Repair Archives - Transportation For America

Fix it first in practice

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

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

The problem

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

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

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

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

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

Implementing the principle

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, why hasn’t this happened yet?

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

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

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

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

It’s Fix It First Week

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

Fix it first in practice

One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away…
We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

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

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

We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

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

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

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

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

It gets worse

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don’t have the money for this

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

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

It’s Fix It First Week

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

Fix it first in practice

One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away…
We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

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

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

It’s time to stop expanding and start maintaining

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

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

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

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

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

A negative return on investment

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

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

Americans want to fix it first

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

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

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

It’s Fix It First Week

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

Fix it first in practice

One of our recently launched principles, fix it first, targets maintenance over expansion, advocating for federal highway dollars to be spent repairing old roads and bridges before expanding or building new ones. So, what would it look like in practice to implement this principle into the federal transportation program, to shift our states’ priorities away…
We can’t afford to keep avoiding repair

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

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

Transportation and extreme heat

A man in jeans and a white t-shirt walks along the side of a wide, sunny street

The following post was written by Mehr Mukhtar and London Weier.

Recent record-breaking temperatures demonstrate that we can no longer rely on old design approaches to meet the needs of our communities. Transportation infrastructure is no exception. Extreme heat can cause road surfaces to buckle and rail tracks to warp, leading to significant travel disruptions and safety concerns for commuters.

The heatwaves this past summer, where temperatures soared to record highs in the eastern and western parts of the US, starkly highlighted the vulnerability of our transportation infrastructure designed to meet the demands of past climate trends, not the trends we see today.

Sweltering heat has pushed transportation infrastructure, from roadways to railroads, to the brink, potentially leaving thousands of travelers stranded in the aftermath. Extreme heat has already caused major damage and disruptions, from planes being unable to take off in Phoenix to pavement buckling in Minnesota. Amtrak, too, recently witnessed service disruptions across the Northeast Corridor, and WMATA announced widespread delays in service. Asphalt and metal rails can expand and buckle under high temperatures, creating potentially unsafe travel circumstances. This results in delays caused by the need to reduce speed levels of train cars in the heat, brought about by the need to reduce speed levels of train cars in the heat, impacting travel plans for commuters. Extreme heat and other climate change induced weather events, such as rising sea levels, are poised to drastically increase the costs of maintaining, repairing, and replacing transportation infrastructure—at a time when the nation is already behind on roadway maintenance and repair.

Transportation infrastructure can also exacerbate the effects of extreme heat on our communities. The urban heat island effect, which occurs in urbanized areas, is partly caused by the large amounts of heat-absorbing materials found in buildings and roads. The impacts can make these heat events drastically more extreme, with pavement reaching temperatures of 160° F when the outdoor temperature breaches 100° F.

Community impacts

The impact of heat waves is not limited only to infrastructure. During the heatwaves this past June, over 30 million people were subjected to extreme heat advisories and their deadly effects as treacherously hot conditions persisted across the country. People walking, biking, or utilizing public transit are especially vulnerable to the health risks associated with extreme heat.

Imagine a bus user, navigating their typical commute on a record hot day where temperatures are breaking 100° F. The five-minute walk to the bus stop in the sweltering heat causes sweat droplets to form as soon as they leave their home. The sunlight bounces off surrounding buildings and structures, creating an almost blinding light, and fatigue sets in immediately. These conditions, exacerbated by the delay of a bus, or non-shaded shelters, can spiral into emergencies, such as heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Often referred to as the ‘silent killer,’ extreme heat has profound health risks due to its effect on the body’s ability to regulate internal temperature. Health impacts of extreme heat disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color, as emphasized in a recent video released by Smart Growth America on the disparate burden of extreme heat experienced by communities in Atlanta. Low-income neighbors and communities of color more often lack trees, shade, and natural landscapes that can reduce the urban heat island effect. For some, a hot day means driving instead of taking transit, but for others, that option is nonexistent, and they are forced to endure the high temperatures out of necessity. Communities can use tools, such as the CDC’s Health and Heat Tracker, to determine if they are more vulnerable to extreme heat and develop their own heat preparedness plans (advice for decision makers on how to develop a heat preparedness plan can be found here).

At a recent congressional briefing on extreme heat resilience for community well-being co-hosted by the American Public Health Association and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, experts brought these impacts to the attention of federal legislators. At the core of Markey’s opening statement was the sentiment that “prevention is preferable to cure,” highlighting the importance of both responding to climate change-induced warming and reducing carbon emissions in order to avoid exacerbating climate conditions. It is clear that we will continue to contend with increased and more intense heatwaves in the future, requiring governments, community leaders and planners, and residents to urgently develop a vision for adapting to, and preparing for, a changing environment.

Resilience in the face of extreme heat

The impacts of extreme heat can threaten urban infrastructure that was not built to withstand such extreme weather events. Just as we created these conditions, we also have the opportunity to create environments that protect communities from the dangers of climate change and extreme heat.

With transportation policies and investments encouraging highways and sprawling development, communities have to drive further away to access the jobs and services they need to get to, causing more emissions to be generated. In combating extreme heat, a necessary strategy is measuring and reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) within the transportation sector is one way to help combat the impacts of extreme heat. With transportation policies and investments encouraging highways and sprawling development, communities have to drive further away to access the jobs and services they need to get to, causing more emissions to be generated. Tackling car-oriented design can play a significant role in not only reducing emissions but also mitigating the negative outcomes associated with extreme heat.

Other ways that we can address extreme heat in urbanized areas are heat mitigation and heat management. Heat mitigation seeks to reduce heat in our cities by changing the design of built environments. These initiatives might include incorporating more tree shade and native vegetation or using different building materials like more permeable and reflective pavements.

Heat management protects those in our communities when extreme heat can not be avoided. Management strategies could include improving bus shelters, establishing cooling centers, and creating heat preparedness plans. Approaching heat management with smart growth policies—like prioritizing location-efficiency, improving conventional zoning and land-use regulations, and adapting existing infrastructure—can drastically enhance effective response capabilities.

Additionally, our federal government should direct current and future investments toward building more resilient infrastructure. When government agencies, such as the Federal Highway Administration, set standards for materials used in new builds to be greener and better able to withstand high temperatures, they will ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to build a future that is sustainable and livable for all of the nation’s residents.

Solutions to the extreme heat crisis require bipartisan support to ensure that protections are enshrined in legislation and our built environments’ standards. Urbanized areas need to improve their resilience to extreme heat, especially our transportation system, to help ensure residents can safely travel to where they need to go, regardless of the temperature.

Building back better: Reflections on the state of infrastructure repair in the U.S.

A long bridge over a river stops abruptly halfway across, with a quarter-long section lying crumped in the river below

Despite substantial federal funding available to address “crumbling roads and bridges,” our infrastructure’s state of repair is an ongoing issue, and climate change is only adding to the problem.

You don’t have to look far in history to see major infrastructure failures around the country. The same day as the Key Bridge collapse (a tragedy that was likely not due to a state of repair issue), in the Greater New Orleans metro area, the Chalmette Paris Road Bridge was closed due to hazardous structural integrity issues (i.e. it could collapse at any time). There also has been multiple notable roadway infrastructure failures in the past two decades: the I-95 bridge collapse in Philadelphia, PA; I-85 bridge collapse in Atlanta, GA; I-5 bridge in Skagit, WA; DC-295 in Washington, DC; I-25 in Pueblo, CO; I-64 in Norfolk, VA; and most notably I-35W in Minneapolis, MN.

For the Philadelphia, Atlanta, and DC cases, the bridges were structurally sound, but failed due to a catastrophic event without safeguards to protect the structures. For the Skagit, Pueblo, Norfolk, and Minneapolis, flawed design paired with a changing climate and mobility patterns (i.e. vehicle weight and size) led to structural failures. And if we look beyond roadways and towards other modes of transportation in the US, top of mind is mechanical failures leading to East Palestine, OH train derailment, the 2007 DC MetroRail crash at Fort Totten (and again on DC MetroRail in 2015 with a train fire at L’Enfant Plaza), the 2017 NYC Subway Summer of Hell, and even a failing seawall that cofunctions as a pedestrian walkway at DC’s famed Tidal Basin (#ripstumpy).

What’s going on with our state of repair?

There are compounding factors that are threatening our nation’s mobility infrastructure. The most notable threat is our climate. With ever-fluctuating temperatures, precipitation (or lack thereof), and major weather events, the structural integrity of our infrastructure is being challenged. When originally built, a lot of our nation’s infrastructure was designed with the assumption of historical climate precedent going forward. Fluctuating temperatures affect building material, while precipitation impacts foundational integrity. When also subjected to increasing extreme weather events that stress the infrastructure, wear and tear accelerates.

Then there is the reality of changing travel patterns on our mobility system. A growing population paired with changing commuting patterns post-COVID pandemic that is stretching system demands for longer periods of time plus using different types of vehicles (that are bigger and heavier, including trains and ships) on our roadways, waterways, and railways is taking a toll on infrastructure designed with a different population and vehicle demand in mind.

There also are factors that are in the hands of transportation operators and decision makers. When the Silver Bridge collapsed between West Virginia and Ohio in 1967, one of the outcomes was the development of the National Bridge Inspection Standards. After the 1980 Skyway Bridge collapse, infrastructure design was altered for future projects to create structural redundancy and fortification. However, as alluded to earlier, changing climate and system demands may render design, maintenance, and inspection standards developed 40-60 years ago “functionally obsolete,” borrowing a term from bridge inspection standards. This also can be seen (or not seen) on the ground via the decreasing frequency and rigor of asset condition inspections.

And this can be attributed to a deteriorating focus on our transportation policy and investments aimed at fixing things first. There are leaders, such as Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who have made it a priority to rethink transportation policy and investments aimed at fixing things first, but unfortunately, that is still a troublesome rarity in light of these challenges to our nation’s mobility infrastructure state of repair. This is also paired with the lack of institutional knowledge at the federal and state legislative levels, deferring often to state DOT for guidance on policy and investments. Unfortunately, those same policies and investments are opaque to decision makers and the public, if not the state DOT itself not understanding their origins and being flexible enough to rethink strategies that haven’t worked for decades to yield different results.

Bridge inspectors investigate the wall of I-84 bridge, which has small amounts of debris. — *Oregon DOT bridge inspection along Eagle Creek Viaduct on I-84 MP 40 after a fire. Flickr photo by ODOT.*

What’s our path forward?

President Biden made commitments to rebuild the fallen Key Bridge within hours of the event, supported by key Congressional appropriators. There is a need for that same urgency across the entirety of the transportation system’s state of repair, which has breached $1 trillion in deferred maintenance, before disasters occur. There also is a need to rethink investment strategies and policies that encourage a reduction in vehicle miles traveled, which is corollary to reducing transportation’s GHG emissions, and in turn, slowing down climate change’s impact on our transportation system.

While decision makers hash out policies and investment strategies, the transportation industry needs to double down how they assess the state of repair in light of changing conditions. That means reassessing our nation’s assets and the climate and mobility demand assumptions that play into an asset’s condition. Digging into this further, that means understanding implications on existing and future building materials and asset designs, plus looking at how and what frequency an asset is assessed and future-proofed from catastrophic failure (whether by deterioration or an extreme event (whether induced by nature or not).

Everyone agrees that repair is important. No one is willing to require it

Despite a fundamental lack of understanding by some members of Congress about the program they’re responsible for overseeing, the law sets states free to spend their federal transportation cash on eligible expenses, however they see fit. Our repair needs will never get addressed until we change this approach.

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Every time that we’ve polled voters over the years, we hear that taking good care of our existing infrastructure—repair and maintenance—should be priority #1 for our transportation dollars. Ask any member of Congress and they’ll tell you it’s absolutely a top priority. ¹ And every state DOT will tell you that keeping things in a state of good repair is either their top priority or second only to safety.

Everyone seems to agree about the importance of repair, yet everyone in charge seems to recoil when anyone suggests creating hard and fast requirements that states prioritize their repair needs before building new infrastructure they will also have to maintain for decades to come.

After seeing Virginia leaders touting the infrastructure law’s $530+ million to address Virginia’s deficient bridges, Wyatt Gordon in the Virginia Mercury recently asked the obvious question: “Why did more than one in 25 bridges deteriorate into a ‘poor or worse condition’ in a state with a nearly $7 billion annual budget for its Department of Transportation?” T4America director Beth Osborne weighed in:

The more you fail in transportation—the more people die, the more expenses increase, the more bridges collapse, the louder the calls to put more money into the programs that produced that failure in the first place. There is no accountability. These senators who voted for [the IIJA] promise us results every time, but I just heard a bridge fell down in Pittsburgh. How many times do they promise the same results without changing the program that is producing these same failures?

Look, it’s worth noting that not every state performs equally when it comes to prioritizing repair with their flexibility, and some states have made sizable shifts from expansion to repair in the last few years. As the above piece notes, states like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are already devoting the lion’s share of their budgets toward repair. They’re doing their best to ignore that second voice in the background of the comic pushing the sexy new expansion project.

But most states are not choosing to do this.

This reminds me of what Mississippi DOT commissioner Dick Hall said during a repair-focused event we held in DC in 2019, where he made a plea for Congress to step in and require repair first. “If you want us to prioritize maintenance, then you’re going to have to tell us ‘you gotta do it,” he said. Until Congress does, some states will do well and other states will just punt questions about paying for all the things they’ve built off to their grandkids to figure out.

“We invested all that money to build a 4-lane highway with absolutely no provision for maintaining what we built. Not a dime. And that has come back to haunt us.”

– @MississippiDOT Commissioner Dick Hall on why we need to #FixItFirst pic.twitter.com/VpQwt5FUZu
— Transportation for America (@T4America) October 24, 2019

How bad is this addiction?

Consider the new $43 billion bridge repair formula program that Congress created in the infrastructure law. Even though this money is doled out proportionately to the states with the greatest bridge repair needs and Congress just supercharged the funding to the massive flexible programs that all states can use to build new highways, Congress still decided to allow states to use this dedicated “repair” money to build brand new bridges. USDOT’s guidance on the legislative language made it clear that the law allows “the construction of a new highway bridge on a new alignment” as an eligible project, though USDOT gently encouraged states to focus on bridges in poor or fair condition.

We’ll once again just have to hope that all states can deliver on all the repair promises. And in five years, after the IIJA’s $643 billion has been exhausted, we’ll be right back here lamenting the state of our infrastructure and wondering where all the money went, even as we renew the pleas for more funds to “repair our crumbling infrastructure.”

Everyone agrees repair is important. No one wants to require it. pic.twitter.com/ov234XqCLe
— Transportation for America (@T4America) March 8, 2022

The infrastructure bill’s limited state of repair funding and policies

*Flickr photo of bridge resurfacing by WSDOT. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/49921039787*

There is very little new funding in the infrastructure bill specifically dedicated to repair and no new requirements on highway monies for prioritizing repair on roads and bridges. Overall the law doubled down on the practice of giving states immense flexibility with the bulk of their money and then hoping that they use that flexibility to prioritize repair. Advocates should be ready to hold states and metros accountable for making progress.

This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.

The law’s shortcomings

I-35W in Minneapolis. I-5 over the Skagit River in the Pacific Northwest. Miami’s pedestrian bridge at Florida Atlantic University. The 295 pedestrian bridge in Washington, DC. Last week’s bridge collapse in Pittsburgh, PA.

Those are just a few high profile US bridge collapses over the last decade. Many smaller ones have escaped national scrutiny. And of course, who knows how many potential collapses were avoided (good!) through weight restrictions, lane closures, or outright closures that resulted in lengthy detours (bad!).

These collapses all happened for a plethora of overlapping reasons related to engineering, age of infrastructure, design flaws, ineffective inspection systems, and others, but they are also the by-product of our overall reactive vs. proactive approach to repair and our failure to require repair ahead of building new. The House’s five-year INVEST Act would have instituted a fix-it-first requirement, but the Senate and the administration discarded INVEST and ultimately struck a deal to continue the status quo on repair: giving states money and freedom, and hoping they use their discretion to maintain the system.

What’s in the law?

While states are given wide latitude on how to spend their money, they unquestionably will have more money at their disposal for the next five years because nearly all of the core programs that are typically used on repair needs increased in size. There are two major programs worth highlighting:

1) The National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) is one of the two largest sources of funding used for repair—about 53 percent of all states’ base highway formula apportionment (~$147 billion in the new infrastructure law). NHPP funds are intended to be spent on the National Highway System’s roads and bridges, as well as transit or for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in an NHS corridor. The easiest way to understand the NHS is that it consists of a spectrum from nearly all multi-lane arterial roads up to interstates, as well as a lot of two-lane rural state highways. Funding for the NHPP went up by 26 percent over the FAST Act, which means more money theoretically available for repair projects if states choose to spend it that way. The infrastructure law did open up NHPP to fund more climate mitigation projects classified as “protective features,” including raising roadways, replacing culverts and drainage, and “natural infrastructure.” Advocates and local leaders—especially in coastal areas—should work hard to make their state or metro area aware that these types of projects are now eligible for NHPP funding. (Relying on the past precedent of emergency aid for repairs after disasters will be risky as climate emergencies become more frequent but funding stays the same.)

2) The Surface Transportation Block Grant Program is exactly what it says: a block grant given to states for all surface transportation needs. This second biggest pot of money states can use on repair is also the most flexible. Not only can these funds be used on repair projects, but they can also go toward transit, biking, walking, and nearly other possible mode of surface travel—though many states do not take advantage of that flexibility. This program represents 23 percent of all highway formula dollars, and was increased by 35 percent from the FAST Act, up to $79 billion in the new infrastructure law.

There is also a separate new program for repairing bridges that’s already been in the news after FHWA released the first batch of funding to states.

The $43 billion bridge formula program is “designed” to repair bridges, whether on the National Highway System or what are known as “off-system” bridges owned by counties, cities, or other localities. While states still have to come up with 20 percent of the cost for repairing the bigger NHS and other state-owned bridges, this program can cover 100 percent of the cost of repairing or rehabilitating these locally owned off-system bridges, to try and incentivize more funding toward these vital but smaller bridges—like the Fern Hollow bridge in Pittsburgh that just collapsed—which many states ignore.

Note: Thanks to the Washington Post’s Ian Duncan for noting that states can in fact use this repair program for expansion and building new bridges, according to FHWA’s guidance on the program:

The construction of a new highway bridge on a new alignment is an eligible project under the BFP, but FHWA encourages States to first focus their BFP funding on projects that improve the condition of in-service highway bridges classified in poor condition and that preserve or improve the condition of in-service highway bridges classified in fair condition. Note that the FHWA considers the construction of a new highway bridge in a new location, in connection with replacement of an existing highway bridge in poor condition, to be improving the condition of an in-service highway bridge.

While states are free to neglect repair needs on their roads, bridges, and highways, the new infrastructure law does uphold the much stricter existing State of Good Repair programs and requirements for public transit. (Yes, we require state of repair on transit, but not on roads and bridges.) The funding for both transit and rail repair grants was also increased dramatically.

Transit: $3.5 billion for state of good repair grants represents a $1 billion increase over the FAST Act. These formula grants provide funding to repair or replace a wide variety of rail infrastructure (rail itself, signals, stations, navigational systems, etc.) The infrastructure law also created a new $300 million rail vehicle replacement competitive grant program that can be used to replace any rolling rail stock. Larger, legacy rail systems with especially old infrastructure will fare better in the grant process for this new program.
Passenger rail: $53.5 billion for state of good repair grants (up from $6 billion in the FAST Act) within two different programs to improve the state of good repair, improve performance, or expand or establish new intercity passenger rail service, including privately operated intercity passenger rail service if an eligible applicant is involved. Notably, these repair funds (from the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail, formerly the Federal-State Partnership for State of Good Repair) are closely tied up with the money being used to expand interstate rail service, so regions will need to coordinate their grant applications between connectivity/expansion and their repair needs in order to best utilize these funds. Funds from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement (CRISI) program are more broadly directed toward repair and safety improvement projects.

How could the administration improve these repair provisions?

Unfortunately, the deal the administration struck with Congress limits the extent of their own authority. States control the bulk of the money, with no fix-it-first requirements. Yes, USDOT has urged states to prioritize repair (and climate, equity, etc.) with their huge formula programs. Some governors and AASHTO already responded to that modest request with shock at the suggestion, even though they know they retain the freedom to continue ignoring those needs.

But there are still things the administration can do. They can choose to prioritize repair and modernization (and climate resilience) within their large range of competitive or discretionary grant programs, and prioritize repairing transit/rail infrastructure in communities that need it most or have been historically underserved to serve their equity goals. USDOT could issue guidance or scoping requirements to include identifying climate threats (extreme weather, extreme temperatures) and the frequency the asset will need repair/maintenance based on the design. And they could require this for any project that undergoes a NEPA environmental review.

How can this advance our goals? How can advocates improve outcomes on repair?

When it comes to advocates and local leaders, the greatest potential is with increasing awareness, reporting, and accountability. For example, even though climate-related projects are now eligible for NHPP funds, governors, legislators or the DOT leadership may not realize it or may have zero interest in pursuing those projects. Further, there are very few states that have a pipeline of resilience projects ready to tee up. Advocates should fill that information gap to make the most of the new climate mitigation eligibility within this huge pot of cash, and focus on the projects that would protect and serve the most climate-vulnerable neighborhoods and people.

When it comes to passenger rail, as states (hopefully) create new interstate passenger rail compacts, some of the repair money for rail will be essential for getting them and subsequent new service off the ground. This would mean coordination across multiple regions and states to make those big projects a reality, as with the ongoing Gulf Coast rail project.

And lastly, you should be reaching out to every reporter on a transportation beat in your state to remind them of the promises that transportation agencies are making on repair.

When we go in-depth with a reporter who is new (or sometimes even a vet!) on the federal transportation beat, they are often shocked to learn there are no requirements for states to repair things first. Help bring your media along and give them actionable information to hold your decision makers accountable. They have just been given a nearly unprecedented windfall of federal cash for the next five years and have the complete freedom to spend it all on repair projects. If your state makes slow or no progress on repair (or does better in some parts of the state than others) that is due to spending priorities set by the governor, legislature and/or DOT.

Advocates and the media should be holding anyone who fails to move the needle in the right direction publicly accountable.

So what?

As one of our three core priorities, repair was one of our biggest disappointments in the infrastructure law. The last decade has shown us repeatedly that too often states use their flexibility to build new things they can’t afford to maintain while neglecting to properly address their repair needs. This is one of the most fiscally irresponsible things we do with transportation policy. Every dollar spent on a roadway expansion project is both a dollar that was not spent on repair, and a dollar that created decades of future repair costs. When Sen. Manchin talks about being concerned about costs passed to our grandkids, our current approach to repair should be exhibit A.

The administration should use every tool in their arsenal to ensure that the funds they control prioritize repair, while using their regulatory toolbox to nudge states and metros toward the same goal. Advocates can have some of the greatest impact by working to both publicize repair needs (including climate related projects) and hold their decision makers accountable for making progress.

With a massive increase in guaranteed federal funding coming their way, they have no excuses left.

USDOT urges states to prioritize repair, safety, and climate with their influx of infrastructure bill cash

road sign that says "changed priorities ahead"

Although state DOTs have always been free to prioritize repair, safety, or improving access for everyone across the entire system, most have traditionally chosen to use that flexibility to build new highways instead. With state DOT coffers soon to be loaded with billions from the new infrastructure bill, USDOT is urging states via a new memo to focus on their repair needs, take an expansive view of what they can invest in, and invest in reducing emissions and improving safety.

Last week USDOT finally released the long awaited state formula funding apportionment tables, which document how the first year of the infrastructure law’s formula funding will be divided up to the states. When it comes to the FHWA and FTA’s role in the oversight and messaging on formula funding to the states, the experience has not been consistent, which this memo looks to tackle.

FHWA sends a clear and consistent guiding message

With the funding amounts published, the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) followed up the next day with a notable and perhaps unprecedented memo of administrative guidance from Deputy Administrator Stephanie Pollock directed to FHWA headquarters administrators, division administrators, and their teams. This memo sent a clear message on where USDOT wants to emphasize its technical assistance and oversight of federal transportation program funds.

Here are four points the Deputy Administrator made that we want to highlight:

1) Prioritizing repair and rehabilitation first

Since Congress chose not to prioritize repair by discarding the House’s INVEST Act which would have instituted hard and fast requirements, USDOT and the Biden administration want to emphasize the critical need for improving the state of repair of the transportation infrastructure. The guidance reminds the role states must play in maintaining a state of repair of their existing infrastructure (23 USC 116) if they plan to participate in the federal transportation program. Lastly, in advancing maintenance, FHWA encourages incorporation of safety and multimodal accessibility into the repair scope of the infrastructure project.

2) Prioritizing investment on all federal-aid transportation infrastructure

The memorandum makes note that the formula funding being directed to states is not for exclusive use of state DOT-owned and managed infrastructure and that they should consider all the needs in their state—not just the big ticket state-owned highways where many typically focus their funds. The memo notes that the 50,000 miles of state DOT-owned roads and bridges are in much better condition than the one million miles of other roads not owned by the state but eligible for that funding, 85 percent of all miles driven takes place on these other roads/bridges, and formula programs also have money dedicated to these “off-system” roads and bridges.

3) Simplifying project review

The memorandum guides FHWA to help fast track and simplify the review of projects that prioritize repair, improve safety, or invest in multimodal improvements. Streetsblog summed up this provision well last week:

Among the most potentially transformative new guidelines is a federal advisory that multimodal projects, like bike lanes, sidewalks and BRT lanes, should no longer be subjected to onerous environmental review — and that highway expansions and other high-polluting projects for which the National Environmental Protection Act was created should be scrutinized much more heavily than they are now. Opponents of sustainable transportation across the country have long abused the environmental review process to stall carbon-cutting projects, while letting autocentric efforts sail through.

4) Emphasizing operational efficiency over expansion

The memo says that FHWA will do what they can with their technical assistance and oversight to emphasize operational efficiencies to move more people and goods within existing infrastructure over capacity expansion (i.e, new highways). The memorandum acknowledges that FHWA is in no position to prohibit states from expanding system capacity, but that FHWA will explore all policy mechanisms at their disposal to not only strongly encourage and influence, but require an emphasis on repair and alternative enhancements to roadway capacity expansion. Of special note as well, FHWA underscored the flexibility that state DOTs have and should exercise in supporting public transportation projects.

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Though this policy memorandum does not have any enforceable mechanisms in what state DOTs can and will do with their formula highway funding, it makes a major statement about where the administration’s priorities lie, gives ammunition to the advocates trying to hold them accountable, and can help nudge and encourage states that are in the midst of attempting to change how they prioritize their spending.

Aarian Marshall wrote in Wired last week about the potential impact of this memo and what’s happening in Colorado, (where the state’s transportation commission approved a new rule requiring the state to consider the greenhouse gas impacts of their projects and try to reduce them):

The DOT’s gentle, “have you thought about this?” approach to climate-friendly and safe road infrastructure may feel toothless. But states that have experimented with similar approaches say it’s helpful. In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis has urged the state DOT to emphasize people-friendly—rather than builder-friendly—infrastructure projects. More than half of the state’s transportation money goes toward “state of good repair” projects, like filling potholes, fixing bridges and viaducts, and adding shoulders to rural roads for safety, says Shoshana Lew, executive director of Colorado’s DOT. Prioritizing safety and climate effects “forces the conversation to be more rounded,” says Lew. “It makes you think really hard about whether the project is worth it, and what the implications will be.” As a result of Colorado’s approach, she says, an expansion project on Interstate 70 will include a new van shuttle system that could grow bigger with demand.

This memo empowers USDOT representatives to the state DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to be more vocal and consistent in advancing department priorities. This also gives local, regional, and state community advocates something to point to as they try to build momentum towards decision-making change in the implementation of the federal transportation program in their backyards.

Fix-it-first would be a win for rural communities

The lack of repair requirements in the infrastructure bill will shortchange rural areas, costing them potential jobs and leaving them with crumbling roads and bridges that won’t get repaired. Our report highlights why using highway funds to fix roads and bridges would bring numerous benefits to rural America.

The infrastructure deal that passed the Senate in August and is currently waiting on a House vote after budget reconciliation will fail to make meaningful progress on the maintenance backlog on our nation’s streets, roads, and highways. That’s because there is no requirement for state DOTs to prioritize repair before building expensive new roads they will struggle to maintain. Historically, when given new funds with this kind of flexibility, they’ve chosen to expand their roadways (with dubious results), with no real plan for maintaining their highway system.

Cover of Rural Transportation Policy report

Read our latest report on the transportation needs in rural areas
Rural Americans need and deserve reliable and convenient transportation options, but current policies are failing them. This short report we released last week has six recommendations and stories of success from rural America that show a better approach.

What’s the impact on rural areas?

Despite what you may have heard from scores of Senators from rural states, failing to prioritize repair first is a big loss for rural America.

Instead of fixing potholed roads and preventing key farm-to-market bridges from being weight-limited or closed outright, a large portion of the infrastructure funding will go to costly expansion projects in big growing metropolitan areas. State DOTs will burn through the funding buying expensive right-of-way to widen roads for metro commuters. Oftentimes, these highway projects will worsen neighborhood connectivity by creating new barriers and will just end up inducing more driving, which means widened roads fill up with traffic in a few years, failing to deliver on the (expensive) promise of reducing congestion.

Meanwhile, rural areas, which aren’t growing as quickly as their urban counterparts, don’t have much rationale for road expansion, but they absolutely do need their roadways repaired. In fact, a report from TRIP (a national transportation research nonprofit) estimates the rural road maintenance backlog at $211 billion. With metro areas sucking up a majority of the funding for wasteful roadway expansion projects, there will be little left for the vital but unglamourous job of fixing rural highways, county roads, and small-town main streets.

What’s worse, the jobs that come with road repair—good-paying blue-collar jobs that rural communities need—won’t be as abundant. Maintenance work produces more jobs per dollar than roadway expansion since a greater share is spent on labor thanks to the lack of costly right-of-way acquisition. And since maintenance is the big need in rural areas, instituting requiring that existing roads are fixed before new ones are created would ensure that not only is the money spent better, but it actually goes to the greatest needs, creating more jobs along the way.

We don’t have to keep wasting highway funds on endlessly expanding highways. While the bipartisan infrastructure bill failed to include fix-it-first accountability, we can still hold our leaders accountable to actually use funds to repair roads and bridges before constructing new ones. Doing so would help preserve the rural roads that are vital for connectivity and bringing goods to market, all while creating the most jobs.

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

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.

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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.

UPDATED: Amendment to the House’s INVEST Act will close the repair loopholes

UPDATE, June 17: This amendment was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. We thank Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for their tremendous support and leadership.

The House’s transportation bill is being debated and voted on starting Wednesday, June 17th, and a vital new amendment would strengthen the repair provisions in the bill, helping to strengthen the bill’s language and better align it with the legislative goal of prioritizing maintenance over new road capacity.

The House transportation committee’s markup of the INVEST Act starts at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. View our amendment tracker here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, visit our hub for all T4America content about the INVEST Act, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

As we wrote last week about some of the shortcomings in the INVEST Act’s repair provisions:

When we first read through the INVEST Act last week we were excited to see that the committee clearly made a good faith effort to prioritize maintenance and after a cursory look we were inclined to give it a passing grade on our first principle of prioritizing repair. But the deeper we looked into the language, the more we saw the loopholes. …the INVEST Act’s fix-it-first language still needs to be strengthened to ensure a true focus on prioritizing repairing what we have before building new things that come with expensive, long-term repair costs. There were three misses in the House’s approach, but all can be fixed if the House is truly committed to ensuring that we preserve and maintain our existing transportation network.

We’re pleased to report that there has been a bipartisan amendment offered for tomorrow’s markup that would address the concerns outlined last week. Amendment #63 from Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL), co-sponsored by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), would make three important changes:

1) Require a maintenance plan
If your state or metro area wants to use core highway dollars for building new capacity, then they must present a financial plan for maintaining it. This is already true for transit, and it should be true for roads. The amendment would require a public plan for maintaining the new road while also maintaining the existing system. It is vital that we finally start requiring states to prove they can maintain what they’re building with the billions that they are given.

2) It will be hard to justify new road capacity with old models.
The INVEST Act requires states planning new capacity road projects to perform benefit-costs analyses (BCAs), but this amendment requires them to use demand models with a demonstrated track record of accuracy. The models in current use don’t have a good track record.

3) Require a more complete accounting of the benefits and costs.
The INVEST Act includes a new host of performance measures, including greenhouse gas emissions, and access to jobs and services. This amendment would require states planning new capacity projects to consider the benefits of ALL the performance measures, including new ones created by the bill. Without the amendment, project sponsors could have chosen one measure, like the narrow measure of “congestion reduction,” which is so often used to justify projects which just induce new driving, failing to consider the other priorities of the program like safety, emissions and access.

Who supports this amendment?

So far, in the limited time since it was released before markup began:

Transportation for America
Bipartisan Policy Center
League of American Bicyclists
League of Conservation Voters
National League of Cities
National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO)
Taxpayers for Common Sense

We’ll be keeping tabs on this amendment and others that are going to be considered as the House transportation committee starts debating and voting on these amendments starting at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, June 17th. Learn more about amendments and view our tracker here.

For those of you that live in a district represented by a Member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, you can send a message to your rep with this page and urge them to support the INVEST Act and to support this very necessary amendment. If you’re not sure if your rep is on the committee, just go on over to take action and the form will let you know.

TAKE ACTION

Note: This amendment was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Thank you Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for your tremendous support and leadership.

The House bill needs some changes to make repair the number one priority

UPDATE, June 17: A bipartisan amendment to fix the issues we detailed below was accepted by unanimous consent in the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Thank you Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for your tremendous support and leadership. View our amendment tracker for the INVEST act here, get real-time updates by following @t4america on Twitter, and take action by sending a message to your representative if they sit on this House committee.

The House’s new INVEST Act made a strong effort to prioritize maintenance, but there are still loopholes that can allow states and metro areas to avoid the legislative intent of a real, concrete focus on repair first. Here’s a run down on our concerns with the repair provision and how it could be strengthened in next week’s markup in the House transportation committee.

Flickr photo of bridge resurfacing by WSDOT. https://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/49921039787

We’ve spent 60-plus years building an unparalleled highway system with hundreds of thousands of bridges, in addition to scores of metropolitan transit networks and a network of other streets. But we have failed to steward our assets well. For no good reason at all, we’re still spending money like it’s 1956, 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. Liberals have supported and aggressively funded the status quo, ignoring the transportation program’s impact on climate, public health, and access to opportunity. Conservatives have joined them, failing to take a stand for bedrock values of good stewardship of federal dollars and keeping federal spending low. We must make repair and maintenance the core, number one priority of the federal transportation program. We cannot afford to keep expanding our system without any plan for maintaining it.

When we first read through the INVEST Act last week we were excited to see that the committee clearly made a good faith effort to prioritize maintenance and after a cursory look we were inclined to give it a passing grade on our first principle of prioritizing repair. But the deeper we looked into the language, the more we saw the loopholes.

It is indeed a major change that the committee proposes dedicating 20 percent of the two biggest sources of state DOT funds toward repair. In addition, states have to fulfill some new conditions to add new capacity with the largest highway program. Both are good steps and we applaud them. However, the INVEST Act’s fix-it-first language still needs to be strengthened to ensure a true focus on prioritizing repairing what we have before building new things that come with expensive, long-term repair costs. There were three misses in the House’s approach, but all can be fixed if the House is truly committed to ensuring that we preserve and maintain our existing transportation network.

1) Too many definitions are either missing, or too vaguely defined

Because the committee left a lot of the vital details to the USDOT Secretary to determine via regulatory language, the final verdict on repair won’t be decided in the legislation (as it should). As an example, for states to add new capacity with core highway funds, they have to fulfill three conditions: They have to demonstrate that they are making progress on repair, they have to consider operational improvements and transit and show that expanding roadway capacity is more cost-effective than either, and they have to demonstrate that the expansion project would meet another performance target, like congestion reduction.

Those three terms in italics will be left up to the USDOT rulemaking process, and can already have a long history of being manipulated to add new capacity. It would help to put more explicit parameters on what defines “progress on repair.” Does it mean meeting the state or MPO’s own repair targets, which could be unambitious? And when it comes to measuring cost-effectiveness and benefit cost analysis, the way these have been applied to transportation projects in the past have overstated the benefits of highway capacity expansions and undervalued or failed to value climate, equity and public health benefits.

2) To truly prioritize repair, states should prove they can maintain the new things they build

Even if states fulfill these conditions above to add new capacity, there’s no language requiring the project sponsor to prove they can maintain the asset they are building. This is a big miss, and this is one of the primary reasons we’re all in this mess in the first place.

Even if states make valuable and measurable progress on state of good repair, it would be negligent to allow them to build new things without requiring that they consider and plan for how they will take care of them. You don’t buy a house when you manage to secure some of the upfront costs (a downpayment), you also have to prove to the bank that you have a plan for paying that monthly mortgage for the next 15 or 30 years. We already require transit capital project sponsors to provide a plan for long-term maintenance when they apply for federal funding. It’s time to start requiring this degree of stewardship and responsibility to a highway program that has been sorely lacking it. Simply adding this as a core requirement to the conditions for expansion via an amendment could bring about this powerful change.

3) All the tools the states have to fulfill this repair focus were designed to justify new highways

The biggest challenge here is that the House is counting on an entrenched culture that was organized around the building and expanding a national highway system to accomplish something entirely new. The tools that transportation agencies have at their disposal—the ones the House is asking them to use to fulfill this new focus on repair—were developed specifically to justify new highways. Without other changes, they will continue to do so.

The transportation demand models assume the same amount of driving in a neighborhood built only for cars as they do for a neighborhood built for walking. These models do not foresee that making space on a highway might invite more driving in the space cleared up. They often predict, strangely, that narrowing a lane in the city from 12 to 10 feet somehow means that the road can accommodate fewer 6-7 feet wide vehicles. These tools are old, flawed and often wrong. Comparing costs and benefits is a great idea, but we need to make clear that the benefits should be calculated in a way that is reasonably likely to be correct. And that can be done by simply asking the agencies to look back and report on how often their projections actually turn out to be right when making a justification for a massive new investment with taxpayer dollars.

We are hopeful that we’ll be able to report news of a specific amendment to make many of these fixes when the committee considers the bill, so stay tuned. We will need your support!

Wrapping up

If infrastructure is as bipartisan as everyone always claims then commonsense should prevail on this point. Republicans should care deeply about conserving taxpayer funds. Democrats should care about climate and equity impacts. Both should seek to maintain faith and public trust in the program. Strengthening these repair provisions should be an easy, bipartisan win and we urge Chairman DeFazio and House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee members to make it happen.

Explaining our three principles for transportation investment

Today, T4America is releasing a new set of three concrete, measurable principles for transportation investment.

Last week we explained why T4America is no longer advocating for more money for the federal transportation program and why we need a clear set of explicit goals for the federal program. Today, we’re rolling out our new principles, which are clear, simple, and measurable. You’ll find them incorporated into the “platform” section of our website and we’ll be using them to evaluate every single proposal in the months and years ahead: whether a standalone infrastructure plan or the forthcoming proposals for reauthorizing the nation’s surface transportation law that expires in 2020.

It’s time to stop spending billions with an unclear purpose for diminishing, marginal returns. We believe these three goals will help finally move us in the right direction.

#1 Prioritize maintenance

The process is inevitable as it is predictable every time the process of transportation reauthorization comes up. We’re stuck in a groundhog day with an infinite loop. Here’s how it goes:

Every interest group, every legislator, every witness before a congressional committee talks about the need to “repair our crumbling roads and bridges.” On cue, congressional leaders call for more money for the federal transportation program. And then no one makes any changes to policy to guarantee that this increased funding will actually be prioritized toward reaching a state of good repair. In fact, as we found in Repair Priorities, Congress has gone aggressively in the opposite direction by allowing states to do whatever they wish with the increase in funding. Many times, states use this money to build new infrastructure while letting their existing assets crumble. And then the same actors are back before Congress, talking about the need for more money to repair their “crumbling” infrastructure. Rinse and repeat.

Our first principle is not about creating some new federal program to achieve a state of good repair. And it’s not about how much money is needed to repair our infrastructure, either. Our principle is simply a commitment to the American people that the maintenance backlog is cut in half. This would be a sea change.

Congress can organize the program in any number of ways to cut the backlog in half. And if cutting the backlog in half over six years is the wrong target, let Congress tell us what the right target should be. But tell us exactly where we will be in addressing state of repair after this bill expires, not how much money will be spent. Until then, we believe half is right and we expect Congress to finally tie the program to their rhetoric.

#2 Design for safety over speed

When we talk about safety, we typically talk about reducing drunk driving, wearing seat belts, and wearing helmets on motorcycles. In recent years, thanks to leadership from former US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood, distracted driving was brought up to equal importance as these areas.

Yet what has been largely ignored is the role of speed itself in making our roadways completely unsafe for everyone outside of a motor vehicle. Speed isn’t always necessarily deadly. The way to make a high speed roadway safe is by separating opposing traffic; removing conflict points, like driveways and cross streets, and separating or removing cyclists and pedestrians. That’s called a limited-access highway. But we’ve tried to design for similar speeds on our arterial roadways in existing communities while retaining all the points of conflict that make those speeds deadly.

Between 2008 and 2017, drivers struck and killed 49,340 people who were walking on streets all across the United States, reaching levels in 2017 not seen since 1990. When crashes occur at higher speeds, they are more likely to be fatal, especially when they involve a person biking or walking. Our sister organization, the National Complete Streets Coalition, found in their report Dangerous by Design that most cyclist and pedestrian crashes occur on these arterial roadways in our urban and suburban areas—roads designed for high speed but without removing conflicts. If we want these roads to be safe, they either need to become limited-access highways (unlikely, expensive and damaging for the local context) or they need to be designed for lower speeds with lower speed limits.

We have to take this seriously. The NTSB issued a landmark study in 2017 about how speed is the #1 culprit in traffic fatalities, and that scores of crashes would not have been fatal at lower speeds. Currently we only track whether someone was driving over the speed limit. We don’t track whether the speed limit was inappropriately high. In fact, numerous local governments across the country are in arguments with states on who has the authority to lower speed limits. It’s time to determine and report when speed was a cause of a crash. It’s time to give local governments the authority to lower speeds to make a street appropriate for its surroundings. And engineers should design roadways in support of slower, safer speeds.

#3 Connect people to jobs and services by prioritizing accessibility

Fundamental to our transportation system (and the hundreds of billions of dollars we invest in it) is that it should provide people with access to jobs and services. This access is essential to an efficient economy, to ensuring that people can make a living and provide for their families, and to providing employers with reliable access to talent.

Our current federal transportation program uses a poor proxy for measuring access to jobs and services. Transportation agencies measure the speed of vehicle movement along observed portions of roadways and assume that if those vehicles can move quickly, then all trips must be smooth and short. That kind of measurement has resulted in a system that values a 40-minute commute to work in free-flowing traffic over a 20-minute commute in some congestion.

As it turns out, to make vehicles move quickly means building limited access roadways or widening roads and spreading out all destinations, making trips longer and biking or walking dangerous. So even though vehicles are traveling at high speed, people may not reach their destinations any faster because everything is more spread out. This is particularly true of pedestrians and cyclists, who once may have had to travel across short blocks, now have to cross long distances designed for cars, thanks to the limited-access changes that cut off local streets and eliminate shorter trips.

The technology has finally caught up. We can now understand, quickly and affordably, how well the transportation system connects people to the things they need. Thanks to aggregated GPS data, we can know where homes and likely destinations are located. We also have congestion data and real-time transit arrival information. With this data, we can accurately calculate how easily people can access the things that they need and how various proposed transportation investments would improve or worsen it.

Some states, particularly Virginia and Hawaii, have already started scoring potential projects under consideration for funding based on the extent to which they improve access to jobs and services. Massachusetts and Utah are investigating doing the same. Congress should follow their lead.

As Congress considers the next surface transportation policy bill, they should ensure that these destination access data are available nationwide. Congress should also update performance measures to replace 1950s proxy measures like speed of travel with accurate, updated 21st century measures. People don’t talk about the average speed of a trip: they talk about how long it took. We should evaluate transportation projects and the overall system the same way.

By the end of this next reauthorization cycle, the federal transportation program should be reoriented from a program focused on the fluidity of vehicle movement to one that prioritizes and measures access to jobs and services.

Go more in-depth on our principles here, and read our specific policy proposals for reauthorization here.

Is repair actually a priority?

While politicians are focused on how much more funding we should give to infrastructure, our upcoming report sheds light on how states are using existing funding for repair vs. new roads and how policy can get the nation back on track.

Earlier this week, President Trump, House Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Minority Leader Schumer met to discuss funding levels for a yet undefined infrastructure plan.

We don’t know what the plan will fund or build, what problems it’s trying to solve, or how we will measure its success—if at all—but politicians have somehow already settled on a $2 trillion price tag.

This is the standard practice on Capitol Hill when it comes to infrastructure, and we believe it’s time for a change.

Much of the rhetoric around this mythical infrastructure plan has focused on “repairing our crumbling roads and bridges.” But if past decisions are the best predictor of future behavior then much of any extra transportation spending will likely be squandered on building and expanding roads rather than repairing them—as we show in our forthcoming report, Repair Priorities 2019.

Repair Priorities 2019 will be released during Infrastructure Week on Tuesday, May 14. Join us for a webinar on Wednesday, May 15 at 3 p.m. ET for a closer look at the findings.

Despite the growing maintenance backlog, states have continued to spend a significant portion of funding to build new roads. Repair Priorities 2019 provides a national snapshot and state-by-state evaluation of current roadway pavement conditions, spending trends, and unmet needs. It also recommends crucial actions federal policymakers should take in the next transportation reauthorization bill to get the nation’s roads—and spending priorities—back on track.

As we have said repeatedly, when it comes to infrastructure we don’t have funding problem, we have a policy problem. But policy makers are still putting the cart before the horse, jumping straight to how much of our money they need before telling us why or what we’re going to get for it in the end. Repair Priorities will help make the case for policy change using the government’s own data.

Register for the webinar on Wednesday, May 15 at 3 p.m. ET.

Eight things to know about the president’s budget and infrastructure plan

After promising the release of an infrastructure plan since the early days of his administration over a year ago, President Trump finally released his long-awaited plan for infrastructure investment. Since he did it on the same day he released his budget request for the next fiscal year, it’s worth considering them together and asking: what do these proposals mean for infrastructure?

Here are eight things worth knowing about both the president’s infrastructure plan and his budget for 2019. Read T4America’s full statement on both proposals here.

1) “One cannot claim to be investing in infrastructure on the one hand while cutting it with the other.”

By only including a modest $200 billion in federal investment over ten years, the president’s so-called $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan isn’t a real plan—it’s a hopeful call for local communities, states, and the private sector to invest $1.3 trillion of their own money in infrastructure while the federal government largely sits on the sidelines. Look even deeper and you’ll discover that the $200 billion in federal investment isn’t actually new money overall—it’s mostly sourced from cuts to other programs, including key transportation programs. The president calls for large investments in infrastructure on the one hand while proposing to cut infrastructure programs in the budget with the other hand. Considered together, the infrastructure plan is like getting a bonus from the boss after their new budget just slashed your salary.

2) If the goal is to repair “crumbling” infrastructure, why not require it?

If our infrastructure is “crumbling,” why advance an infrastructure plan that doesn’t do anything to require that states or cities prioritize repair and maintenance with the new funding? Why give out new money that states can spend on costly new infrastructure with decades of built-in maintenance costs when we can’t afford to maintain what we’ve already built? A proposal meant to address America’s crumbling infrastructure almost never mentions maintenance or repair anywhere within it.

“One of the reasons there’s a break in trust between the taxpayer and the federal government is that there’s only so many times you can come before the taxpayer and say, ‘our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling, please give us more money to fix it,’ and then not dedicate it to fixing it,” noted T4A senior policy advisor Beth Osborne on CBC News on Monday evening. We’ve made this point routinely over the years: Why do we keep spending hefty sums on new roads and new lanes while repair backlogs get ignored?

Little accountability, no performance measures: In addition, though this proposal claims to be outcomes-based, there is almost no mention of actual goals. It proposes to invest new money, but to accomplish what exactly? It includes no requirements to measure how these billions will lead to improved roads, bridges or transit systems, better connect people to jobs and opportunity, or move people and goods more efficiently. There are no requirements to measure performance or hold anyone accountable for accomplishing specific goals with the money.

3) Ends federal support for building or improving public transportation

Just like the president’s first budget proposal released a year ago, this one also calls for an immediate halt to federally supported transit projects by eliminating 100 percent of funding for transit projects in development that don’t already have signed funding agreements with the federal government. This pulls the rug out from under at least 41 cities—many of whom have already raised new transportation revenues from voters at the ballot box—that were fully expecting the federal government to share around 50 percent of the cost. While transit projects could still theoretically compete for funding from the plan’s “incentives” program, they would have to compete against transportation, water, waste, power, and broadband projects for a smaller pool of funding.

Seattle is one of many cities that have raised new transportation revenues for transit at the ballot box with the full expectation of a federal contribution to help complete their projects.

4) Roadway projects will be free of new requirements to create value that would be imposed on transit projects

Value capture is a creative way to finance transit projects by “capturing” some of the increased land value that transit provides and using those anticipated revenues on the front end to pay a share of the costs. It can help fund transit improvements, but it’s not a solution that works everywhere, in part because many states don’t allow it and/or most transit agencies have zero control over land use. This infrastructure proposal treats transit projects differently than all other modes by requiring the use of this financing mechanism. New roads? They won’t even need to create a dime of new value to win funding from new incentive or grant programs, much less capture any of that value to pay for their costs. Like Alabama’s $5.3 billion, 52-mile bypass, known as the Northern Beltline, to be constructed north of Birmingham. At $102 million per mile, the project will be one of the country’s most expensive roadway projects, yet it and projects like it would be exempt from these requirements to create any value to pay a share of the costs.

This top-down requirement would put a burden on new transit projects that is not placed on any other new transportation investment and would essentially halt the development of dozens of smart transit projects across the country. It would also jeopardize funding for capital improvements for more than 400 rural transit providers where value capture is rarely feasible.

5) Cities and states already raising new transportation funding will have to do even more

The federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax since 1993. Since just 2012, 31 states have raised new transportation revenues — mostly by raising or otherwise modifying their fuel taxes. Yet the largest program ($100 billion) in this proposal flips the script and puts the onus on these same local and state taxpayers by changing the federal match on new projects from 80 percent to 20 percent. Asking localities to simply kick in more money would do little to guarantee better projects or even less reliance on federal funding—it’ll just occupy more of the local funding that states or cities could invest elsewhere or spend on long-term maintenance, and could just incentivize huge tolling projects, others with some sort of repayment mechanism, or the sale of public assets.

It either devalues or ignores outright local dollars already raised: This proposal penalizes cities like Indianapolis, Seattle, Raleigh, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Atlanta and scores of others that have already done the hard work of securing new local funding for transportation. How? Though localities are required to come up with 80 percent of a project’s cost, the plan ignores any funds raised more than three years ago—even if it’s a tax producing new revenue today. And for new funds raised within the last three years, there’s a sliding scale for how much those dollars are worth. The specific percentages aren’t detailed in the plan, but for example, $1.00 raised at the ballot box two years ago might only be worth 0.50¢ toward the 80 percent local share required by this plan. Many of those cities (and the 31 states) would have to raise yet more new funding to qualify.

6) It eliminates TIGER, one of the few competitive programs that exist today

The proposal completely eliminates the fiercely competitive TIGER program. This $500 million grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects and one of the most fiscally responsible transportation programs. TIGER projects brought 3.5 other dollars to the table for each federal dollar awarded through the first five rounds. And the competition for funds is in stark contrast to the majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to ensure that all states or metro areas get a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars. Unlike the old system of congressional earmarks, the projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible. There’s a reason that TIGER remains so popular with local communities even though around 95 percent of applicants lose in every round—it’s one of the only ways to fund the multimodal projects that are difficult to advance through conventional, narrowly-focused federal programs.

7) Money is set aside for rural areas, but governors will still control it

The plan sets aside $50 billion for rural areas, allocated directly to governors and awarded at their discretion to the projects that they choose. Each governor’s share will be determined via a formula that considers only lane miles and population while purporting to build transportation, water, waste, power, and broadband infrastructure. Is lane-miles an adequate metric for the full range of needs that our rural areas have? Block-granting money to states does not guarantee that local communities will get funding to invest in their highest priority infrastructure projects. Incentivizing cities and towns through competition is proven to be more effective in producing long-term results.

Without this money set aside, rural areas (and smaller cities) would have few chances to successfully win funding from the plan’s $100 billion incentives program. As Aarian Marshall wrote in Wired today, it “would favor applicants that can ‘secure and commit’ continuing funds for their project, including future money for operation, maintenance, and rehab. The ventures, in other words, that can pick up most of the tab. That’s a problem for cities that don’t have steady funding streams, or that find themselves in any of the 42 states that restrict locales’ rights to tax their citizens.” And these smaller areas will never be attractive places for the private investment that this plan assumes will materialize to make up that $1.3 trillion funding gap.

8) Makes long-term cuts to overall transportation funding

Buried in the document is a tiny yet significant detail about scaling down overall transportation spending by as much as $21 billion each year by the end of the decade due to the declining value of the gas tax. So in addition to making cuts to core transportation programs and providing no new revenue for transportation in the infrastructure proposal, the budget actually proposes to reduce transportation investment overall year by year, putting the screws to the cities, towns, and transit properties that depend upon formula funding to operate and maintain existing transportation programs or to make critical capital improvements.

Considered with the president’s FY19 budget request, this infrastructure plan will result in a net reduction in transportation spending and investment. It does not require that we first repair the myriad of assets already in a state of disrepair. It punishes communities that have already stepped up to address their own infrastructure challenges. It leaves rural areas without any guarantees and it hollows out the core funding for transportation that has carried the program for more than a generation. We strongly urge Congress to start over and craft a plan that provides real funding, fixes our current infrastructure inventory, funds smart, locally-driven and supported projects, and requires performance measures that enable taxpayers to understand what benefits they will receive for their investments.

Hold states accountable for repairing roads and bridges – send a letter to USDOT

The U.S. Department of Transportation is in the process of writing new rules to hold states accountable for the condition of their roads and bridges. USDOT’s strong first draft rule was a step in the right direction, and we want to thank them — and ensure they don’t bow to pressure to soften these requirements.

Can you take just one minute to sign this letter to USDOT? We’ll hand-deliver a copy straight to USDOT for you.

Did you already take action? Share this action with others:

The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. USDOT is working to establish these new metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion (coming soon!), air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system through an iterative process of draft rules, feedback, refined drafts and final rules.

Look, we get it: this is a wonky and arcane affair. So why should you take action and provide a comment on this pavement and bridge proposed rule? Because USDOT is truly listening to comments and making changes as a result.

USDOT’s first rule on roadway safety wasn’t a good one, to put it bluntly, and it failed to ensure that safety would improve. Yet the thousands of comments we delivered played a part in improving it.

In that draft, states were allowed to fail half of the fatality and injury targets and still receive a passing grade. But after receiving more than 1,500 comments, USDOT incorporated that feedback into this improved draft for roads and bridges, requiring progress on all targets — not just 50 percent of them.

Now USDOT is going to hear from the other side, those that don’t want states to be held to such high standards. We need to let USDOT know that we support the changes they made and that requiring progress across the board is just as essential for evaluating the condition of our roads and bridges.

Between 2009 and 2011, all U.S. states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads, and just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving existing roads and bridges. But by 2011, after spending more than half of all highway dollars on expansion projects, just 37 percent of our nation’s roadways were in ‘good’ condition. And today, more than 260 million trips are taken each year on the country’s structurally deficient bridges.

That’s not good enough. We need to hold states accountable to meet measurable targets with our tax dollars. USDOT has drafted a better rule to make that happen, and we need your help to ensure it stays that way.

Read and sign this letter today, and we’ll deliver it to USDOT before the May 8 deadline.

If you see nothing else this spring, you’ve got to watch the trailer for ‘Infrastructure!’

On his late night HBO show, the British comic John Oliver took up the cause of our nation’s infrastructure — with help from some Hollywood A-listers (and a couple suggestions from us).

Goodness knows we’ve tried to get America’s attention on the issue, and no matter how many catchy infographics or compelling reports full of eye-popping statistics we produce, they’ll never reach as many people as Hollywood does with even the most mediocre movie.

That was John Oliver’s conclusion on his weekly show: Hollywood has been blowing up our infrastructure for decades, and viewers will turn out reliably to watch the destruction time after time in Die Hard 9 or The Day After the Day After Tomorrow. Oliver decided that what we really need is a blockbuster movie that can make routine preventive maintenance on a bridge just as awesome as Bruce Willis can make blowing it all up with a F-22.

Watch the whole segment, but the explosive trailer for a sure-to-be Hollywood summer blockbuster starts around 17 minutes in.

We were delighted to be able to provide some background information to the show’s producers as they prepared the piece, but they never told us about the movie. Next time, maybe we should trade information for a few minor roles in the actual movie?

Credit where it’s due: With repair rule, the feds listened to public comment

In developing new standards for ensuring our roads and bridges are kept in good condition, officials at the U.S. DOT did something skeptics would find surprising: They really listened to public comment, and reflected it in the newly released rule.

T4America’s Beth Osborne

As we have noted here often, the 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) requires transportation agencies to begin using performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. The U.S. DOT is working to establish those metrics for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system.

State DOTs and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) will then set their own targets for areas. They then must show how their investment plans will help them reach the targets and report on the results. If they fail to make enough progress on say, road and bridge conditions, they would be expected to spend more in those areas.

Creating this brand new system from scratch is a challenge. DOT officials have to figure out which sets of data are truly valid measures and where the data come from; how much time and wiggle room to give states and MPOs in setting and meeting targets; and what happens when they don’t.

We at T4America and many of our allies howled last year when USDOT’s first proposed performance measure, on safety, allowed states and MPOs to fail outright on half of the measures, making the targets for states virtually meaningless. T4A and the Complete Streets Coalition responded with 1500 public comments saying that this was not good enough.

We are still waiting for the full rule on safety, but with the release of this second proposed rule on system conditions (i.e. bridge and pavement maintenance) USDOT has shown that they heard us on the question of how agencies will be held to account. The new rule proposes that MPOs and states must hit all of the required targets — 50 percent success is no longer a passing grade. And states must either beat the trends or, if their target is not as good as the trend line, they must hit their target. This is a substantial improvement. Considering the current condition of the country’s infrastructure, holding states’ and metros’ feet to the fire on state of repair is critically important. As Smart Growth America’s 2014 Repair Priorities report made clear, most states are still spending billions on new roads or expanding existing ones — while neglecting their growing repair backlogs.

Between 2009 and 2011, the latest year with available data, states collectively spent $20.4 billion annually to build new roadways and add lanes to existing roads. America’s state-owned road network grew by 8,822 lane-miles of road during that time, accounting for less than 1 percent of the total in 2011.

During that same time, states spent just $16.5 billion annually repairing and preserving the other 99 percent of the system. … [In 2011], just 37 percent of roads were in good condition that year—down from 41 percent in 2008.

Under the new rule, that kind of investment decisions and resulting diminishing performance should fail to pass muster in the future.

As someone who has worked for USDOT and is accustomed to the dense documents we sometimes produced, I was struck by the clarity and tone of this (still long and technical) rule. The impact of the public comments — including those provided by T4America and our partners — was clear. USDOT explains each issue they had to grapple with, what they heard from stakeholders on each issue, the principles they used to evaluate options, how each option performed in that evaluation and then their final choice. Reading the rule felt like having a frank conversation with the experts at FHWA writing the rule.

This is especially encouraging because the third rule on congestion (and other measures) undoubtedly will be the hardest and, in many ways, the most impactful. It includes measures that are newer to the federal program and can be defined many different ways. For example, is the goal of highway performance to keep traffic moving at the speed limit no matter how many cars are on it? Or is it to know that your trip today will take the amount of time you budgeted for it? If it is the former, we will have to spend a lot of money paving over a lot of places at marginal benefit to ensure a safe and efficient commute or delivery. If it is the latter, we can address the issue with a mix of more affordable operational improvements, emergency response and new capacity. In congestion, are we only interested in the speed of cars or do we give communities credit for letting their residents opt out of congestion entirely by taking transit, walking or biking?

One thing we now know for sure: USDOT is listening to the public, so we need to engage. We thank USDOT for the improvements and for listening. It is a heavy responsibility, and one the folks at the U.S. Department of Transportation executed very nicely.

There are a couple more ways they can improve the rule further, like making more of the process available to the public. I encourage everyone to comment on the current draft.

T4’s Andrea Kiepe writes about reaction to Minneapolis bridge collapse, potential for making repair a priority

T4 America’s Minnesota Field Organizer Andrea Kiepe penned a moving piece for the Infrastructurist this week about how the tragic Minneapolis bridge collapse four years motivates her work for transportation reform and investment today. It’s a timely subject too, given the recent decision by the governors of Kentucky and Indiana to shut down the Sherman Minton Bridge near Louisville for repairs.

“Thank God they closed it,” Andrea described as her initial reaction, adding: “How many more collapses and close calls before this country gets serious about keeping up with our infrastructure?”

That’s a question that motivates all of us at T4. We’ve seen the political climate change a lot during the last three years, but our nation’s infrastructure needs haven’t. Most in Washington seem to believe, in concept at least, that there are no Republican or Democratic bridges. The attentive response to the closure from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul, both of Kentucky, corroborates this consensus.

Andrea writes of being moved by the words of Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who said at the time of the collapse: “A bridge should just not fall down in the middle of America, not a bridge that is an eight-lane freeway, not a bridge I drive my 13-year-old daughter over every day.” Andrea continued:

That experience is one reason why, today, I am working to motivate people to get Congress to repair our nation’s bridges and other infrastructure, as an organizer for Transportation for America. The memory still brings tears to my eyes, and I want desperately to make sure people remember how much we have riding on our bridges, our trains and buses, and on our roads.

It’s tempting for politicians and everyday Americans alike to focus on the bridge in their community. But this is a national issue that requires bold nationwide action. Kentucky has more than 1,300 structurally deficient bridges, and Indiana has nearly 2,000. The average age of a U.S. is 42 years, and most were only built to last about 50 years. In other words, if you think the problem is bad now, just wait until 2020 or later.

Both President Obama’s American Jobs Act and a long-term transportation bill present an opportunity to get to work fixing our nation’s bridges, and we hope to see Congress act soon.

Whether the sense of shared responsibility over our nation’s infrastructure can translate into concrete action remains to be seen, but as Andrea put it: “we Americans can dream, can’t we?”

Photo courtesy of the Infrastructurist.