. “Mayor Freddie O’Connell deserves a great deal of credit for building a broad coalition of partners and developing a plan that people could get behind. With this investment, the Nashville region is now prepared to better capitalize on the opportunities it can provide its residents.”

The Chamber was joined by leading community groups. Supporters included the Urban League of Middle Tennessee, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH), and Shift Nashville, a coalition of three leading voices on racial justice, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Equity Alliance and Stand Up Nashville, announced their strong support for the measure in August.

In the campaign to win the ballot measure, the only substantive opposition was from a small anti-tax group “Committee to Stop an UnFair Tax.” This was in contrast to the 2018 measure, which had significant opposition from local and national conservative groups, as well as the Black faith community, who weren’t engaged on the substance of the plan nor brought into the process early enough. The campaign’s catchy but simple core message of “sidewalks, signals, service and safety” helped convey the broad benefits of the measure.

“For the first time in our city’s history, we will have dedicated revenue for transportation improvements, and that’s going to allow us to finally chip away at our traffic and cost of living issues,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “We all deserve more time with our friends and family and less time just trying to get to them. Throughout this process, Nashvillians have been clear. They want to be able to get around the city we all love more easily and more conveniently.”

More good news

The money that will result from this successful ballot measure is paired with some encouraging policy developments in the city. Mayor O’Connell issued an executive order on Complete Streets and the city has adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan that will guide investments. T4America’s sister program at Smart Growth America, the National Complete Streets Coalition, has been working with Nashville’s department of transportation to train their staff and others on Complete Streets and Vision Zero implementation. Earlier this year, Nashville and the Tennessee Department of Transportation participated in Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academy, during which they developed quick-build demonstration projects to improve street safety while strengthening their approach to community partnerships.

Nashville is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, but with infrequent and unreliable transit service and scores of city streets lacking sidewalks entirely, their approach to transportation has been stuck in the past. Voters were ready to do something. And on Tuesday, patience, perseverance and learning from past mistakes paid off.

Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

People add art to sidewalks along a quick build demonstration project complete with a flex post delineated bike lane and clearly marked crosswalk

It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

People add art to sidewalks along a quick build demonstration project complete with a flex post delineated bike lane and clearly marked crosswalk
A quick-build demonstration project in Chattanooga, TN, completed as part of Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academies.

Quick-build demonstration projects are temporary installations to test new street design improvements that improve safety and accessibility. Here are three reasons why you, your elected leaders, and your transportation agency should have them as a tool in your arsenal:

1. Improve safety quickly in the most dangerous places

If elected leaders or transportation agencies are truly committed to safety, they must consider ways to improve immediately.

Transportation in this country often moves at a snail’s pace. Between planning, community engagement, and construction, adding safe infrastructure can take years. But that can leave dangerous conditions unchanged for far too long. If the number one goal is safety, and we know where the most dangerous places are, then we should be doing everything possible to fix them as quickly as possible.

As opposed to the years required for many capital projects, quick builds can go up in a matter of a week, addressing pressing issues immediately. While we should plan long-term safety projects, making safety the number one priority means doing everything we can to implement change in the meantime.

2. Cheaply test specific designs, interventions, and materials

Transportation departments are rightfully worried about building things that will be in place for the next 30 years. It’s hard to move concrete once it’s poured. That is precisely why quick builds need to be used more.

While permanent changes to infrastructure may need years to plan, temporary measures that use paint and plastic don’t require the same level of deliberation. A quick build can test out possible designs using building materials that transportation departments already have on hand. The beauty of this is that it allows you to test a concept in real life (at very low cost), get feedback, and make it better. Quick builds can be iterated upon and provide data inputs for future, permanent projects.

Quick builds can also help foster vital partnerships between local transportation departments and state DOTs. The deadliest roads are owned by the states, with 54 percent of pedestrian deaths taking place on these roads. If localities want to design roads for safety and economic activity while a state DOT wants to move cars as quickly as possible, this can lead to friction. Quick builds allow these stakeholders to learn how to work with each other. Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academies put this idea into action in multiple states.

3. Build needed trust for stronger permanent projects

Building highways through neighborhoods and continually ignoring communities has led to a situation in which low-income and minority groups are disproportionately harmed by traffic violence. It takes years to build up trust in places that have been disregarded. Quick builds can help the process of restoring relationships by demonstrating the responsiveness of local agencies, showing that change is possible. If someone is killed in an intersection, swiftly changing the intersection means much more in comparison to filing a potential improvement away in a list of projects years from implementation.

How federal leaders can help

State DOTs look to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for guidance. FHWA has communicated that quick builds are allowed on state-owned roads, but that’s about as far as it goes—leaving state DOTs to do the heavy lifting on figuring out how to implement one in their state. This piecemeal approach means progress can be slow as each state works alone to discover best practices. To help make more quick builds a reality, the FHWA can provide a proactive guide to quick builds on state-owned roads and run training sessions for state DOT employees and FHWA regional offices.

So much of our transportation policy is based on a reactive response to issues. We wait for someone to get killed on a road, the community speaks out, and then the department of transportation (sometimes) acts. Quick-build demonstration projects are excellent ways to change road design today and are an important tool to finally prioritize speed over safety, but the work can’t end there. Quick builds are just the first step in building a safe transportation system. They are templates for a permanent, future change where safety is prioritized over speed.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

    It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

  • Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

    Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

  • Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

    Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

A young man and woman attempt to cross the street on a worn out crosswalk while two cars approach

Ask anyone at a state department of transportation, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

7,522 people were struck and killed while walking in 2022, an average of more than 20 deaths per day. These numbers represent the harsh reality many Americans see on a day-to-day basis: in most places across the U.S., there are few options to travel safely and comfortably outside of a vehicle. When that’s the case, a simple walk to school, work, or the grocery store can mean risking injury or death.

Some of the deadliest roads in the nation are state-owned—often wide, high-speed roadways that place an emphasis on vehicle travel, even as they cut through places where people frequently walk, bike, or roll. However, design changes on these deadly roadways often face pushback from state DOTs—even when those same DOTs claim that safety is their number one priority.

There is a logical disconnect between the way our leaders describe the goals of our roadways and the way our roadways are designed. Despite the stated goal of safety, engineers’ actual top priority is moving cars quickly—as evidenced by measures and models like value of time and level of service.

Years of research have shown that when roads are designed for vehicles to drive as quickly as possible, there are serious consequences for the safety of all other travelers. Yet the same design changes that would improve safety also come up against barrier after barrier to progress.

The change we need from state DOTs

The unfortunate reality is that our traffic engineers have been taught for decades that most problems can be solved with wide, high-speed lanes. Changing that thinking requires a real culture shift, starting at the very top. State DOTs require strong leadership and support to tailor projects to a well-defined problem and evaluate the outcomes of their decisions.

A willingness to rethink old models and reckon with the fact that the go-to solution hasn’t solved many of our transportation problems can go a long way in bringing about a safer travel environment. The good news is that alternative solutions are out there—if state DOTs are willing to give them a try. A select number of state DOTs have already started to implement change by, for example, navigating opportunities to utilize a Complete Streets approach on rural highways or trying out a quick-build demonstration project to boost engagement.

The typical approach to designing our roadways has left safety behind. We can’t curb the danger with more of the same. Going forward, state DOTs will need to think outside of the box to protect everyone traveling on their roads.

Our federal leaders have to be part of the solution

Guidance and regulations from USDOT often set standards that prioritize high-speed vehicle travel, but these same regulations also allow state DOTs to make safer choices if they wish. Unfortunately, practitioners at state DOTs don’t always seem to know they have this flexibility, and even if they are aware, they face additional barriers if they want to use it.

When state DOTs use extra time and effort to overcome these barriers and test out a new safety feature, this gets no notice from the federal government—even if it results in improved safety. In fact, if a state DOT does nothing and allows more people to die on their roadways, that DOT receives the same level of funding and attention as those making effective safety improvements. This creates a system where it is far more practical to maintain the deadly status quo than it is to implement proven safety methods.

Recently, our colleagues at Smart Growth America wrapped up a series of technical assistance projects to build partnerships between local communities and state DOTs and advance safety on state-owned roadways. T4A Director and VP of Transportation and Thriving Communities Beth Osborne reflected on the experience:

We’ve heard through our years of work, including most recently with participants in this program, that state DOT staff often feel left on their own to determine whether a non-traditional safety treatment they may like to try out is permitted by USDOT…even if it has a proven track record of improving safety. There is a great opportunity for federal leaders to work with states, local leaders, and safety and public health partners to foster and support more learning through demonstration projects with proactive new guidance.

For state DOTs to truly prioritize safety over speed, system-wide change is necessary—and they can’t do it alone. USDOT can help by providing affirmative guidance that promotes safety strategies that actually achieve results. Future legislation must also hold states accountable for choosing safety over speed.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

    It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

  • Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

    Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

  • Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

    Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Principle #1: Safety over speed. Any serious effort to reduce deaths on our streets and roads requires slower speeds. Federal funding should require approaches and street designs that put safety first. Cartoon of the grim reaper tipping the scales towards pedestrian deaths while holding a speed limit: 55 sign.

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Principle #1: Safety over speed. Any serious effort to reduce deaths on our streets and roads requires slower speeds. Federal funding should require approaches and street designs that put safety first. Cartoon of the grim reaper tipping the scales towards pedestrian deaths while holding a speed limit: 55 sign.

Transportation in this country is fundamentally broken, creating a dangerous environment for everyone who uses it but especially for those outside of vehicles. The way we’ve built our roadways has transformed what should be easy trips into potentially deadly journeys. Though our cars have more safety features than ever—cameras, lane keep assist, automatic braking—those advancements have only served to protect people within vehicles. They didn’t save any of the 7,522 people killed while walking in 2022. In fact, as cars become safer for people inside the vehicle, they have gotten even larger and more deadly for people outside of them.

The fact of the matter is that fast-moving vehicles present a danger to people walking. We can’t address this danger if we are unwilling to commit to safer speeds.

We can’t do it all

The policies and practices that inform the design of our roadways often serve one primary goal: to move as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible. That negates the experience of everyone walking, biking, and rolling. Yet, if you asked the same people designing our roadways and dictating these policies whether safety is their top priority, they would absolutely say yes. Our approach to road design, reinforced by federal guidance and manuals, continually tries to juggle both speed and safety, when these two goals are fundamentally opposed.

When we try to prioritize both safety and speed, drivers end up receiving competing messages. Current roadway design requires people to drive perfectly while creating an environment that incentivizes risky behavior such as speeding. Safe roadways don’t ask people to slow down. They are designed so that safe speeds are the most intuitive option.

Less talk, more action

USDOT and other agencies have called for safer streets, but federal funding and policies haven’t led to results. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the relatively small amount of money set aside to specifically address safety compared to the much larger amount of money going to build even more dangerous roads.

State departments of transportation are allowed to set safety goals where more people die every year, knowing they will get more funding regardless. Meaningless “safety” targets allow governments to point their fingers and say they’re working on it while building even more deadly roads. The danger is often not addressed until multiple people get hurt. It’s no surprise that the majority of pedestrian deaths occur on federally funded, high-speed state roads.

There are not enough policies to support environments where safe mobility is available for all modes. The Surgeon General called to promote walking and walkable communities and to create a built environment that allows for human connection. The USDOT’s supposed top priority is safety and the Federal Highway Administration has a long-term goal of zero roadway deaths. But there’s no follow through on these statements. We want people to go on walks, and kids to play outside, and for there to be less deaths on the road, but our policies and tax dollars continue to primarily support projects that overlook non-vehicular traffic—at the expense of everyone else. Our transportation system is built on a series of hypocrisies.

If we want a system that moves people without killing them, we need to start putting our money where our mouths are. We need policies that put safety first, placing everyone’s well-being at the center of our roadway design.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

    It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

  • Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

    Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

  • Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

    Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Another hurdle cleared for passenger rail on the Gulf Coast

press release

Today, the Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak, the Port of Mobile, CSX, and Norfolk Southern (NS) signed a $178 million grant agreement to fund necessary construction between Mobile and New Orleans, an important hurdle for passenger rail service to return to the Gulf Coast.

The signed agreement for a $178 million Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant is a critical step that represents 17 years of concerted efforts toward restoring passenger rail on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. This agreement includes funding for station and rail infrastructure improvements along the route in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, all required for service to return.

“Every step towards the return of passenger rail is a victory for the people who call the Gulf Coast home,” said Transportation for America Chair John Robert Smith. “The past two decades of tireless efforts by the Southern Rail Commission and other champions have made it possible for service to come back even better than before, giving people more freedom to choose how they want to travel.”

This announcement coincides with a groundbreaking for passenger rail in Mobile, Alabama with Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and other federal leaders, where these funds will be used toward station siding and an ADA-compliant platform. The CRISI will fund station improvements in Mobile and New Orleans, safety improvements along the route, multimodal connection, and rail line improvements. Once these improvements are made, local leaders will be able to create safe routes and welcoming places for all travelers along the Gulf Coast. We look forward to the ultimate result of these efforts: the return of service.

Progress on the Gulf Coast would not have been possible without Senator Wicker’s leadership in creating CRISI and for his steadfast support for this project for the past decade. In addition, Senators Cochran and Hyde-Smith have dedicated invaluable time and resources to the restoration of service.

Transportation for America supports the Southern Rail Commission to champion the efforts to return service in the Gulf Coast and across the Deep South.

Fix it first in practice

VDOT Crew pulling ditches in a Work Zone on west bound Route 60.

One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away from grand openings and toward more resilient transportation infrastructure?

VDOT Crew pulling ditches in a Work Zone on west bound Route 60.
(D. Allen Covey, VDOT)

The problem

Make no mistake, requiring repair and maintenance before expansion would represent a complete reorientation of our transportation program. While some states certainly do better than others, the majority of them are ignoring or deprioritizing certain maintenance needs in favor of building new roads. And arguably none are creating long-term plans for financing the ongoing maintenance of those new roads or bridges. Which is why every five years, we hear the same rhetoric about why we need a massive increase in federal transportation investment to “fix our crumbling roads and bridges,” and why conditions rarely change. It’s a loop cycle.

A few years ago, before the passage of the 2021 five-year infrastructure law (the IIJA), we heard endless speechifying on Capitol Hill about the decaying infrastructure. Thousands upon thousands of deficient bridges. Bad roads. Unfathomable backlogs of neglected maintenance and repair. But with that historic infusion of infrastructure money in hand from the IIJA, state DOTs and a collection of senators lost their minds that USDOT would even deign to suggest that repair be prioritized first with that money.

It shouldn’t be a revolutionary principle: Federal dollars should not be spent on new roads and bridges if our existing ones are at risk of or already breaking down. The need for this reprioritization primarily stems from the staggering lack of priority that maintenance has historically been given. Instead of fulfilling repairs, our dollars are spent on expansion, resulting in the overwhelming 830 billion-dollar maintenance backlog.

If you have a flat tire, you don’t take a cross-country road trip before getting the tire replaced. We should have the same approach to our transportation infrastructure. In this video, bridges in Fife, Washington and East Providence, Rhode Island had to be closed due to safety concerns after decades of delayed maintenance. The closures reduced traffic flows to local businesses, causing significant concerns amongst local business owners seeing their revenues dip. Delayed maintenance also impacts access to necessary resources, such as healthcare, and can exacerbate damages caused by natural disasters, reducing our resilience to extreme events. On the other hand, investing in repairs holds numerous opportunities to improve quality of life and increase economic growth. If we invested only $1 billion per year into resolving delayed maintenance, an estimated 13,000 direct and indirect jobs would be created.

comic illustration
Illustration produced for T4America by visual artist Jean Wei. IG/@weisanboo

Implementing the principle

To reorient our federal program around repair and maintenance we’ll have to get to the root of the problem: policy, the resistance of state DOTs and their elected leadership to this idea, and a mistaken belief that new roads and lanes are the only viable strategy to reduce congestion, connect people to opportunity, and create economic benefits.

Congress came close in 2020 during the run-up to what eventually became the IIJA. In the House of Representatives, a much stronger and superior five-year reauthorization proposal (the INVEST Act) included an amendment from Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) that would have enshrined our ix-it-first principle into federal transportation policy. The amendment included three small but transformative changes to the bill:

  1. Require a maintenance plan for building new capacity.
  2. Require benefit-cost analyses (BCAs) on new capacity projects.
  3. Include a range of new performance measures in BCAs.

Although small, these changes would have ensured that our federal dollars were spent responsibly, that expansions would not crumble just a few decades after being built and that new capacity projects have considered a wide range of accurately predicted benefits.

Unfortunately, this and some of the other best parts of the superior INVEST Act were removed during negotiations with the Senate to produce the final 2021 Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA). This amendment is only one example that prioritizing maintenance is not an unpopular opinion, but it does happen to be less popular than a ribbon-cutting photo op. If state’s are going to prioritize spending on maintenance, it has to come from the top. As a former Mississippi DOT Commissioner told us a few years ago, left to their own devices, states will continue taking the blank checks to build new things. “If you want us to prioritize maintenance, then you’re going to have to tell us ‘you gotta do it!’”

Replicating the policies in the INVEST Act would be a good starting point, but the maintenance goals can be strengthened through a few other key details. The federal government could create strict requirements on deferred maintenance before states are permitted to utilize that funding for new builds. A strong example of this are transit formula funds, which currently prioritize funding maintenance over expansion. Furthermore, ties to federal dollars would require the federal government to develop stronger tracking methods on how state funds are being spent on maintenance. Additionally, the federal government should embed additional requirements to more accurately define the beneficiaries of expansion projects. Through stronger BCAs, the federal government can ensure that funds are being spent to improve the quality of life of those living in the communities near new projects.

So, why hasn’t this happened yet?

The longstanding myth that expanded roadways improve congestion has been debunked. Furthermore, expansion actually makes traffic worse. This idea is referred to as induced demand, and is an economic term that illustrates how an increased supply in something will make people want and/or use it more.

But most state DOTs still view expansion as the only tool in their toolbox, and are highly resistant to being good stewards if it comes at the expense of long-planned new highways and expansion projects. Shortly after the 2021 release of the IIJA, Federal Highway Administration Deputy Administrator Stephanie Pollack shared a memo gently urging states to prioritize repair over new capacity projects. As noted earlier, congressional reps carrying water for their state DOTs lost their minds at the humble suggestion (no requirement!) that they should prioritize repair. The outcry was so intense that USDOT had to recall the non-binding memo.

This controversy overshadowed the fact that their voters back home actually believe that repair is the best use of infrastructure dollars, as well as the fact that a majority also believe that new roads or lanes either don’t affect congestion or make it worse. (Focus groups we’ve conducted in the past have also shown that voters are shocked to discover that there are no requirements for repair first. Many assume there are.)

Now is the time for our federal government to ensure that our roads and bridges are in a good state of repair before expanding a system with insufficient plans to ensure it will stand the test of time.

It’s Fix It First Week

Click below to access more content related to our second principle for infrastructure investment, Fix it first. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Fix it first in practice

    One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away…

  • We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

    When decision-makers fail to prioritize basic maintenance and repair, everyday Americans pay the price—in increased costs, increased time on the road, and suffering local economies. We can’t keep wasting taxpayer dollars without a clear plan to maintain what we’ve already built.

  • It’s time to stop expanding and start maintaining

    To reshape our transportation system and address staggering maintenance needs, we must prioritize repairing existing infrastructure before expanding our roadways any further.

We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

A pothole filled with caution signs

When decision-makers fail to prioritize basic maintenance and repair, everyday Americans pay the price—in increased costs, increased time on the road, and suffering local economies. We can’t keep wasting taxpayer dollars without a clear plan to maintain what we’ve already built.

A pothole filled with caution signs
(Charlie Vinz, Flickr)

We’ve written a lot about how decision-makers justify spending money on expansions instead of repair, even when we have a $830 billion maintenance backlog on existing highways alone. The idea is that when they add a new lane, they are saving travelers time, primarily by allowing drivers to drive faster. If you’ve been following us for a while, you already know that this logic is fundamentally flawed, but let’s set that aside for a moment.

When we expand roadways at the expense of every other way to travel, we create a transportation system that all but requires owning and driving a personal vehicle for essential trips like going to work, school, or the grocery store. When we then fail to maintain those same roads and bridges, we see travel delays in the form of detours and slowed traffic—delays people must suffer through, because they have no other option.

Because the full transportation system is connected, when one intersection is rendered impassable due to poor maintenance, anyone traveling on the roadways around it can experience disruptions, even if those roads are in perfect condition. If time is money (as transportation officials like to believe), this is reason in itself to invest in more transportation options and maintain our existing infrastructure.

It gets worse

Infrastructure failures also have economic ripple effects. When bridges are closed due to maintenance concerns, changed routes can impact local businesses. Bridge collapses can cost local economies millions and disrupt national supply chains.

This doesn’t even factor in that every dollar we spend on expansion adds to our overall maintenance deficit, as new lanes and bridges have maintenance needs as well. And thanks to induced demand, new lanes often lead to more driving, which leads to even more wear and tear on our roads. These costs, too, will eventually be shouldered by taxpayers.

There are also real, physical costs to poorly maintained roads and bridges. When you don’t maintain the roof of your house, you end up with even more costs as water damages the interior. It’s the same with roads and bridges. Water percolates through cracked and potholed surface pavement leading to worse damage, leading to expensive rebuilds that could have been averted with proper resurfacing and minor repairs. Bridges that aren’t regularly cleaned, sealed and repainted have shorter lifespans leading to more frequent bridge replacements that are very expensive.

Costs accumulate for travelers as well. Driving over potholes risks damage to personal vehicles, which the city and state likely won’t pay. If pavement is in poor condition, risk of crashes can increase. And then there is the physical risk of driving over a poorly maintained bridge, hoping that it won’t collapse. When the Fern Hollow Bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh in 2022 due to lack of maintenance, a bus and six passenger vehicles fell with it, leading to multiple injuries. When a structurally deficient I-35 bridge collapsed in Minneapolis in 2007, 13 people died and 145 more were injured.

You could put it this way: The maintenance costs state and local decision-makers fail to address are all eventually passed on to everyday Americans—to travelers, local business owners, and workers. The costs accumulate in the form of lost time, lost income, damage to personal vehicles, and increased risk of injury. They turn into even more maintenance expenses and higher taxes down the line.

When taxpayer dollars aren’t spent responsibly, we all pay for it, over and over again.

We don’t have the money for this

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was a historic investment in our nation’s infrastructure, but without a requirement to fix it first, a substantial portion of those funds went to more roadway expansions without any plan to maintain the roads we’ve already built. The environmental impact alone of these expansions will likely lead to even more maintenance needs in the future.

It’s unlikely we’ll see an investment like that again any time soon, which makes our maintenance needs even more concerning. In the next federal infrastructure investment, congressional leaders need to make sure that taxpayer money gets spent wisely. We simply can’t afford to keep this up.

It’s Fix It First Week

Click below to access more content related to our second principle for infrastructure investment, Fix it first. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Fix it first in practice

    One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away…

  • We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

    When decision-makers fail to prioritize basic maintenance and repair, everyday Americans pay the price—in increased costs, increased time on the road, and suffering local economies. We can’t keep wasting taxpayer dollars without a clear plan to maintain what we’ve already built.

  • It’s time to stop expanding and start maintaining

    To reshape our transportation system and address staggering maintenance needs, we must prioritize repairing existing infrastructure before expanding our roadways any further.

It’s time to stop expanding and start maintaining

Principle #2: Fix it first. If your house has a leaky roof, you fix that before remodeling your kitchen. the federal transportation program should do the same and prioritize existing maintenance needs ahead of building new things which require decades of additional repair costs. Cartoon of winding highways eating up a U.S. dollar

To reshape our transportation system and address staggering maintenance needs, we must prioritize repairing existing infrastructure before expanding our roadways any further.

Principle #2: Fix it first. If your house has a leaky roof, you fix that before remodeling your kitchen. the federal transportation program should do the same and prioritize existing maintenance needs ahead of building new things which require decades of additional repair costs. Cartoon of winding highways eating up a U.S. dollar

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided an unprecedented level of funding for U.S. infrastructure, so why are our roads and bridges still deteriorating?

Despite a requirement for transit systems to maintain a state of good repair, there is no such requirement for our bridges and highways. As a result, decision-makers continue to use taxpayer dollars to fund new lanes rather than repair existing ones.

This wasteful cycle of expansion and misallocation of resources has created a system with a staggering maintenance deficit and no clear plan to address it. Each new lane has its own maintenance needs, meaning we continue to add to the number of roadways in need of attention. And the intensifying impacts of climate change and extreme weather events, as seen through the above-normal Atlantic hurricane season this year, will create new challenges on all of our infrastructure, further exacerbating our maintenance and investment needs.

A negative return on investment

Transportation agencies use models to predict future traffic and plan the roadway system accordingly. For decades, they’ve used these models to justify costly highway expansions, claiming that expansions are needed to help relieve traffic congestion. Yet billions of dollars have been spent on this strategy, and traffic has only gotten worse. With no requirement to revisit and update these models, we continue to throw our dollars at a solution that simply doesn’t work.

Our ever-expanding roads widen community divides, costing Americans more in travel time, especially if they don’t travel by car. They worsen traffic, meaning Americans spend more time in traffic than before. And low-income communities face the greatest burden, as they are more likely to be located near wide, dangerous roadways and also least likely to have their maintenance needs met.

Americans want to fix it first

Americans have caught on to the congestion con, as 82 percent of voters don’t believe that highway expansions reduce traffic. The most popular long-term solution to reducing traffic in U.S. communities is repairing existing roads—not building new ones.

We need to stop borrowing against the future and instead adopt an approach that values fixing what we have before adding to the system. Prioritizing “fix-it-first” principles would reorient our transportation program to emphasize addressing repair needs before creating new maintenance liabilities. This approach not only begins chipping away at our maintenance backlog, but produces more jobs, enhances safety, and brings roads to an improved state of repair in rural, urban, and suburban communities alike.

The last two decades have proven that pouring money into the same flawed system is failing to make it any better. Delaying investments in repair means that we will only increase the costs of our maintenance needs in the long-run. We cannot afford to continue the status quo. With the next transportation reauthorization bill looming, it is necessary for our federal funding to be focused on achieving a state of good repair and delivering on better economic, environmental, and social outcomes for our communities.

It’s Fix It First Week

Click below to access more content related to our second principle for infrastructure investment, Fix it first. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Fix it first in practice

    One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away…

  • We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

    When decision-makers fail to prioritize basic maintenance and repair, everyday Americans pay the price—in increased costs, increased time on the road, and suffering local economies. We can’t keep wasting taxpayer dollars without a clear plan to maintain what we’ve already built.

  • It’s time to stop expanding and start maintaining

    To reshape our transportation system and address staggering maintenance needs, we must prioritize repairing existing infrastructure before expanding our roadways any further.

Four ways our federal leaders can invest in the rest

Photograph of a street facing the U.S. Capitol with bike lanes down the middle and pedestrians utilizing a crosswalk

While we might have the most extensive highway infrastructure in the world, the U.S. is delivering pitifully poor results compared to our peers when it comes to cost, efficiency, emissions, and safety. What can Congress and USDOT do to invest in the rest?

Under federal transportation policy, funding for highways greatly outpaces transit. Worse, it is hard to overstate how little of total funding has been allocated to building sidewalks and bike routes. For Americans who are unable to drive or lack regular access to a car, the lack of alternative options has very real consequences. In addition, when we fail to invest in opportunities to walk, bike, and take public transit, communities lose out on the wide-scale benefits these options provide. Multimodal transportation investments that make transit and walking more practical options for people promote ecologically and fiscally sustainable options for economic development.

Our system today costs us much more than we think, with poor outcomes for all users, including public health and climate outcomes, which have a disproportionate impact on Black and low-income communities historically marginalized from transportation decision-making. We continue to invest in road capacity expansions as our go-to strategy to alleviate congestion or drive economic growth, despite proof that this strategy does not work. As a result, cities remain locked in a Sisyphean strategy that continues to leave us stuck in traffic, even after COVID-19, with more remote work options than ever.

A bar chart compares transit funding with highway funding in federal investments from 1991 to 2021. In every bill except the 2021 ARP that only funded transit ($31B), highway spending dwarfs transit spending, with the largest discrepancy appearing in the IIJA ($432B for highways and $109B for transit). Cumulative spending since 1991 is also significantly higher for highways than transit, with cumulative spending by 2021 reaching $1413B for highways and $359B for transit.
Across recent major bills, federal investment in highway programs has vastly outpaced investments in transit.

Instead of continuing oversized investments in the bloated federal highway program that fail to deliver results, the next transportation reauthorization bill needs to invest in the rest to build a world-class, multimodal transportation system. Here are some steps Congress and USDOT can take to get started.

1. Fix the data

We need quality data to make quality decisions. Transportation generates plenty of opportunities to collect data, from vehicular speed and throughput to how many miles of bike lane are being built. However, ensuring data quality matters much more than raw quantity of measures alone. While we have plenty of data-oriented solutions and measures to advance and plan specific transportation projects, the data underlying our system is full of holes.

Right now, it’s difficult for policymakers and advocates to determine how we are spending our money and to identify the actual effects of spending trends. Critical performance measure data tracked by the Federal Highway Administration can take years to update or be presented incomplete, missing data entirely. But even quality data is insufficient when we interpret it through the same old flawed processes that take us to the same old conclusions that lead us to the same bad outcomes.

We need better information to make better decisions at the federal, state, and local levels. Practitioners should have access to tools that effectively model and account for induced demand, land use changes, greenhouse gasses, and access to jobs and services in ways that can inform investment decisions away from strategies that have not worked in the past. Current and planned transportation investments should be reported on a more standardized basis in order for state advocates to understand where their funds are actually going.

2. Better utilize federal programs

The transformative investment levels required to provide a world class transportation system won’t be met with small, individual discretionary grant programs alone. The real workhorses of the federal transportation program—the Surface Transportation Block Grant and National Highway Performance Program—often provide a significant portion of federal funds for states to invest how they see fit, which almost always means building more roads. Spending on new road capacity is delivering diminishing returns and should be rededicated to opportunities to take public transit or walk, bike, and roll.

Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), there are many programs available to create more transportation options. However, finding and applying for these funds can be a strain on communities. Congress should consider consolidating the number of programs and expanding the size of smaller programs that provide funding access for local communities to address local safety, access, and resilience priorities. In implementing these federal programs, USDOT should streamline grant applications for smaller localities and jurisdictions while continuing to provide specialized assistance and relevant application information for lower resourced communities.

3. Fund transit operations, and use funding to boost frequency

When properly supported, transit provides immense value to communities and users from all walks of life. Unfortunately, transit has received significantly less support over the years compared to highway projects.

In order to unlock the transformative economic, climate, and equity benefits that transit can bring to a region, transit service needs to be frequent and provide access to jobs and services. We can do this by helping to fund transit operations and structuring federal grant programs to provide a pathway for transit agencies to reliably increase service and frequency to get people where they need to go.

Pairing the above with walkable, denser development around transit and a method to raise revenues that captures the value transit brings to a region could help advance investments in building out our transit systems, making them even more valuable resources.

4. Build out the passenger rail network

The IIJA is proving to be a launchpad for a passenger rail revival in the United States. There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way. However, as projects develop, there’s still much more work to be done and it takes a long time to bring a train up to top speed. If we want to build off our successes, reauthorization should ensure that we don’t stop building our rail network commitments now. Continuing our investments in national connectivity, and service is the best path forward to a strong national rail system. Learn more about how federal leaders can help advance passenger rail here.

The stakes

Congress and USDOT can play a major role in supporting a multimodal, world-class transportation system. Providing a floor for consistent investment in transit and active transportation infrastructure will be vital in ensuring that every American can reach their destinations safely, conveniently, and efficiently.

It’s Invest in the Rest Week

Click below to access more content related to our third principle for infrastructure investment, Invest in the Rest. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Four ways our federal leaders can invest in the rest

    While we might have the most extensive highway infrastructure in the world, our system is delivering pitifully poor results compared to our peers when it comes to cost, efficiency, emissions, and safety. What can Congress and USDOT do to invest in the rest?

  • Week Without Driving showcases the need to invest in the rest

    Last week, Transportation for America joined organizations and advocates nationwide in the Week Without Driving challenge. During this week, all Americans, including transportation practitioners and policymakers, are encouraged to travel without a car, allowing them to experience local barriers to walking, biking, and taking public transit firsthand.

  • Time to tip the scales in favor of more transportation options

    For decades, federal highway funding and funding for all other types of transportation (public transit, opportunities to walk and bike) have been severely unbalanced. In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pedestrian deaths, and traffic, the Department of Transportation must invest in more transportation alternatives.