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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 Existing or pending regulations will be repealed or shelved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.

T4A Director Beth Osborne sets the record straight on federal regulation & oversight

A woman with shoulder-length dark hair wearing glasses and a maroon top speaks into a microphone. Behind her are wooden benches and a yellow wall

In testimony to the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, Beth Osborne explained how our current approach to transportation is failing average Americans and what steps need to be taken to build a system that responds to taxpayer needs.

A woman with shoulder-length dark hair wearing glasses and a maroon top speaks into a microphone. Behind her are wooden benches and a yellow wall
Beth Osborne addresses the House T&I Committee on July 24, 2024.

Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne was invited to speak before the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee today during a hearing on the United States Department of Transportation’s regulatory and administrative agenda. In her testimony, she highlighted that current federal investments are failing to achieve their intended results, arguing for stronger accountability for the American taxpayer.

“The point is that federal spending and what we get for it is not regulated nor is there much oversight. There is very little transparency into where funding is allocated and there is rarely a report on whether a project delivered any of the benefits that were promised.”

—Beth Osborne

She also noted that the few regulations that are in place are slowing innovation, particularly for safe streets. Smart Growth America’s Dangerous by Design report found that pedestrian fatalities reached a 40-year high in 2022, concluding that designing for safety over speed would help save thousands of lives. However, street design engineers at the state and local level regularly cite federal rules and standards as the reason they cannot narrow lane widths, add color in the roadway, or slow traffic speeds.

Every five to seven years, our nation’s leaders funnel more taxpayer dollars into our transportation system, hoping that this time more money for the same old approach will lead to different results. Each and every time, they have been proven wrong. As transportation emissions rise and deaths on our roadways increase, accountability to the American people is long overdue.

Read Beth Osborne’s full testimony here.

Two federal bills for better transit service

The U.S. Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue, with people walking and driving on the road in the foreground

The Moving Transit Forward Act, introduced by Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and John Fetterman (PA), seeks to bolster public transit nationwide. While differing from Representative Hank Johnson’s (GA-4) transit operating bill in the House, both aim to address the urgent need for sustainable transit funding.

The U.S. Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue, with people walking and driving on the road in the foreground
(Adam Michael Szuscik, Unsplash)

Millions of people across the country depend on reliable and consistent public transit to get where they need to go. To provide this service, public transit agencies rely heavily on federal, state, and local funding to maintain their system and improve service provisions. However, while federal funding covers capital expenditures for the construction and acquisition of infrastructure and equipment, the costs of operating the transit system are primarily procured from state and (even more often) local funding sources.

Transit agencies struggle to maintain service levels under this traditional model for operating costs. National lockdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic caused ridership to plummet, exposing the extent of transit operating challenges for agencies. Revenue from fare collection drastically decreased, leaving little funding for transit agencies to cover their operating costs. Combined with rising inflation and stagnating local funding sources, transit agencies are faced with a self-reinforcing downward spiral of decreasing ridership and service cuts. Covid relief funds from the federal government offered temporary relief that prevented massive service cuts but with funding now being exhausted, transit agencies are facing a fiscal cliff due to this unstabling funding. This model creates a system that lacks the necessary resources and support to provide the reliable transportation services that communities need, and deserve.

On May 14, 2024, Senators Chris Van Hollen (MD) and John Fetterman (PA) introduced the Moving Transit Forward Act, with the legislation aiming to bolster public transportation services across the country. The bill aims to supplement the existing operating budgets of transit agencies to provide them with resources to expand routes, increase service frequency, and improve the experience of transit riders.

The Moving Transit Forward Act would create a federal formula funding program under the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to provide additional funding resources for service improvements and safety and security enhancements. This legislation finally represents a Senate bill addressing operating costs, similar to the Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act reintroduced by Representative Hank Johnson (GA-4) in the House in January.

Both the House and Senate bills authorize new federal formula funds for transit operations. However, they have some key differences.

An immediate variation between the two bills is in terms of funding authorization. The House bill specifies authorizing $20 billion per year through fiscal year 2027 whereas the Senate bill does not specify a dollar amount for transit operating. Furthermore, all transit agencies, both rural and urban, are eligible for funding under the House bill, but the Senate bill targets transit agencies within urban areas that have a population of more than 50,000. This discrepancy is likely due to the fact that, unlike urban areas, rural areas are already eligible to use federal funds to cover transit operating costs. However, denying rural areas additional resources to cover operating costs limits their ability to provide frequent and reliable transit service—which is sorely needed, considering that more than 1 million rural Americans do not have access to a car.

Despite these discrepancies, both of the bills demonstrate the necessity of addressing operating costs for transit agencies to ensure that public transit is available, accessible, and affordable for communities, particularly for those that are underserved. As these bills move through their respective chambers, it is crucial that a transit model that supports the vision of reliable transit for all is realized.

The incoming Congress still has plenty of transportation work to do

As the sun sets on the 117th Congress with the bipartisan infrastructure law under their belts, it is up to the 118th Congress to deliver meaningful oversight and leadership on implementing those funds and guide the future of America’s transportation system.

Legislators like Rep. Peter DeFazio (in focus) retired in 2023, turning leadership over to other members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Source: Flickr/Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Democrats

What did the 117th Congress accomplish?

When it comes to transportation policy, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) collectively authorize nearly $700 billion in programs that directly touch America’s transportation industry or play a supporting role. 

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, known as the IIJA or 2021 infrastructure law, provides around $643 billion in new federal funding for a wide range of surface transportation infrastructure projects. (Get everything you need to know on this law here.) Congressional appropriators now decide (each year) how much of the law’s annual funding is allocated to its programs. While parts of the funding are virtually guaranteed by statutory formulas, legislators have some discretion and congressional appropriators are already maintaining the status quo at the expense of needed change.

For example, while the highway formula program received nearly all of its funding commitment (97 percent of the funds promised by the IIJA), other vital programs did not. The Active Transportation Infrastructure investment program would fund pedestrian sidewalks and cycling infrastructure, providing more choices in transportation, but it received $0 of the $200 million committed in the IIJA in fiscal year 2022 (FY22) and only $45 million funded in fiscal year 2023 (FY23). The Amtrak Northeast Corridor also received only 80 percent of what IIJA committed, while the national passenger rail network received only 66 percent of its expected funds.

While it’s good news that transit formula funds were at nearly 100 percent of the IIJA funding commitment, overall transit funding is still too low to keep up with the extensive transit repair backlog or the operational cost needed to fund America’s transit system. 

The Inflation Reduction Act

The IRA’s primary focus is on economic investment and innovation in reducing America’s carbon emissions, focusing on electric vehicles, buses, and other freight trucks. Electrifying our many different vehicle fleets is necessary, but this is not a sufficient step to curb our emissions without other investments in transit and changes to the transportation network overall. (Don’t miss the new report on that very topic from the CHARGE Coalition, of which T4America is a core member.) In this regard, the 117th Congress has failed to ensure a secure and efficient future for American transportation. The IRA’s goals for electrification will only be attainable if other policies are tapped to produce fewer and shorter vehicle trips, and fewer cars on the roads overall due to improved alternative modes of transportation. 

However, the IRA also codified the $3 billion Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, which can be used to cover highways or convert them into boulevards, add bike lanes or sound barriers, provide better connections to transit, build green stormwater infrastructure, and make roadway safety improvements. These programs build on the momentum of past projects that have reconnected communities, like this one in Milwaukee.

Click here to learn more about the IRA.

Transportation work is not over for Congress — far from it

While we now have a long-term authorization in place that shapes the broad contours of funding and policy, the members of the 118th Congress do not have the luxury of checking out on transportation. They have ample opportunities to build upon the previous Congress’s successes—and even improve upon their work and make up for past mistakes. Here’s where they can start:

Even in a divided and polarized House, there could still be opportunities to work together

The 118th Congress was sworn in on January, 7th, 2023 after a slight delay, as House Republicans struggled to cooperate to elect a new Speaker. However, in the compromise to elect Speaker McCarthy, a new House rule was adopted that will allow representatives to debate bills on the House floor before being called to a vote.

Given the realities of the slim majority Republicans possess in the House (eight seats, five of which are held by far-right representatives) analysts believe this rule could provide opportunities for moderate Republicans to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats on key transportation legislation and IIJA appropriations, which will continue to be debated year after year during the IIJA’s five-year lifespan. What gets 100 percent of the funding spelled out in the IIJA, and what gets a reduced share? Congress will decide.

Set better goals, measure progress

Congressional oversight is one of their most important responsibilities. To pass bipartisan legislation, Congress should strive for goal-oriented oversight. For example, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has an important role as a watchdog, and should be regularly asking whether or not this historic infusion of infrastructure funding is actually producing what was promised by their predecessors when it comes to the state of good repair, improving access and mobility, and other goals. Legislators (and the president) made hefty promises what this funding would accomplish, and this Congress should be asking hard questions about where the money is going.

They should also clearly define the transportation problems facing Americans, clearly restate the implementation goals of the federal transportation program, and investigate solutions supported by the programs in the IIJA and IRA. One smart way for Congress to accomplish this is through fact-finding oversight hearings. Fact-finding hearings feature one or more panels of witnesses who are selected for their expertise or their representation of a particular group. Developing goal-oriented policy in this manner could cultivate a collaborative atmosphere in Congress as they pass appropriations during these next two years of the IIJA’s funding lifespan. 

Take advantage of new opportunities

A proposal from Congressman Hank Johnson focuses on allocating funds to the operational budgets of transit systems to improve services and boost ridership. $20 billion provided annually over four years would provide more frequent service on bus and rail lines and prioritize improving service in areas where it is currently subpar, in disadvantaged communities, and in areas of persistent poverty. Funding under this bill would make “substantial improvements to transit service” working towards a more equitable America. 

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding is set to expire in FY23 and should be low-hanging fruit for bipartisan action. While T4America focuses specifically on surface transportation, FAA authorization does present opportunities to integrate America’s airports with their surrounding urban transit, active transportation, and intercity passenger rail systems and leverage other funding provided through the IIJA.   

The bottom line

The next two years of this new Congress will help determine whether or not the historic funds in the IIJA and the IRA result in changes to our deeply embedded car-centric transportation network. 

The ability to capitalize on this moment of inflection depends on the House and Senate’s ability to collaborate and pass bipartisan legislation to meet the needs of the American people. Over the next two years, Congress should work together to increase funding for projects that advance mobility choice (i.e. rail, transit, and active transportation) while also addressing important issues of safety, equity, and reducing emissions. 

T4America statement on the passage of the 2021 infrastructure deal

press release

After Congress’ final passage of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, aka “the infrastructure deal” on Friday, November 5, Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne offered this statement:

“As we have stated before, the transportation portion of the infrastructure bill spends a lot of money but fails to target it to the needs of the day: building strong economic centers, providing equitable access to opportunity, addressing catastrophic climate change, improving safety, or repairing infrastructure in poor condition.

“The administration is confident they can make substantial progress on all of these goals despite those deficiencies. Most states are promising to use the flexibility they fought for to make marked improvements across these priorities. To make that happen, both the administration and the states will need to make major changes to how they approach transportation, but we know they can do it.

“We stand ready to support this important and challenging work. We also encourage everyone— elected leaders, businesses, taxpayers, advocates and the press—to follow their results and hold them to their promises.”

Strides towards Building Back Better the US transportation program

a full bus of commuters

The revised version of the Build Back Better Act preserves $40 billion in important additions that will advance racial equity, address climate change by lowering emissions, and foster community-oriented economic recovery. T4America is encouraged to see these inclusions, but they’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to the much larger infrastructure deal, which doubles down on our dangerous, disconnected, high-speed-vehicle-dominated status quo.

UPDATED 11/8/2021: The infrastructure deal (the IIJA) passed on its own on Friday night (Nov. 5), minus the budget reconciliation act (BBB) detailed below. Read our short statement here and see the updated sections noted below.

a full bus of commuters
Image from Max Pixel

“We are encouraged that the revised Build Back Better Act maintains several important proposals to improve the infrastructure deal by reducing emissions and addressing climate change, improving access to transit service—especially for those who can benefit from it most—and advancing racial equity,” said T4America director Beth Osborne.

“We are encouraged to know that Congress is taking seriously the need to address climate change, equity, and economic recovery. But the $40 billion included here unfortunately won’t be enough to redeem the $645 billion-plus infrastructure bill that will continue to make many of those same problems worse. As we’ve said throughout the second half of this year, the administration has a difficult task ahead to advance their stated goals of repair, safety, climate, equity, and access to jobs and services through these small improvements, while spending historic amounts on unchanged programs that have historically made those issues worse.”

How did we get here? An explainer

The last year has been one of the most complex for those who care about transportation policy, and it’s easy to get lost with all the acronyms and jargon as bills have been introduced and replaced and merged together. Over the past year the House and Senate made respective attempts at writing new five-year transportation bills to replace this year’s expiring FAST Act, with wildly diverging results. 

The House’s five-year INVEST Act “commits to a fix it first approach, prioritizing safety over speed, and connecting people to jobs and essential services—whether they drive or not,” as T4 Director Beth Osborne said in the summer when it passed. It made notable strides to fix past problems ($20 billion for tearing down divisive highways) while taking the vital step to update the underlying programs that are continuing to create those same problems.

The Senate took a different approach, ignoring the INVEST Act and crafting their five-year transportation policy as part of the larger infrastructure bill (the IIJA). Their bill doubled down on the status quo—more money for the same old things—with important but marginal attempts to account for equity, climate, repair, electric vehicle infrastructure, safety, and community connections. The Senate approved that infrastructure bill and sent it to the House for final consideration, leaving the House in the unenviable position of choosing between their INVEST Act or supporting the larger infrastructure bill—one of the president’s key priorities.

UPDATE 11/8/2021: After months of the debate about combining the above infrastructure deal with the budget reconciliation act detailed below (read on for details about that), Congress finally moved on the infrastructure deal alone and approved it on Friday, November 5. This means that everything detailed above has now passed through Congress: the $600+ billion infrastructure deal which also included a five-year reauthorization to replace the expiring FAST Act. Read our short statement about that deal here.

The Build Back Better Act and the modest but notable transportation improvements within it (detailed below) are still awaiting action from Congress. Some other updates have been made to the post below to reflect that only the Build Back Better Act is still up for consideration at this point.[End of update. -Ed]

During the fall, Congress also began considering President Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act through the mechanism known as budget reconciliation to advance funding for all sorts of programs, including transportation and the infrastructure bill. This gave the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee an opening to make additive improvements to the lackluster infrastructure bill (IIJA) included in reconciliation that would focus on climate, equity, transit, and connecting communities.  Here are three notable improvements we urged T&I to include, which were included in the initial version:

  • Affordable Housing Access Program – Provides $10 billion for competitive grants to support access to affordable housing and the enhancement of mobility for residents in disadvantaged communities or neighborhoods, in persistent poverty communities, or for low-income riders generally.
  • Community Climate Incentive Grants – Provides $4 billion towards addressing greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions, specifically $1 billion for state incentives and $3 billion in competitive grant funding for regional and local government entities to pursue carbon and GHG reduction projects.
  • Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants – Provides $4 billion for competitive grants towards improving affordable transportation access via removing transportation barriers, building community connections that promote active and affordable transportation, and community capacity building aimed at assessing community impacts and enhancing public involvement in the decision making process.

Though members of the House were ready to move on this budget reconciliation bill and the infrastructure bill in September, the deal stalled due to opposition in the Senate from Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ), who objected to the reconciliation bill’s top line spending extremely late in the process. 

Where are we now?

In late October, Congress presented a revised and pared-back $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act. We are encouraged to see that the drafters maintained the above three provisions which will significantly contribute towards equity, climate change mitigation, and fostering community connections. 

But the (now approved!) $645-plus billion infrastructure deal (the IIJA) is the elephant in the Build Back Better Act room, and its’ shortcomings dwarf these good and worthy $40 billion improvements. As we said in our statement upon the IIJA’s passage, “the transportation portion of the infrastructure bill spends a lot of money but fails to target it to the needs of the day: building strong economic centers, providing equitable access to opportunity, addressing catastrophic climate change, improving safety, or repairing infrastructure in poor condition.”

It will be critical to build upon the work laid out upon passage of both the IIJA and the Build Back Better Act to make the most of the US transportation program to advance repair, safety, climate, equity, and community connection priorities and hold Congress and the administration accountable to deliver on what they are promising.

Less than 30 days to speak out on transit funding

graphic element

Last weekend, Congress gave themselves until October 31st to pass the infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA) and the budget reconciliation (the Build Back Better Act). With cuts on the way for the Build Back Better Act, it’s more important than ever to raise our voices in support of transit funding.

In the Build Back Better Act, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee allocated funds to key programs that are critical for our nation to create and sustain good-paying jobs, strengthen our global economic competitiveness, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution. At the same time, these provisions will make real progress toward racial, economic, and environmental justice. 

Passing the IIJA without these provisions in the reconciliation bill will leave the nation in a worse state than before—facing rising greenhouse gas emissions and worsened access to jobs and services, especially for communities that need this access most. Even so, Congress is negotiating major cuts to the reconciliation bill that could threaten these programs in the name of an arbitrary bottomline.

The programs we can’t lose

Investing in marginalized communities

  • A $10 billion transit program that includes operations funding and is specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services 
  • A $4 billion program to mitigate negative impacts of transportation on underserved communities

Investing in local communities

  • A $6 billion program that would advance local surface transportation projects

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions 

  • $4 billion in incentive grants for states that show progress toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not only benefitting the environment but the local economy and public health 

Increased funding for rail 

  • $10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, supporting jobs and providing for travel options

The Build Back Better Act increases transit funding by $10 billion, bringing transit spending up to $49 billion. If that number sounds familiar, it’s the amount transit was originally promised by a bipartisan group of Senators—before the Senate stripped out $10 billion without any explanation. 

The funding provided by the Build Back Better Act promotes more local control and is flexible enough to include operating funds—a glaring omission in the IIJA. Adequate funding for transit, transit operations in particular,  is crucial for mobility freedom and access to jobs, education, and community for all users, especially youth, elderly, people with disabilities, and all those unable to access a vehicle.

The Build Back Better Act makes meaningful investments in rebuilding communities harmed by transportation decisions, another area where the IIJA comes up short. Highway construction and suburban sprawl have repeatedly caused the uprooting and marginalizing of communities, particularly BIPOC communities. It is crucial for the  government to facilitate rebuilding and reconnecting our communities. 

The Build Back Better Act is far more serious than the IIJA about taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve infrastructure for all Americans. These are necessary programs that shouldn’t be cut to meet a last-minute spending goal. We encourage you to call your Congressperson and voice your support for these programs in the Build Back Better Act before time runs out.

Transit funds could crack under the pressure of the budget deadline

entrance to the USDOT headquarters

The upcoming continuing resolution to fund the government and avert a shutdown won’t include transportation spending, piling on the pressure to pass the infrastructure deal and budget reconciliation. Congress could end up gutting the reconciliation package to make a deal.

Image by U.S. Department of Transportation

Congress is currently negotiating a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government at current levels and keep things open and functioning through December 3, but, unlike most other CRs, transportation is not in the current CR. So the race is on to pass both the surface transportation reauthorization (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Senate’s infrastructure deal), and the budget reconciliation by the current September 27 deadline set by Congressional Democrats.

If passed, the current CR will fund only the FAA and the FHWA’s emergency fund, no other transportation programs. This means that without reauthorization, normal authorized funding provided to highways, transit, rail and other programs will come to a halt after September 30, even under this CR. Of course, these things will be funded by reauthorization and reconciliation if they pass, but that is not a given. So without the safety net of a CR, Congress must pass reauthorization by September 30 or risk a shutdown of much of US DOT. That date is coming fast, and the United States government has already begun shutdown planning procedures.

Speaker Pelosi’s dual-track approach has tied the fate of reauthorization to that of budget reconciliation. If Congress can pass reconciliation, they will most likely be able to pass reauthorization. But key Senators are debating the budget’s $3.5 trillion funding level, which may mean that in order to get both bills to pass, Congress could cut reconciliation funding for the transit programs we applauded last week.    

For those who wish to improve the nation’s infrastructure, reconciliation is just as important as reauthorization. 

If Congress passes reauthorization without the transportation funding in the budget reconciliation package, they will cut $10 billion in transit funding and remove all operations funding for transit agencies. They will fail to provide direct funding to localities, fail to connect affordable housing to services and amenities, and fail to address the impacts of U.S. transportation policy on communities of color.

As we said when the reauthorization text was released, the bill does not represent any sort of policy shift toward safety or connectivity that our communities so desperately need. In fact, it cements irresponsible highway expansion. The transportation programs included in the budget reconciliation package move this reauthorization in the right direction.

To avoid a shutdown that could cripple transportation projects and to improve the infrastructure deal, reconciliation is just as vital to pass as the deal itself.

A way to improve the infrastructure deal

The transportation programs for the budget reconciliation package would help fill the gaps left by the bipartisan infrastructure deal. 

Close-up of Capitol building
Photo by S Chia on Flickr

Update 9/21: This post was updated to include progress made in the House since its original post date.

Congress’ final infrastructure deal (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) didn’t live up to the original bipartisan package announced with pride by the White House and Senate on June 24, cutting transit funding by $10 billion while almost all other areas matched the original proposal. The House’s budget reconciliation package takes steps to restore this funding, while also going further to provide equitable access to goods and services, improve climate outcomes, and reduce the negative impacts of the transportation system on disadvantaged communities.

The House’s reconciliation package includes a new $10 billion transit program, helping to rectify the $10 billion taken from transit in the final bipartisan infrastructure bill. This funding includes flexibility for operations support, which will be key for transit agencies hit hard by the pandemic. It’s also specifically designed to connect residents of disadvantaged or persistent poverty communities to jobs and essential services. 

Another win for equity: the budget also provides $4 billion for communities negatively impacted by transportation. These funds can be used to improve walkability, reduce the public health impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and improve road safety.

There’s an additional $4 billion for incentive grants for states that reduce GHG emissions significantly or adopt targets to reach zero emissions by 2050. Funding is also included for USDOT to institute a GHG emissions performance measure to help prioritize projects that reduce travel time and emissions. Former President Trump repealed this measure and reinstating it is one of our key tasks for the Biden administration.

To help address needs at a local level, the House added $6 billion to advance local surface transportation projects.

The House also added $10 billion for the planning and development of public high-speed rail projects and $150 million for credit risk premium assistance, making it easier for smaller railroads to access and benefit from these funds. This funding will help improve passenger rail service, making it a more convenient and reliable form of transportation.

We enthusiastically support these programs and encourage you to tell your senator to include them in the final budget reconciliation package.

Why the House and Senate owe transit $10 billion

The Senate’s infrastructure deal came up short on transit in two key ways. The House can address these concerns by restoring the funds cut from transit. More on this in our fact sheet.

Originally, the Senate proposed $49 billion in new transit spending in their infrastructure deal. But without any explanation, the final bill cut transit down  to $39 billion. Reliable, accessible transit will be key to an equitable economic recovery after the pandemic, and there are two key reasons that the funding provided by the Senate is not sufficient and the $10 billion originally promised for transit is returned.

1. It isn’t the amount of funding, it’s the mix

From job creation to mobility, transit provides key benefits to communities, but highways routinely receive far more federal funding than transit. Before the bipartisan infrastructure package passed in the Senate, some policymakers finally started  discussing altering the 80-20 highway-transit split, which provides 80 percent of new funds to highways and 20 percent to transit. Though the House’s INVEST in America Act altered the split to 77-23, when the Senate passed its bipartisan infrastructure bill, the 80-20 split remained in place and transit funding was cut from $49 billion to $39 billion—one of the only programs that was cut when compared to the original proposal.

$39 billion is still a historic investment in terms of funding levels, but it won’t lead to major shifts in transportation outcomes. With the highway program getting equally historic funding levels and the 80-20 split still firmly in place, we can expect the majority of funds to go to highway expansions, which can make transit more difficult to access and use. More funding for everything will just lead to more of the results we have today.

2. Operations funding

New funding for transit will help buy more buses or railcars, but these investments could be rendered useless without proper investment in operations costs. Operations funding pays for drivers and other labor, mechanics, and electricity to run the new buses and lines.

Transit, like other industries during the pandemic, has been put under economic strain due to low ridership cutting into farebox revenues. In the midst of the Great Recession, transit faced a similar situation. New funding paid for brand new buses or railcars at the same time that transit agencies were laying off drivers and cutting service because of the drop in sales taxes and other non-fare revenue sources. The irony is that proper investment in public transit can spur even more economic recovery and job growth compared to other types of spending.

As T4America Director Beth Osborne recently put it, “There’s a lot of money for new buses and updated facilities, and things like that. It still will likely be as dangerous and difficult as ever to reach that facility, but it’ll be real pretty.”

In the budget reconciliation, the House can restore the $10 billion taken from transit and make funds available for operations.

Download the fact sheet about why “Congress and the White House owe transit $10 billion cut in the infrastructure deal.”

Three ways reconciliation can restore funds taken from transit and equity

Nancy Pelosi speaking into a microphone with Chuck Schumer on her right, AFGE behind her
Nancy Pelosi speaking into a microphone with Chuck Schumer on her right, AFGE behind her
Image from Flickr/AFGE

With the bipartisan infrastructure deal approved by the Senate, opportunities to shift long-term transportation policy will shift to the House and to program implementation. The opportunity in the House is through targeted investments via the budget reconciliation bill that will accompany the House infrastructure bill vote.

(UPDATE 8/18: Clarified details on the passage of the Affordable Care Act)

After a strong five-year reauthorization proposal was approved by the House, the Senate transformed their reauthorization offering into a larger bipartisan infrastructure deal, funding everything from broadband to water infrastructure, which passed the Senate last week. This deal, which was crafted and passed in the Senate with the White House’s backing, doubled down on maintaining the status quo in regards to transportation policy, focusing on highway construction and expansion without incorporating maintenance of roads and bridges as the priority, improving transportation safety, and better connecting communities. 

Rep. Peter DeFazio criticized the deal, specifically citing the bill’s treatment of public transportation.

From Washington Post Live

Speaker Nancy Pelosi reportedly refused to approve the Senate’s deal, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act without the Senate first approving a sweeping budget reconciliation bill that focuses on strategic national investments across a broad spectrum of infrastructure concerns, including but not limited to agriculture, environment (air and water), education, first responders, and public health. The Senate granted her wish, passing a budget resolution, kicking off the reconciliation process, and this bill provides an opportunity to invest more in transit funding, including transit operations.

What is budget reconciliation?

As noted in the graphic below, the Senate budget resolution provides key directions to specific committees on both the House and Senate side on how to program the specific budget called for in the resolution. (Budget reconciliation is often used to pass more controversial or partisan legislation. For example, the final Affordable Care Act package resulted from the House passing the Senate’s healthcare bill and then amending it through the reconciliation process. However, reconciliation only happens once each year as part of the annual budget-making process.) The House will return next week, with respective committees deliberating how they will program and craft legislative text to the directives of the Senate’s budget resolution, before cobbling together the final reconciliation bill for passage in both chambers of Congress.

Diagram listing the steps of budget reconciliation
Image from Peter G. Peterson Foundation

As the respective committees in the House and Senate contemplate legislative text for the final reconciliation bill, there are key restrictions for what can be included. Unfortunately, introducing brand new policies or making major policy changes not connected directly to new funding are difficult if not impossible. 

As the graphic illustrates, any legislative text in the final reconciliation must pertain to policy that has budgetary impacts and stays within the programming directions and funding limits of the budget resolution.

Table showing changes that are permitted and not permitted in budget reconciliation
Image from Twitter/ House Budget GOP

As it pertains to transportation, the resolution allocates $60 billion to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to program as they deem prudent, while also adding unspoken pressure not to revisit items called for in the IIJA. The resolution also calls for an additional $30 billion for respective Senate committees focused on surface transportation to program accordingly.

Within those constraints in place for this reconciliation process, T4America has outlined three key investments that need to be made to better connect communities and improve equity and climate outcomes.

1. Increasing public transportation funding levels by $10 billion

The original bipartisan infrastructure framework, agreed to and announced by the President and the Senator’s part of the negotiations in June, called for $49 billion for transit. As the final IIJA was set, transit was the only part of the plan that took a cut (of $10 billion) from that original proposal, down to $39 billion. Less money for transit means greater challenges for transit agencies, for keeping transit running, and making the necessary capital investments, including transit electrification. There is much more that can be done to improve transit, but advocating simply for restoring the agreed funding amount is an easy fix within the limits of the budget resolution.

2. Increasing funding for the reconnecting communities program by $12 billion

President Biden’s American Jobs Plan (AJP) contained approximately $24 billion for reconnecting communities (tearing down highways that separate marginalized communities, reintegrating community mobility and streetscapes). The Senate’s deal slashed that program down to just $1 billion. (The House’s INVEST Act allocated $20 billion.) By restoring at least some of this program’s funding, meaningful progress can be made to reconnect and reinvest in diverse communities across the United States.

3. Increasing funding for zero-emission vehicles and charging infrastructure by $7.5 billion

Currently, transportation is responsible for a significant portion of climate change-inducing emissions, but emerging technologies are making it possible for reliable zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). Meeting the moment with significant investments in ZEVs (especially medium and heavy duty vehicles such as transit, school bus, and municipal fleet vehicles) and their associated charging infrastructure will help drastically curb emissions. This funding would also involve investments in domestic manufacturing to help ramp up capacity and lower costs to deliver on ZEVs and their charging infrastructure.

While Congress is in recess and members are in their home districts, it is a great time for constituents to engage their members on these issues. Share these three simple, key investment priorities for reconciliation with your members of Congress, while explaining what these investments can mean in your local community in regards to jobs, equity, and climate change.

The bipartisan infrastructure deal’s passage: More money for more of the same

Yesterday the Senate passed the bipartisan infrastructure deal, which incorporates the Senate transportation reauthorization in all its good and all its flaws. We outline what’s in it and where to go from here.

an out of service bus drives through an intersection
The White House and Senate’s infrastructure deal says a lot about change, but largely maintains the broken status quo. Photo by BenderTJ on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Mostly lip service for climate and equity

The bipartisan infrastructure deal includes a lot of new spending, but that spending isn’t directed toward outcomes, much less the priorities that the President articulated in The American Jobs Plan. Though this bill mentions safety, climate, and equity often, as it stands, it will fail to produce meaningful shifts. “The White House will soon discover that they’ve dealt themselves a challenging hand in their long-term effort to address climate change and persistent inequities, while kicking the can down a crumbling road that’s likely to stay that way,” T4America director Beth Osborne said in our full statement after Tuesday’s final vote.

Overall, despite all the headlines about the $1.2 trillion total investment, the bulk of the bill’s five-year funding for transportation will be governed by the two reauthorization proposals approved by Senate committees earlier this year and folded into this deal. (Here’s some of what we had to say about the highway title, and the Commerce committee’s rail and safety title. A transit title was never produced by the Banking committee.) 

Some funds ($1 billion) will go to reconnecting communities separated by highways, an important step in undoing the ongoing damage of urban renewal programs. However, these funds are a fraction of the $20 billion originally proposed by the House and are dwarfed by historic increases in highway spending, without any guarantee that future highway expansions won’t separate more communities. (This isn’t just some historic, old problem from the Civil Rights era—it continues today. See I-45 in Houston, I-49 in Shreveport, I-5 in Portland, etc.)

There’s language supporting Complete Streets and vulnerable transit users, but the overall status quo approach to safety will undermine those modest improvements. States are still allowed to shift safety funds for non-safety projects and set annual “safety” targets for increasing numbers of people to die on their roads, with no penalties or accountability for doing so. Competitive funding is offered for states, regions, and local governments, but local leaders still have very little control over the projects and the designs of projects that will be built in their neighborhoods with formula funds.

This bill includes a climate program that many states can opt out of, so long as their population and economy is growing faster than their carbon emissions. It offers funding for electric refueling stations, but a late change diverted one-third of those funds to emissions-producing natural gas and propane stations. And the freight program is still written to have states identify their biggest freight needs and then require the majority of the available freight funding to only address the highway projects on that list. 

There were four amendments that could have significantly improved the bill’s repair, climate, and equity outcomes (listed below). Along with nearly all of the 400 amendments offered, none of these four were even considered.

  • Sen. Kaine (VA) offered a proposal to require a “fix it first” approach to highway funding
  • Sen. Klobuchar (MN) offered a proposal to eliminate regressive safety performance targets
  • Sen. Cardin (MD) offered a proposal to create a greenhouse gas performance measure
  • Sen. Warnock (GA) (and Sen. Cardin (MD)) offered a proposal to increase funding for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program to $5 billion

Rail is the deal’s silver lining

The Senate Commerce Committee’s plans for rail, which we praised in June, made it into the final deal, increasing funding for passenger rail across the board. Amtrak is rightfully treated as a valuable national service deserving of federal funding. The mission of Amtrak is to now maximize convenience and service to the customer, not to cut costs making the experience difficult to those traveling on rail. Plans to duplicate the success of the Southern Rail Commission across the country also made it into the final deal.

This bill doesn’t meet the moment

The only major cut made to the original bipartisan deal announced with fanfare in June was to transit, by $10 billion.

The deal’s $39 billion  is still more than what the current FAST Act has been providing over the last five years, and the White House believes that the overall increase is a win. But Transportation for America cares far more about how the money is spent. This bill provides every category of spending with more funding, but it doesn’t change the balance nor does it create accountability to the taxpayer for results.

The administration believes they can run any program so well that the flaws don’t matter. This is an admirable goal, but one that’s putting them in a bind. There are a record number of competitive grant programs, which provides great opportunity for this USDOT (and future ones) to implement their priorities, but they’ll have to battle the flaws in their own legislation. We are not sure that an administration that struggled to do things like call for state road safety targets that would improve safety, or stand on their laurels to make long overdue safety updates to the manual that guides street design is really up to the challenge of, for example, stopping every project that harms a minority neighborhood. We certainly hope they are and will do all we can to help. But the administration has put themselves in a challenging position.

The IPCC’s latest climate report calls for transformative, immediate change—less emissions, less waste. This bill is far from transformative. It adds some new money for programs to fix some problems while spending far more perpetuating those same problems.

Going forward

Now that the reconciliation bill has passed in the Senate, the House is expected to come back during the week of August 23rd, before the end of August recess, to consider the infrastructure deal and the reconciliation package. Though it’s not clear yet if we can expect to see further policy changes to the infrastructure bill, it will be worthwhile to remain engaged in how additional funds will be distributed through the budget reconciliation process in the House. The budget resolution passed in the Senate gives the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure $60 billion in additional budget authority to appropriate how they see fit.

Beyond that, our eyes turn to the administration to see how they’ll manage this program. They’ll have control over a lot of money, and they’ll need to move quickly to provide better accountability for  lowering emissions, improving racial equity, and increasing access to economic opportunity. They’ll have the power to provide greater control for local governments over what is built in their communities. We’ve been keeping tabs on what the administration has accomplished so far, and we’ll continue to do so from here on out. If they’re going to accomplish what they set out to do, they’ll need help from all of us to do it.

Bipartisan infrastructure deal update: What we need to see

With Capitol Hill abuzz about transportation infrastructure, Transportation for America wants to remind Congress of key policies that must be incorporated into a bipartisan infrastructure bill (as well as a final transportation reauthorization bill.)

(UPDATE 7/15: Senate info added and call script below, post clarified to focus on bipartisan deal.)

Transportation has been the main topic on Capitol Hill in recent weeks with the recently passed House INVEST Act, a deal struck between a bipartisan group of senators and the President, and momentum building for transit operating support legislation in the House and Senate. Over in the Senate, there’s a mediocre highway title and a pretty good passenger rail and safety title. (While the transit title is still missing, we’re hoping for something soon.)

Also in the mix is the standalone bipartisan infrastructure framework. The Senate plans to consider the legislative language of that bipartisan compromise deal next week (the week of July 19th), to pair policies with those basic, top-line funding numbers released a few weeks ago. That framework is coming into focus with the understanding that its funding amounts are new, additional money that adds additional dollars to the current FAST Act authorized amounts.

Process-wise, this deal is unlikely to go through the traditional conferencing process where the House and Senate negotiate the bill through committee conferences. This means Senate and House leaders are likely to produce a bill by negotiating bill text before a bill is introduced and passed in either chamber and then simply bring that final bill to the Senate floor for a vote and then the House floor for a vote.

A “compromise” can’t mean settling for the broken status quo

Senators from just 22 states have an outsize role in producing the final product. If you live in one of these states listed below, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to speak to your Senator’s office? It’s surprisingly easy and will take just five minutes. Ask to speak to anyone working on the infrastructure deal. Here’s a short script you can use when you get to leave your message:

“I live in [STATE] and I’m calling about the infrastructure deal. I’m glad that we’re investing in infrastructure, but we have to do it right, and this potential deal must do four key things.

First, states are still spending money on new roads we can’t afford to maintain. This deal must prioritize repair with our tax dollars first. Second, we need to invest in transit like we did with highways in the 1950s and 60s to give more people more options for getting around. Third, we need to address the deep inequities in our communities. The House transportation proposal included significant money to tear down highways that destroyed neighborhoods and focus on healing divided communities. That’s the kind of thinking we need in this deal. Lastly, the deal has to prioritize safety for all people on our streets. The ways we currently design and build streets prioritize vehicle speed over the safety of people, and that’s one reason we’re seeing record levels of people being killed on our streets.

That’s all. Thank you for your time.”

Key Senators

ALASKA
Murkowski

ARIZONA
Sinema
Kelly

COLORADO
Hickenlooper

DELAWARE
Carper
Coons

INDIANA
Young

KANSAS
Moran

LOUISIANA
Cassidy

MAINE
Collins
King

MISSISSIPPI
Wicker

MONTANA
Tester

NORTH CAROLINA
Tillis
Burr

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Hassan
Shaheen

NEVADA
Rosen

NEW YORK
Schumer

OHIO
Brown
Portman

PENNSYLVANIA
Toomey

SOUTH CAROLINA
Graham

SOUTH DAKOTA
Rounds

UTAH
Romney

VIRGINIA
Warner

WASHINGTON
Cantwell

WEST VIRGINIA
Capito
Manchin

Here are more details on the key policy priorities that MUST be incorporated into any bill that invests in transportation infrastructure:

Accountability to fix our roads and bridges, not just rhetoric

The administration has claimed that the money for highways in the bipartisan proposal is all about maintenance and repair. We need to see more than rhetoric. 

There is a huge maintenance backlog on our roads, bridges, and transit infrastructure, and we only have so much money we can invest. The priority must be on first addressing the maintenance backlog. Additionally, for any new proposed transportation capacity, a maintenance plan needs to be part of the equation before adding more infrastructure into the mix with no plan for how to maintain it.

The House transportation committee supported this concept unanimously in 2020 and it was incorporated into the INVEST Act a few weeks ago as well. The Senate’s highway proposal failed completely on this count and as of now, there is no hard and fast requirement in the bipartisan deal to prioritize repair. Failing to include such a provision would be a colossal mistake.

Highway-style commitment to transit

For every dollar of transportation investment, only twenty cents goes towards transit (and the rest towards highways). This is a huge imbalance between a mode of transportation focused on vehicle movement and speed and another focused on moving people, providing equitable access to mobility, and connecting communities to opportunities. It’s time to focus transportation investment on people and the environment first.

The transportation reauthorization bill should increase transit funding to the level of highways and fund transit operations. Providing operating support for transit agencies would allow them to increase frequency and expand service to efficiently move more riders, which will also have immediate and lasting impacts on climate change. In fact, providing people more options to get around without a car (in addition to electrifying the fleet) is an essential component of ratcheting down greenhouse gas emissions. It is also a strategy that will give everyone improved access to jobs and services and better health outcomes—especially for low-income households and communities of color. The Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act in the House works to help bridge the transit parity gap with highways.

Address inequities in our communities

Transportation is a public good that provides people and goods with mobility and accessibility between and within communities. However, transportation public works projects—especially our national highway system—have historically torn through established communities, specifically targeting marginalized communities. It’s high time to redress those wrongs in the federal transportation program by providing funding to remove highway infrastructure that divides communities while mitigating the displacement of marginalized communities, providing people with equitable access to jobs and services, and, giving local communities control to guide the process (versus being dictated by their state department of transportation).

The Southeast/Southwest freeway in Washington, DC under construction in 1968, which plowed through homes and cut off southwestern and southeastern DC neighborhoods from downtown and the Mall. Photo by DDOT on Flickr.

Specifically, the final transportation reauthorization bill needs to include a competitive grant program, akin to the INVEST Act’s $3 Billion Reconnecting Neighborhoods program, aimed at not only capital and planning costs for eligible communities to redesign or deconstruct divisive infrastructure, but enabling the creation of land trusts to avoid community displacement, empowering local decision making and implementation, and updating the transportation planning process to be cognizant of holistic multimodal transportation impacts for all users. 

Design and invest in safety for all users

You would think reduced driving trends in 2020 due to COVID-19 would have caused a drop in traffic fatalities. Unfortunately the opposite was true—fatalities were up everywhere, reaching historic highs.

From NHTSA’s Early Estimate of Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities in 2020 report, available here

Traffic deaths increased overall, with a disproportionate number of fatalities impacting pedestrians, cyclists, and marginalized populations. The trend is not new, and is only intensifying over time, and it is evidence of how our existing methods of designing and building streets are inherently unsafe and prioritize a need for vehicle speed over all other users. The final transportation reauthorization bill needs to fundamentally change our design standards to emphasize people movement across all modes.

It furthermore needs to require states and metropolitan areas to target their investments and document performance on reducing fatalities on their roadways instead of continued lip service and wasted tax dollars only perpetuating more fatalities.

Drafters of the final bill should look to the various examples from the INVEST Act that tackle safety and design of the transportation network, from the regulatory framework in reimagining the MUTCD, accountability measures that ensure transportation investments do indeed reduce traffic fatalities for all users, and competitive grant programs for local communities to plan, design and implement Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans. 

Historic INVEST Act passes the House, Onwards to the Senate towards Transportation Reauthorization

Last week, the US House of Representatives took a bold step in passing sweeping legislation that rethinks the US transportation framework towards fixing it first, safety over speed, connecting people to jobs and services, and going a step further towards addressing climate change plus equity and inclusion. All eyes are now on the Senate on how they package their existing subpar work on highways, decent work on passenger rail and safety, the bipartisan infrastructure framework, and the House’s INVEST Act.

The US House of Representatives took up the INVEST Act for floor consideration on June 30th, with major movement on the 149 amendments. Wrapping up amendment considerations by July 1st, the House took a vote on the INVEST Act, with a roll call vote of 221 yeas to 201 nays (with 8 not voting). With the bill’s passage, the House made a clear declaration towards fundamentally recalibrating America’s transportation program to work for the people and for the future.

Read our full statement on the INVEST Act from director Beth Osborne here.

Now as the House has taken their bold step towards transportation reauthorization, all eyes are on the Senate. To date, the Senate has released a highways title and a rail and safety title, but has yet to release a transit title. Adding into the reauthorization mix is the bipartisan infrastructure framework negotiated by 21 senators and the White House. What comes next for the Senate regarding transportation reauthorization is anyone’s guess at this point in time, but the clock is ticking towards the expiration of the FAST Act on September 30th, a mere 85 calendar days away.

As the focus turns to the Senate, we remain hopeful that their legislation will include concrete policies that address climate change, safety, maintenance and equity. Merely providing lip service to repair, climate, and equity while still building projects that produce the opposite would be an unjust use of taxpayer dollars, especially in our small towns plus rural and marginalized communities.

INVEST Act passes: an overdue paradigm shift toward accomplishing measurable outcomes that prioritizes repair, safety, and access

We congratulate the House of Representatives for passing the INVEST Act, a transportation bill that commits to a fix it first approach, prioritizing safety over speed, and connecting people to jobs and essential services—whether they drive or not,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. 

“Chairman DeFazio’s leadership has produced a bill that acknowledges needs—like repair, climate and equity—and seeks to fix past problems while updating the underlying programs to ensure we don’t just continue to make those problems worse. The bill commits to expanding and improving intercity rail, promoting vehicle electrification and providing more charging stations, making all users safer by establishing Complete Streets policies and approaches, and reconnecting communities divided by transportation infrastructure.

“We also want to recognize and thank Rep. Hank Johnson, who led the effort to extend transit into areas with little or no service and to provide new flexibility for transit agencies to use federal dollars to run more trains, more buses, in more places, to serve more people. We hope to work with champions like Rep. Johnson and Rep. Chuy García to strengthen our commitment to transit, invest in repairing transportation infrastructure, and make the transportation system cleaner, more efficient and more equitable.

“As the focus now turns to the Senate, we remain hopeful that their legislation will include concrete policies to address climate change, safety, maintenance and equity in the core parts of the program—not only in new add-on programs. Merely providing lip service to repair, climate, and equity while continuing to build projects that produce the opposite would be an unjust use of taxpayer dollars, especially in our small towns, rural places, and marginalized communities.”

Amendments we’re tracking to the House INVEST Act

The INVEST Act, which hits all three of Transportation for America’s three principles, is being considered this week on the House floor ahead of a final vote. There are a few key amendments being offered that could jeopardize these improvements, or further improve the already strong bill in support of our principles.

UPDATE (6/31): The INVEST Act was approved by House of Representatives! Read our full statement here. The amendments we were tracking have also all been voted upon. Jump straight to the tracker.

We heartily support the INVEST Act and encourage all representatives to vote for its passage, but well over 250 amendments were submitted to the INVEST Act to be considered before that final vote. We will be tracking the most notable amendments in a table below, but we want to draw your attention specifically to the seven amendments we will be paying careful attention to. 

Transportation for America strongly supports five amendments to be included in the final bill:

  • Amendment #15 (Moulton): this amendment  increases the PRIME passenger rail program funding by $5 billion total, to modernize and develop passenger rail service (especially critical and affordable interstate travel options) while also expanding existing rail corridors throughout the country.
  • Amendment #86 (Garcia (IL)): This amendment ensures that the street design manual used by all traffic engineers (the MUTCD) equitably accounts for all transportation users, especially cyclists and pedestrians. It furthermore directs the Secretary to update guidance on updating the MUTCD, targeting a four-year update cycle to ensure it stays  current with evolving transportation needs.

The three following amendments from Rep. Hank Johnson would make changes to new and existing programs in the INVEST Act to help transit agencies run more buses and trains to serve more people. Rep. Johnson was proposing an amendment that would have created an entirely new program to fund transit operations, but it became clear that leadership is not allowing amendments to create entirely new programs at this point for the INVEST Act.

  • Amendment #133 (Johnson (GA)): This amendment increases the eligible funding for transit operating expenses from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Program up to 20 percent, allowing states to use these funds to make transit service more frequent and reliable—which has a notable impact on carbon reduction.
  • Amendment #139 (Johnson (GA)): This amendment prioritizes transit operations expenses in the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program by removing construction of maintenance facilities as an eligible expense. Maintenance facilities projects could swamp this small program and are eligible for funding elsewhere, while transit operations are harder to fund.
  • Amendment #148 (Johnson (GA)): This amendment makes expanding transit service hours and/or days an eligible expense for the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program. The underlying program only focuses on improving frequencies, but extending service hours is just as important for reaching more riders who need transit the most.

Transportation for America also strongly opposes two amendments and urges all reps to vote against these short-sighted proposals:

  • Amendment #144 (Perry (PA)): This amendment prohibits the use of funds to expand the Amtrak passenger rail network. At a time when communities across the country are clamoring for more connections and more options of all kinds—especially in places not well connected to airports or other interstates—this amendment is especially out of touch with the needs of Americans, both urban and rural alike.
  • Amendment #247 (Gibbs (OH)): This amendment allows state DOTs—such as the Ohio DOT in Rep. Gibbs’ home state, which spends next to nothing on transit service statewide—to seize transit funding and spend that money on highways, overriding local control and eliminating funds from documented local multimodal needs. It also prohibits using transit funds for art, non-functional landscaping, and sculptures—or for paying the cost of including an artist on the design team. This might seem pennywise but it’s incredibly pound foolish. Allowing a small amount of transit funding to support artists’ involvement leads to projects that are more responsive to their surrounding communities’ needs, better incorporate the desires of riders, and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Additionally, these funds support local artists’ small businesses, further benefiting the communities adjacent to transit projects.

Full table of amendments

Amendment NumberSponsor(s)DescriptionThemeOur PositionVote FormatOutcome
1Langevin (RI), Titus (NV)Requires the Department of Justice, in addition to the Secretary, to adopt the U.S. Access Board's Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guidelines as enforceable standards. This will strongly influence the built environment to be designed and built to be more accessible and inclusive for persons with disabilities.Equity / AccessibilitySupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
3Espaillat (NY), Nadler (NY), DeSaulnier (CA)Allows local transportation agencies, in addition to MPOs, to be direct aid recipients of Metropolitan Performance Program funding. This allows direct, local and regional deployment of federal funds towards transportation needs.Local ControlSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
10Norcross (NJ)Requires all Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE) projects funded directly through the Federal Government to be performed by qualified electricians with Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program certification.Electric VehiclesSupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
15Moulton (MA), Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Costa (CA), DelBene (WA), Strickland (WA), Espaillat (NY), Morelle (NY), Blumenauer (OR), Maloney, Carolyn (NY), Cleaver (MO), Titus (NV)Increases the Passenger Rail Improvement, Modernization, and Enhancement (PRIME) program funding by $5 billion over the life of the bill, helping to modernize and develop passenger rail service (especially critical and affordable interstate travel options) while also expanding existing rail corridors.Passenger RailSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
18Velázquez (NY)Revises the Climate Resilient Transportation Infrastructure Study to guarantee that residents of public housing and of other HUD-designated affordable housing programs are considered and benefit from resilient infrastructure investments. Further revises the study to consider the needs of and create opportunities for individuals registered with a one-stop career center in the climate resilient workforce.Equity / ResiliencySupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
28Ocasio-Cortez (NY)Revises SEC. 1309(g) of the Active Connected Transportation grant program to direct the Secretary of Transportation to consider the extent to which a project would serve low income residents of economically disadvantaged communities when making grants.Equity / Active TransportationSupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
30Nehls (TX)Strikes Division D of the bill (rail title). This would in essense, defund all rail infrastructure investment.Passenger RailOpposeStandaloneNot offered
33Auchincloss (MA), Huffman (CA), Moulton (MA)Provides municipalities with the ability to create and expand new mobility options, including on-demand public transportation projects.Local ControlSupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
46Perry (PA)Strikes section 1303, which establishes a clean corridors program to provide formula funding for EV charging and hydrogen fueling infrastructure. This would in essence, would keep us running a status quo on transportation energy sources that focuses exclusively on fossil fuels.Electric VehiclesOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed
55Titus (NV), Moulton (MA)Amends the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program to add rail carriers engaged in high-speed rail activities under the eligible entities for credit risk premium subsidy payments. Much like buying a home with little money down, there is a mortgage insurance premium paid; this amendment helps to provide financing to offset that insurance cost to finance passenger rail infrastructure projects.Passenger RailSupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
84Levin, Andy (MI), Ocasio-Cortez (NY)Amends eligible project considerations under Sec. 1303 Clean Corridors Program to include considerations for promoting efficient dwell times and amends Sec. 1303 Clean Corridors Program to include requirements for the provision of information on charging station placement through mapping applications. In essence, this amendment looks to ensure that charger turnover needs are considered in the design and placement, while also publicizing location information through consumer mapping tools.Electric VehiclesSupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
86Garcia, Jesús (IL)This amendment ensures that the street design manual used by all traffic engineers (the MUTCD) equitably accounts for all transportation users, especially cyclists and pedestrians. It furthermore directs the Secretary to update guidance on updating the MUTCD, targeting a four-year update cycle to ensure it stays current with evolving transportation needs.Safety / Equity / StandardsSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
87Castor (FL)Expands the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement (CMAQ) program to allow funding to be used to offset the incremental cost of zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, related zero-emission operations equipment, battery electric charging or fuel cell electric refueling infrastructure, and related infrastructure investments.Electric VehiclesSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
103Torres, Norma (CA)Raises authorization level of the Transportation Equity Research Program to $8,000,000 and gives DOT flexibility to conduct research. This will fund needed research to better understand and develop best practices on incorporating equity and inclusion into the transportation program.EquitySupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
113Torres, Ritchie (NY), Williams (GA), Omar (MN), Escobar (TX), Peters (CA)Clarifies that projects to deck over a limited-access highway are eligible for funding under the Reconnecting Neighborhoods Program, a program focused on remediating economically-disadvantaged and historically excluded communities and emphasizes projects that provide for inclusive economic development. Equity / ConnectivitySupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
118Crow (CO), Torres, Ritchie (NY), Moore (WI)Ensures historically excluded communities are considered in the expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure deployment.Equity / Electric VehiclesSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
133Johnson, Hank (GA)This amendment increases the eligible funding for transit operating expenses from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Program up to 20 percent, allowing states to use these funds to make transit service more frequent and reliable—which has a notable impact on carbon reduction.Public TransitSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
139Johnson, Hank (GA)This amendment prioritizes transit operations expenses in the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program by removing construction of maintenance facilities as an eligible expense. Maintenance facilities projects could swamp this small program and are eligible for funding elsewhere, while transit operations are harder to fund.Public TransitSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
144Perry (PA)This amendment prohibits the use of funds to expand the Amtrak passenger rail network. At a time when communities across the country are clamoring for more connections and more options of all kinds—especially in places not well connected to airports or other interstates—this amendment is especially out of touch with the needs of Americans, both urban and rural alike.Passenger RailOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed
148Johnson, Hank (GA)This amendment makes expanding transit service hours and/or days an eligible expense for the Reducing Transit Deserts grant program. The underlying program only focuses on improving frequencies, but extending service hours is just as important for reaching more riders who need transit the most.Public TransitSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
151Perry (PA)This amendment would strike the FTA Capital Investment Grant Program, which is used to provide funding for fixed guideway
investments such as new and expanded rapid rail, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars, bus rapid transit, and ferries, as well as corridor-based bus rapid transit investments that emulate the features of rail. This would starve public transit system of much needed capital funding to replace their assets and expand their transit network.		Passenger RailOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed
157Moore (WI)Increases the percent set-aside for Low and Moderate Community Grant program within the Zero Emission Bus Grant Program from 10 percent to 15 percent. This will help communities tight on resources to be able to afford to purchase zero emission buses and charging infrastructure with additional federal support.Equity / Electric VehiclesSupportEn Bloc 1PASSED
166Rush (IL), Dingell (MI), Clarke, Yvette (NY), Tonko (NY), Adams (NC)Promotes the domestic manufacture and use of advanced, fuel-efficient vehicles and zero-emission vehicles, and encourages electrification of the transportation sector. This will help promote electric vehicle technology as an augmentation of the existing vehicle experience (and getting people to touch, feel, and experience electric vehicles), while bolstering a growing domestic manufacturing industry.Electric VehiclesSupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
226Crawford (AR), Cheney (WY), Graves, Garret (LA), Rouzer (NC)Strikes Section 1201's requirements that states prioritize state of good repair needs over constructing new highway capacity. Outright bad policy to keep on building new roads while the existing roads continue to fall apart. Talk about a huge safety risk and a hit on our wallet with congestion and accelerated vehicle damage. A new road in a sea of crumbling infrastructure, it won't get you far.MaintenanceOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed
237Jackson Lee (TX), Espaillat (NY)Provides local governments more control over where the funds for the new "Safe Streets" program are spent, by requiring state Departments of Transportation to consult with the local governments before carrying out these complete streets’ projects. The “Safe Streets” program uses sets aside safety funds to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on public roads, with a focus on vulnerable road users such as pedestrians, bicyclists, scooters users, and motorcyclist. Very often, funding is steered by State DOTs without recognizing or consulting the on-the-ground local experience. This amendment looks to get local governments at the table as to where this funding is spent towards complete streets.Local Control / SafetySupportEn Bloc 4PASSED
247Gibbs (OH)This amendment allows state DOTs—such as the Ohio DOT in Rep. Gibbs’ home state, which spends next to nothing on transit service statewide—to seize transit funding and spend that money on highways, overriding local control and eliminating funds from documented local multimodal needs. It also prohibits using transit funds for art, non-functional landscaping, and sculptures—or for paying the cost of including an artist on the design team. This might seem pennywise but it’s incredibly pound foolish. Allowing a small amount of transit funding to support artists' involvement leads to projects that are more responsive to their surrounding communities' needs, better incorporate the desires of riders, and avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Additionally, these funds support local artists' small businesses, further benefiting the communities adjacent to transit projects. Placemaking / Local ControlOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed
251Brady (TX)Revises the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program to add new conditions of assistance for loans and loan guarantees issued through the program. This only will add burdensome hurdles and complicate a critical program aimed to help finance rail infrastructure.Passenger RailOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed
261Tiffany, Thomas (WI)Stipulates that no funds made available from the Highway Trust Fund may be expended for any purpose other than road and bridge construction. This short-sighted amendment would starve off funding from a significant portion of our transportation system, including our rail network, public transportation, active transportation infrastructure. Additionally, this amendment would starve off funding from critical research and education programs that advance transportation efficiency and safety.Maintenance / Public Transit / EquityOpposeEn Bloc 3Failed

Build transit back better with more trains, more buses, more frequency

As more Americans begin returning to work and daily life, we need transit to be there, running reliably and frequently, getting us where we need to go. There’s an exciting new proposal to fund increased transit service across the country, but time is short to build support for this important legislation.

Photo by T4 supporter Richard Rabinowitz.

While the INVEST 2.0 awaits a vote by the full House later this month, there are ongoing efforts to make further improvements to that already strong bill. Rep. Hank Johnson’s (GA) Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act is a must-have bill that would produce higher quality transit in communities of all sizes across the country. This vital piece of legislation would create a new program to fund transit operations costs, available to all transit agencies, rural and urban, in order to:

  • Increase service frequency so that people don’t have to wait so long for the bus; 
  • provide additional hours of service so that those who don’t work white-collar hours can still get to their jobs; and
  • add new, frequent service to underserved communities in the region. 

We have a tremendous chance to build an engine for equitable economic growth across the country through more robust transit service and systems. The more support this bill gets, the more likely that House leadership will include it in whatever final transportation and infrastructure product they consider later this month. 

Why we need more funding for operating transit

For decades, not only has transit gotten only 20 percent of federal transportation funding, but that funding has been limited by Congress to only maintenance and capital needs—not the day-to-day costs of running trains and buses. This moratorium was lifted for rural transit agencies in 1998, though it’s not a big benefit to rural transit agencies to make them choose whether to fund existing service or develop additional service with their limited funds. They don’t need flexibility: they need more robust funding. Beyond these rural agencies, large and mid-sized agencies still do not receive any operating funds, which make up two-thirds of public transportation’s costs.

This has to change in order to create the equitable and sustainable transportation system necessary to connect everyone to opportunities.

It wasn’t always like this. In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government matched as much as $1 of operating assistance to transit agencies for every $2.25 provided by local and state governments, as we wrote with partners in this report. The current federal focus on only capital needs instead of providing quality service, leads many transit agencies towards spending “large quantities of federal funds upgrading or extending a handful of routes while neglecting the broader network of service,” and as a result, “ridership stagnates or shrinks.” In fact, following the stimulus bill in 2009, numerous transit agencies received money to buy new buses or railcars at the same time they were cutting service and laying off employees because of the Great Recession, putting many agencies in the ludicrous position of having tons of money to buy vehicles they could not afford to operate.

All Americans—no matter where they live—deserve transportation options that are convenient, affordable, sustainable and safe. But this arcane policy makes it an uphill climb for transit agencies to deliver that kind of service. In fact, fewer than 10 percent of Americans live within walking distance of transit that runs every 15 minutes or less, TransitCenter found.

The lack of operating support for public transit—and the severe underfunding of transit in general—also doesn’t impact everyone equally. People of color make up 60 percent of transit riders. Of that, 24 percent are Black Americans. In addition, 19 percent of Black households have no access to a vehicle, compared to 9 percent of households nationally with no vehicle access. 

“A transit system that truly works has to be frequent and reliable,” said former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater in a recent op-ed. “People should be able to depend on a bus coming every 10 minutes, no matter where in the country they live.” 

Imagine a United States where every community has convenient, reliable, frequent transit service that can safely and conveniently get you to work, school, shopping, church or anywhere else you need to go; where you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars per year owning and operating a car if you don’t want to or can’t afford to. Putting millions more Americans within reach of frequent transit service is possible, and Rep. Johnson’s bill is our best opportunity to start to realize that vision.

Use the form above to tell your representative to support this bill.

Ed. note: the second half of this post was adapted from this related post we wrote back in May.

Nine ways the House’s transportation proposal starts to make a “paradigm shift”

With the House’s INVEST in America Act being considered in committee on Wednesday, it’s a good time to look at what else beyond our core three principles in the bill are worth praising and potentially even improving.

Photo of Metroway (bus rapid transit in Northern Virginia) by BeyondDC on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

Most of the time, when we evaluate long-term transportation policy proposals or infrastructure bills from Congress, we start with a “good, bad, and ugly” post, but this House bill doesn’t fit well into that rubric. There’s a lot of great, some good, a few things that could use further refinement, and a couple of missed opportunities; but nothing that falls into the category of “bad,” much less “ugly.” It also has a lot of the same language in the INVEST Act introduced in the last Congress which stalled before a Senate vote, which also went 3 for 3 (after some modifications) on our scorecard.

With that in mind, here are nine specific things in the House bill (INVEST 2.0 for shorthand) that we wanted to highlight. Bear with us, this is a longer post!

1) Avoids the Senate’s cardinal sin of creating small, new programs to fix mistakes actively being perpetuated by the larger, unchanged, status quo transportation program

The overall approach of the last 30 years has been to create small, exciting new programs to fix established problems (safety, pollution, etc) while allowing the much larger core program to exacerbate and further those same problems.  This was our biggest complaint about the Senate’s bill from a few weeks ago. 

If you want to create a program to fix the issues created by running interstates through neighborhoods, you should also stop actively running interstates through neighborhoods. Or consider the issues of repair and maintenance. As we noted in our scorecard post, this bill doesn’t just create some new repair programs, it requires states to produce a plan to maintain any proposed new capacity while making progress toward their state of repair goals anytime they spend money from the biggest pot of highway funding. That’s the kind of new approach that the Senate completely missed, but the House is proposing to implement for key issues like repair, climate change, and others.

2) It recognizes that transportation is primarily about people and connecting them to what they need

The current federal transportation program does not require that states actively improve access to jobs and services for the real people who use the system every day. Say what? This is why the bulk of current transportation funding goes toward increasing vehicle speed, a “goal” that focuses on concrete and steel instead of the needs of actual people and where they need to go. This House bill kickstarts a huge shift toward focusing on people instead of vehicles by instituting a new performance measure that requires project sponsors to improve access to jobs and services by all modes. 

Under the House bill, state departments of transportation and regional planning organizations would have to measure whether all people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care, and other necessities. Further, states and MPOs would have to project the impact their projects would have on access and USDOT will review and publicly report their targets and progress. USDOT also has to collect that data and make it available to help with the measurement of multimodal access, and there are requirements to analyze the accuracy of the models and update direction to states and MPOs on how to improve access. 

While seemingly minor and perhaps a little wonky, this would mark a big shift in how transportation projects are evaluated. Measuring access—not vehicle speed—is a people-first way to consider the impact of the billions we spend on transportation each year. With this, we can create more equitable access to economic opportunity, lower transportation costs, and reduce emissions and the damaging climate and health impacts of them.

3) Nails all three of T4America’s core principles

Click to read our scorecard post

As we’ve done with every infrastructure proposal or long-term policy proposal for the last few years, we’ve produced a scorecard to evaluate how it starts to redirect transportation policy toward T4America’s three core principles of 1) maintaining the current system, 2) protecting the safety of people on the roads, and 3) getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care.  This bill nails all three of these principles  Read more about how the House bill advances these three simple priorities in this post with the scorecard.

4) Advances our proposal to start tearing down divisive infrastructure and repairing the damage

Since 2020, with help from Third Way, T4America has been advancing a policy to undo the damage of “urban renewal” projects that have displaced more than a million Americans since construction of the Interstate Highway System and that continue to harm communities of color today.  Our plan focuses heavily on creating a competitive grant program to redesign or deconstruct things like divisive highways, and creating strategies to prevent displacement so that this work generates wealth for the communities that suffered most, in addition to a few other strategies.

What the sunken, divisive Rochester Inner Loop used to look like, before being filled in and replaced with a surface boulevard. The House bill would kickstart efforts like this across the country. Flickr photo by Friscocali

The House runs with our proposal through a $3 billion ($600 million a year) Reconnecting Neighborhoods program, which is six times larger than a similar proposal in the Senate bill. This program will analyze neighborhood barriers (like interstates) and identify candidates for remediation, repurposing, or removal. In addition, part of that money can also be used to establish a community advisory board or a land trust to preserve the new wealth for those most affected by the divisive infrastructure. There are some details we’d like to enhance, but this idea has gained incredible traction over the last year and we are excited about the possibilities for the future.

5) Recognizes that you must address climate change within the entire transportation program

Download our report on lowering emissions through better land use and transportation

Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, and the majority of them come from driving. The bill addresses the entirety of the transportation program by establishing a new greenhouse gas performance measure and requiring states to set positive targets to reduce emissions. It gives states the latitude to figure out their own preferred path to hitting those targets, but we know that infrastructure investments that give people more options than hopping in the car are key to reducing these emissions. INVEST 2.0 creates programs to fund these projects at both the state and city levels.

While making it easier to drive less overall should be central to our short-term climate and transportation strategy, we do need to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles as well. This is why we’re part of a unique coalition called CHARGE—the only “electric vehicle” coalition where improving and expanding public transit is the first priority. This bill creates a new program to build electric vehicle charging stations along corridors and sets standards to require them to be open to the public and work with all kinds of electric vehicles.

There are also some good provisions targeted at making the transportation system more resilient to climate change and making resilience an eligible use in the largest highway programs. One place where the bill could be improved is to require resilience to be built into the design of all projects. 

6) Measuring access to jobs and services is one of the best ways to address equity, but this bill includes others

As noted above, requiring agencies to measure and improve access to jobs and services for all people is perhaps the single greatest change to remake transportation policy in a more equitable way. But INVEST 2.0 would also improve equity in other ways—something we wrote about at length last summer in the context of the House’s very similar 2020 proposal. Prioritizing access, investing in more and better transit, building safer streets for people, and investing in what we have would all have an impact on equity. Considering the similarities between that bill and this year’s INVEST in America Act, that evaluation still stands.

7) Support for expanded national passenger rail

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) addresses an enormous crowd in Gulfport during a rally for restoring Gulf Coast passenger service. Photo by Steve Davis / T4America

Expanding and improving our nation’s passenger rail network to bring better, more reliable passenger rail service to more people is one of the best ways to improve access for millions of Americans in big urban areas and small rural ones alike. This bill creates a new $5 billion a year program for high speed and intercity rail investments, triples the funding for the existing program for improved safety and efficiency in passenger and freight rail service, and funds Amtrak at $32 billion over the life of the bill.

The House incorporated several of our other recommendations, including updating the Amtrak Board to have better representation from riders and the national network as well as the Northeast Corridor. More importantly, it allows for the formation of more multi-state rail commissions like our partners the Southern Rail Commission, which has been the key to (almost!) restoring passenger service along the Gulf Coast, and provides funding for them to operate. 

There is some opportunity to strengthen the authorities for the Federal Railroad Administration and the Surface Transportation Board to prevent the freight railroads from obstructing or interfering with that service.

8) A strong commitment to transit…

INVEST 2.0 provides over $21 billion for transit, a sizable increase over the current $13 billion program, and it also includes some funding for operations—a major win, as operations funding has typically been a no-go with federal funds. Funds from the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program and even the core Surface Transportation program can be used for transit operations. There’s also a new one-time competitive grant program to support capital and operations costs associated with addressing transit deserts through better, more frequent transit service.  

Improving service frequency is a big focus of the bill. There is a new $100 million competitive grant program for transit agencies collaborating with state or local governments to increase bus frequency and ridership by redesigning urban streets to better move transit (and more people) in congested areas. There is also a change to the funding formula that prioritizes frequency.

9) But with opportunities for greater improvements on transit

While the bill makes some important changes and does slightly increase its share compared to highways, the bill does not hit T4America’s priorities of equalizing transit funding with highway funding, nor does it create long term support for keeping transit running. We will be once again turning to leaders on Capitol Hill to move these efforts forward. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia of Illinois has led the effort to invest in transit as strongly as we do highways, and we hope he uses this bill as an opportunity to push that effort forward.

READ: Letter of support for Rep. Johnson bill, signed by ~100 organizations (June 9, 2021)Download

On the operations side, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia is leading an effort to create a federal program for transit operating support. The Stronger Communities through Better Transit Act would create a new grant program available to all transit agencies, rural and urban, to increase service frequency so that people don’t have to wait so long for the bus; to provide additional hours of service so that those who don’t work regular hours can still get to their jobs; and to add new, frequent service in the region. We are proud supporters of that bill and we encourage you to tell your House rep to join Rep. Johnson as a sponsor. 

Tell your representative to support a bill to increase funding for transit operations

New House transportation bill goes 3 for 3 on T4America’s core principles

Late last week the House released their new five-year proposal for transportation policy and spending, known as the INVEST in America Act. By focusing on making tangible progress on outcomes like repair, safety, climate change, and access to jobs and services—rather than just asking for more money for more of the status quo—House leaders have again proposed a paradigm shift in how we spend transportation dollars and measure what they accomplish.

The first, most important thing to know about the new Invest in America Act is that it’s quite similar to the INVEST Act, which was approved by the House in the last Congress but which failed to advance to the Senate. This new bill picks up where the INVEST Act left off, repeating almost all of the good provisions and making improvements.  As we said in our statement last Friday about the bill, “this is a paradigm shift from the approach of the last 30 years of proposing small, exciting new programs to fix recognized problems while allowing the much larger core program to exacerbate and further those same problems.”

It’s the kind of fundamentally new approach we need.

As we’ve done with every infrastructure proposal or long-term policy proposal for the last few years, we’ve produced a scorecard for the bill to measure how the Invest in America Act starts to redirect transportation policy toward T4America’s three core principles of 1) maintaining the current system, 2) protecting the safety of people on the roads, and 3) getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care. 

1) Prioritizes maintenance first in nearly every program

We can’t keep choosing to expand with no plan to maintain. We’ll never make progress on our infrastructure if we don’t start prioritizing the care of the valuable assets we’ve spent decades and billions of dollars building.

As we wrote last summer, we’re “expending money we don’t have to build roads we can’t afford to maintain which fail to bring the promised economic returns—all while neglecting repair needs.” While our preference would be to cut maintenance backlogs in half by dedicating formula dollars to maintenance, this bill finally brings the kind of focus on repair that we need, pushing transportation agencies to prioritize maintenance across the board in core programs—the most important way to make repair a priority—while also creating some new repair programs. This stands in sharp conflict to the Senate approach which favors providing state DOTs the flexibility to ignore their repair needs in order to build new things they can’t afford to maintain.

As an example of that approach, for one of the two largest programs typically used on highways (the National Highway Performance Program), this bill requires project sponsors to have a plan to maintain any proposed new capacity while making progress toward their state of repair goals. Overall, this bill maintains the INVEST Act’s language requiring a long-term maintenance plan for any proposed new capacity project and a record of improving their state of repair, includes a provision requiring states to spend no less than 20 percent of their main highway programs on bridge repair, creates a new programs to fix bridges and a $1 billion program for repairing rural bridges, adds a unique program to prioritize replacing the oldest buses, and creates other new programs focused on the maintenance of rail crossings, bridges, and tunnels. 

2) Institutes a comprehensive approach to safety

Designing for safety over speed is our second principle, with a call to save lives with road designs that support and encourage safer, slower driving.

The conventional approach to designing highways—wide lanes and wide roads to allow for high speeds—has resulted in the highest number of people being struck and killed while walking and biking in three decades, in addition to a record rate of in-vehicle fatalities in 2020 as traffic evaporated and speeds increased. Our roads are deadly by design, and safety needs to supersede moving cars fast at all costs. 

Last summer’s INVEST Act was strong on this count, and this bill maintains almost all of that positive language, which might be easiest to digest in a list of bullets: 

  • It removes states’ current ability to set negative targets for safety, i.e, planning for more people to die on their roads next year with the money they spend.  This stands in stark contrast to the Senate bill which continues to provide states with the “flexibility” to continue with this practice, with no penalties and certainly no concrete, accountable goals for saving lives and reducing deaths.
  • It will no longer require states to use the unreliable sorcery of traffic modeling that so often results in prioritizing speed and vehicle throughput over peoples’ lives. 
  • The Transportation Alternatives Program, which is used to make walking and biking safer and more convenient, is popular and oversubscribed in almost every state, where localities have to apply to the state for funds. Yet some states either sit on this money or transfer it into conventional road-building projects, a practice which will be curtailed by this bill. 
  • The Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) gets a new focus on vulnerable users and a push toward what’s known as a safe systems approach.  
  • To create plans for Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans—an effort to completely eliminate traffic fatalities, in part through street design—states would be able to use a variety of federal funds for those efforts, including the HSIP program above. 
  • Lastly, the 85th percentile rule for setting speed limits gets tossed, and states would instead be required to set speed limits  with a consideration of the community surrounding the corridor, the number of bicyclists and pedestrians, and crash statistics (as opposed to just traffic conditions). Right now (with the 85th percentile rule), speed limits are set by how people behave; so if you build a wide street and people drive too fast, the speed limit is often raised to accommodate the rule breakers, showing just how pernicious the focus on speed over safety is with the current program.

This bill will most certainly create a safer transportation system and save lives. We may dive into the safety provisions in more detail in a longer post, so stay tuned.

3) States and metro area planners must determine how well their system connects people to jobs—drivers and non-drivers alike

If the goal of transportation spending is to connect people to jobs and services, then that must be measured and considered when funding decisions are made. Our third principle is measuring transportation success by how many jobs and services people can access, rather than the blunt and outdated assumption that cars being able to drive fast on specific segments of road equals success. 

As with the INVEST Act last summer and for the first time at the national level, recipients of federal transportation funding will be required to measure how well their system connects people to the things they need, whether they drive, take transit, walk or bike. State DOTs and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities, collect that data, and also make it available. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

This is truly groundbreaking stuff, and while there’s far more under this umbrella to highlight in a longer post, this represents a massive shift to how we currently spend money on transportation, which is largely unhinged from producing any sort of measurable improvement in access for everyone who uses the system.

—

We will be taking some longer looks in a follow-up post at how the bill will impact other important areas beyond our three principles, like climate, equity, transit, passenger rail, and others, so stay tuned.