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Ten things to know about the BUILD Act’s failure to produce better outcomes

The BUILD America 250 Act, approved by a House committee early on Friday, May 22nd, is a lot like the IIJA—minus a whole lot of funding for transit, rail, and reducing emissions. Here are ten things to know about the bill and how it will fail to advance T4America’s simple three priorities.

After a year of hearing that “the House is definitely going to release and markup a draft bill sometime this month,” Lucy kept the football on the ground, and the House finally released a five-year, $474 billion reauthorization proposal last Sunday on the eve of this year’s Infrastructure Week. Predict the same thing every month, and eventually it will come true. 

How will Congress pay for this enormous bill? The short answer is they won’t—your grandkids will. A modest amount of new funding will come via a controversial new fee on electric vehicles, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the enormous gap between revenues and spending. Just like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), an enormous subsidy from all taxpayers would be required to cover annual spending that is roughly double what the gas tax brings in each year. And all that for a fairly status quo proposal that fails to meet the moment and will not deliver a transportation system that safely, affordably, and reliably gets us all where we need to go. 

But in a bill with less money than the IIJA, it’s transit and passenger rail that take the hit. 

Though leadership on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee describes it as a $580 billion bill, in reality, it includes only $474 billion in guaranteed funding, representing a cut from the $539 billion guaranteed by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nearly all of that difference comes from cuts to transit, passenger rail, and scrapped competitive grant programs. Highways? They get a healthy bump in guaranteed funding.

1) There was a notable attempt to prevent a repeat of the Trump administration’s massive flood of grant cancellations

This administration has been unwilling to follow the current transportation law, as evidenced most clearly by their abrupt 2025 cancellation of billions in grants that were previously awarded to states and local communities. The BUILD Act included some surprising language aimed at preventing a repeat: “the Secretary may not terminate, withhold, or delay the execution of a grant agreement for a grant or award (in part or in whole) made using funds made available under this Act” based on any arbitrary reasons or a change in preferences of a new administration.  While this provision would be a step in the right direction, it unfortunately does nothing to restore the billions in grants rescinded under the IIJA. 

Another way to think about this provision: it will successfully prevent the cancellation of grant funding for the kinds of projects that this administration will absolutely not select in the first place. This is a move in the right direction, but it’s slamming the proverbial barn door after the horses are already in another zip code.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) did attempt to restore the canceled IIJA grants via this amendment during Thursday’s marathon committee markup. This amendment, which failed on a voice vote, would have retroactively applied to all grants awarded under IIJA, noting that “the Secretary shall obligate and execute grant agreements for any project that was selected, awarded, or publicly announced for funding by the Department on or after November 15, 2021” via the IIJA or Inflation Reduction Act, and prevent the Secretary from canceling them. When it was offered during the markup, Chairman Sam Graves backed the Trump administration’s decision to cancel these grants, noting that Sec. Duffy inherited a backlog of unobligated funds, so the only solution was obviously to cancel them all and take back the money. 

Rep. Huffman had some support, but considering the fact that canceled grants spanned republican and democrat districts alike, you’d think that a sizable number of committee members—but especially those in the minority—would be loudly standing up for those communities and making the restoration of these grants one of their fundamental prerequisites for support. 

Apparently not.

Grant cancellations aside, here are nine other things to know about the BUILD America 250 Act, organized around our three simple principles. (Note: We’re just calling it the BUILD Act from here on.)

Fix it first

Overall, this bill fails to make meaningful strides towards prioritizing maintenance and repair on our roadways. States are not required to demonstrate progress toward any hard and fast targets for road or bridge conditions before building new road capacity with federal-aid highway programs. There is no change to the current paperwork exercise of performance management, and states are not required to set any targets they’d be held accountable for meeting. (Read more about this T4America principle)

2) Dedicated bridge repair funding is back, but lacks accountability

Congress eliminated a dedicated bridge repair program back in 2012, but what’s old is always eventually new again, and the BUILD Act creates a new dedicated formula program for bridge repair. Some IIJA bridge programs are consolidated into a new $9.2 billion annual program—creatively called the Bridge Program. Each state would receive $75 million, plus an amount based on factors like bridge area and the amount of bridge area in poor condition. Some money is set aside to be spent on the thousands of oft-overlooked bridges not on the federal-aid highway system (though states can opt out of this), and 25 percent is set aside for states to run a competition for awards to locally-owned bridges. States have to produce a new report describing progress made on reducing the number of bridges in poor condition, but there are no real penalties for failure. 

Beyond this formula program, there’s a new $2 billion annual competitive grant program (without guaranteed funding) that’s focused on improving the safety, efficiency, and reliability of bridges on the National Highway System only. While the details are different, with dedicated funding and little accountability, the BUILD Act’s approach is not that dissimilar from our pre-2012 approach to bridge repair. 

3) The slightest of head nods toward repair accountability

The National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) is the largest highway-focused program that states have control of. Within this program, states will have to develop and maintain a state asset management plan. Under BUILD, any state that fails to develop and implement its asset management plan will see the federal share for projects within NHPP drop down to just 65 percent. While that sounds like a move in the right direction, there are no requirements that states set or meet binding, positive targets on repair. That’s not going to cut it.

UPDATE: This 65 percent provision already existed in current law. The updated language makes some small changes to how USDOT will assess compliance, but this is not a notable change in the BUILD Act. – Ed. 6/17/2026

4) Reconnecting Communities is functionally dead

This bill completely eliminates the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant program, which was best understood as the authorized, long-term version of the Reconnecting Communities pilot program, which technically ended this year. This likely means the end of federal money spent on repairing divisive infrastructure, and the end of a program T4America helped create back in 2020. 

The concept of Reconnecting Communities survives as a project eligibility within a new grant program (STAG) that would replace the BUILD competitive grant program. (Yes, this is confusing. The BUILD grant program is the one formerly known as TIGER and RAISE.) But considering that this administration canceled nearly every single unobligated Neighborhood Access and Equity grant project, it’s unlikely that any reconnecting-style projects would win funding in this new grant program under this administration. The Senate should resuscitate this program, and there was an amendment offered during the markup to restore the Reconnecting Communities program and rename it.

Safety over speed

While there are a few changes that could be perceived as small improvements to safety policy, the program fails to make improving safety a centerpiece priority across the entire program and will do very little to reverse the U.S.’s roadway safety crisis. (Read more about this T4America principle)

5) Safe Streets for All local grant program survives

Tucson residents paint the street orange, green, blue, and white to draw attention to a bike lane in their Complete Streets demonstration project.
Photo courtesy of Living Streets Alliance staff. From Smart Growth America’s profile of Tucson’s Complete Streets policy. https://smartgrowthamerica.org/tucson-complete-streets-is-about-more-than-pavement/

Perhaps the best news in this entire bill is the survival of the Safe Streets for All (SS4A) grant program, which is only available directly to cities and local communities (including tribes) for projects to make concrete changes to their streets to improve safety.  SS4A’s survival is good news for safety, and it was also moved into the highway title of the bill and given guaranteed funding through contract authority, sparing it from future appropriations fights.  In IIJA, 40 percent of SS4A funds were (likely mistakenly) set aside for planning, and one of the eligible uses was for quick-build demonstration projects. The BUILD Act reduces that set-aside to a much more rational 5 percent. That might seem too low, but considering how much money has been put into planning over the last five years, it’s time to pour more money into implementation and actually building projects to improve safety.

The bad news is that the program is roughly half the size it was during the IIJA, and all mentions of Vision Zero were eliminated. And we’re putting a lot of faith in a program that has already been weaponized by this USDOT. USDOT has selectively canceled SS4A grants they didn’t like and also changed the criteria to let applicants know they won’t select projects that make people safer by removing parking or repurposing lane space. This USDOT wants to improve safety with SS4A grants, as long as those improvements don’t come at the expense of their other, higher priorities. 

6) States aiming for more people to die on their roads have to inform the Secretary

Under our weak system of measuring performance, numerous states have routinely set targets for more people to be injured/killed on their roadways. These targets have been posted publicly on FHWA’s website, but the BUILD Act makes a subtle change to require the Secretary to notify Congress when states do it in the future. But there will continue to be no penalty for setting these regressive targets, and Congress has not shown any appetite to create actual accountability for reducing roadway deaths. But it will be harder for Congress to claim they didn’t know that states were aiming for such bad performance. 

Invest in the rest 

While the BUILD Act increases guaranteed funding for highways, guaranteed transit funding is going down. There are a few changes to provide some modest flexibility to use capital dollars for operations, but there are none of the dramatic increases in transit capital or operations funding on par with what it would truly take to invest in the rest and build a world-class transit system. (Read more about this T4America principle.)

7) Guaranteed highway money is going up while transit is decreasing. 

IIJA provided an historic increase in guaranteed funding for highways and transit. That’s only the case for highways this time around. 

Though the bill’s authors are quick to note that transit contract authority is increasing over IIJA levels, the guaranteed amount for transit is actually going down, thanks to the loss of advance appropriations. Transit goes from $91.2 billion in guaranteed funding in the IIJA down to $87.6 billion in BUILD. Highways, meanwhile, jump from $351 billion up to $376 billion in guaranteed funding. This also means that transit is dipping below its typical 20 percent share of the overall bill. The 80/20 split has often fluctuated slightly above or below that 20 percent threshold, but the decrease is still notable.

8) Changes to the transit capital program…which is currently frozen by the Trump administration

No one should be celebrating any positive changes in the program for building and expanding transit systems, considering that it has been ground to a halt by the current administration. The bipartisan authors in the House have failed to recognize this reality nor have they done anything in this bill to attempt to require this administration to follow the law and administer this program in this new five-year proposal.

There are some changes to streamline transit capital project delivery, including rewarding transit agencies that have recently navigated the federal process successfully with a speedier process. Likely recognizing the increasing costs of bus rapid transit projects and other “Small Starts” projects, BUILD raises the funding threshold for these projects up to $1 billion (with a 50 percent max federal share) and changes their name to Streamlined Starts. The law would broaden the eligibility for Core Capacity projects, which could make it possible for projects to do things like investing in automation to increase throughput on a busy rail line. And transit projects in the pipeline can receive extra credit in the evaluation process for local policies in favor of housing development near transit. 

On the negative side, the IIJA-created program for procuring low- and no-emission buses is toast.

9) A new focus on transit safety, crime, and fare evasion

bus driver wearing mask adjusts mirror
Image from Flickr/MTA NYC

There’s a significant new focus on transit safety and fare evasion—both with funding set aside from transit formulas, but also in new policy requirements. 

Instead of just one percent, urban agencies will be required to spend 1.5 percent of their transit formula funds on a wide range of eligible transit safety and security projects, including fare evasion prevention, new technology, and new police officers. Agencies have to start gathering and reporting data to FTA on how much money they are losing to fare evasion, and there are requirements for making fare evasion a criminal or civil offense. There are no penalties for the states or cities that continue building streets and roads that ensure that anyone’s walking trip to transit might be the most dangerous part of their journey.

10) Passenger rail loses out big time

After $66 billion guaranteed in IIJA for rail, the BUILD Act provides zero dollars in guaranteed funding for passenger rail and reduces authorized spending below IIJA levels, while making some marginal improvements around rail permitting and Amtrak accountability, and logically combining several programs. 

The result of losing the guaranteed funding means that Congress will have to do something it didn’t have to do over the last five years: consider every year whether or not it will provide the authorized amounts of rail funding. Policy improvements aside, the rail title overall decreases federal investment in passenger rail and is a step back. We expect the Senate Commerce Committee to take a different approach.

The bill was approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on a 66-2 vote in the wee hours of Friday morning. Stay tuned on the blog for more on the law and the next steps.

Here’s how we will grade the next surface reauthorization bill

Empty scorecard to grade a bill against three principles: safety over speed, fix it first, invest in the rest.

With the IIJA expiring in September, a draft version of the next surface transportation reauthorization will eventually be released. As with previous bills, T4America plans to release a public scorecard on how well Congress’s proposal would steer the federal program toward achieving its stated goals. Here’s what we are looking for.

Transportation for America is ready to grade the next surface transportation reauthorization, and our rubric is incredibly simple.

Empty scorecard to grade a bill against three principles: safety over speed, fix it first, invest in the rest.

The federal government has spent $1.5 trillion over the past 30 years to achieve its stated goals of improving safety, fixing infrastructure, reducing congestion and emissions, and improving public health. The reality is that despite the massive amount of money poured into the system, we don’t have much to show for it. The success of the next transportation bill should not be measured by how much or how little money we put into the program, but by how well it holds the system accountable for achieving our national goals and being responsible to the American taxpayer. 

Similar to our past scorecards, T4America will be grading legislative text on a pass/fail basis against our three core principles. In line with these principles, T4America will be looking for how the text prioritizes 1) safer roads over speed, 2) the maintenance of existing infrastructure, and 3) investing in more transportation options.

Safety over speed

The roads in most developed countries are safer than ours and continue to improve, but Congress continues to prioritize vehicle speed above all else, including safety.  Safety needs to come first. 

What we’ll be looking for: States and MPOs should be required to set concrete targets to improve roadway safety and reduce roadway deaths and to report progress on safety goals. When states fail to meet those safety targets, their flexible funding under the National Highway Performance Program and the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program should be dedicated to projects that are proven to move the needle on safety. Localities also need evidence-based guidance for roadway designs, and the federal government needs to overhaul its own road safety guidance and provide localities the freedom to experiment. Read T4America’s policy recommendations for prioritizing safety over speed in surface transportation reauthorization. 

An emerging consideration: As the autonomous vehicle (AV) market continues to expand, it is vital to ensure that the rapid growth of this industry does not come at the expense of safety. The next law must promote transparency, make AV data public, and require reporting of collisions, malfunctions, and other anomalies. Local oversight also needs to be preserved, and localities should be able to determine how autonomous vehicles are deployed and operated on their streets. Finally, left unchecked, empty AVs could clog our roads while waiting for passengers. USDOT should establish a pricing mechanism that disincentivizes AV operators from allowing their vehicles to operate without passengers, preventing roads from being filled with empty cars.  Read T4America’s other policy recommendations on ensuring AVs meet their potential. 

Fix it first 

Prioritizing roadway expansion and leaving maintenance as an afterthought, with no long-term plan for decades of maintenance costs, is nonsensical. We can’t afford to keep expanding the size and scope of the system without a clear plan to maintain what we’ve already built. Our last Repair Priorities report showed that we’d need $231.4 billion per year just to keep our existing road network in acceptable condition. Every new road, lane-mile, or bridge adds a costly new financial obligation for decades to come, pushing that number even higher.  We need to be accountable to taxpayers and cannot continue to defer maintenance.  Federal funding should prioritize fixing what we have before building anything new.

What we’ll be looking for: Legislative language must center accountability to ensure that maintenance is not on the back burner. If federal funds are given to grantees to increase roadway capacity, recipients should first demonstrate that they can maintain that asset over the course of its entire lifetime. Grants should not be distributed to agencies that cannot maintain the capacity they claim to need. States and MPOs should be required to set clear, measurable targets for improving pavement conditions, and when they fail to meet those targets, USDOT should step in and reorient National Highway Performance Program and Surface Transportation Block Grant funds toward repair. See the rest of T4Americas’s policy recommendations to prioritize existing maintenance needs. 

Fixing roads should also include reconnecting communities and addressing the harms of previous infrastructure decisions. Projects built in the 1950s (and continuing through today) destroyed local economies and undermined the health and connectivity of people living near highways. Language that expands programs like the Reconnecting Communities Program (RCP), a competitive grant that funds the redesign and deconstruction of outdated infrastructure, must be included in the text (we’ll be looking out for the REPAIR Infrastructure Act, which continues the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program). Opportunities like RCP offered communities the chance to improve access to daily needs such as jobs, schools, food, recreation, and healthcare resources by building complete streets, fixing sidewalks, and investing in access to public transit. Additionally, models need to be updated for accuracy so agencies can accurately assess the impacts of highway alternative projects, and agencies must be transparent with the public about which models they use. Read the rest of our policy recommendations for an idea of what we are looking for in the next surface reauthorization bill to fix our past infrastructure history. 

Invest in the rest

As the U.S. has built out the highway system, there has been too little support for other modes of transportation. Households need choices for how to get around, and we do not have freedom if there is a monopoly on mobility. The next surface reauthorization bill text must ensure we can build out a world-class transit system, a strong passenger rail network, and take charge of the electric vehicle market (EV).

What we’ll be looking for: One of the biggest challenges localities face is securing reliable funding for transit operations. Fare revenue does not cover the full cost of transit operations, and only smaller systems are allowed to use their federal funds on operations. Larger systems do not have that flexibility, and even if they did, that flexibility comes at the expense of money for capital improvements. In the next surface bill, T4America will be looking for policies that provide robust support for federal transit operations (similar to the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act). Rural communities also rely on transit, and we will be looking for language that improves mobility services in rural areas by streamlining funding from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Read T4America’s full policy recommendations on how to build out world-class transit. 

Passenger rail needs to be preserved and expanded on in the next surface bill. Amtrak’s national network of long-distance and state-supported routes provides vital transportation connections for communities. We are looking for policies that restructure roles and responsibilities, so that Amtrak’s board includes representation from individuals with demonstrated interest in the system and regular experience using passenger rail. The legislation should also encourage residential, commercial, and mixed-use development near rail stations to support transit-oriented development. Read T4America’s complete policy recommendations on building world-class passenger rail. 

Federal transportation policy should position the U.S. to build a competitive advantage in electric vehicle manufacturing. An important part of supporting this market is expanding a reliable charging network by increasing the flexibility within the EV fueling program. The surface bill should include reducing unnecessary restrictions on the National Electric Vehicle (NEVI) program and ensuring that EVs pay into the system just like gas and diesel cars do. Read T4America’s other policy recommendations on investing in the EV market. 

Looking ahead

T4America will look closely at any reauthorization proposal and grade it against our three core principles—priorities with broad support from voters across the political spectrum. Bills that fall short of these very attainable goals will be rated accordingly, while proposals that deliver the mark will earn a ringing endorsement. We will publish our scorecards and determine whether the next surface reauthorization law would actually deliver measurable and improved outcomes. 

How well does the House’s new transportation bill advance T4America’s core principles?

Update, June 29: This bill passed the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) and will be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. A bipartisan amendment to fix the issues with the bill’s repair provisions was accepted by unanimous consent in the House (T&I) Committee. It’s our pleasure to change our scorecard below from 2/3 to a 3/3. We thank Chair Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. Jesús G. “Chuy” García, and Rep. Mike Gallagher for their tremendous support and leadership on this specific issue.

Federal transportation policy is in desperate need of an overhaul. This week, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released a bill that makes substantial changes to connect the program to outcomes that Americans value. Here’s more on how the House bill starts to redirect transportation policy toward maintaining the current system, protecting the safety of people on the roads, and getting people to jobs, schools, groceries and health care. 

You can read our full statement about the bill here.

1) Takes steps to prioritize maintenance across the board

Prioritize maintenance is the first of our three simple core principles for federal investment in transportation. (Read more about all three here.) This bill doesn’t go as far as our specific call to cut the road, bridge, and transit maintenance backlog in half by dedicating formula dollars for maintenance, but it does push transportation agencies to prioritize maintenance in other concrete ways. Everyone in Congress talks nonstop about raising new money to “repair our crumbling roads and bridges,” and then they never make the requisite policy changes to guarantee it’ll ever happen. With this bill, the walk is starting to line up with the talk.

We should note that the overall highway funding in this bill is indeed growing overall, but we hope the language included in this proposal would lead to that money being spent in a different way. For one, 20 percent of the two biggest sources of state DOT highway funds are dedicated to bridge repair.1 For another, states will have to demonstrate three things before they can add new capacity with funds from the National Highway Performance Program, the largest highway program.2 DOTs would have to 1) demonstrate they are making progress on repair, 2) consider operational improvements and transit and show that expanding roadway capacity is more cost-effective than either, and 3) demonstrate that the expansion project would meet another performance target, like congestion reduction. This is a good step; however, this will only work if it’s matched with a strong standard to determine what defines “progress on repair” as well as a requirement that DOTs base their decisions and cost-effectiveness calculation on transportation models with a strong history of accuracy—and most currently do not.

Additionally, even if they 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, like we require transit project sponsors to do. That’s a big miss.

On the transit side, a new $600 million program is intended only for local transit projects which improve state of good repair (or other vital performance measures like emissions reduction, safety, or access.) There’s also a new formula program for keeping transit buses up to date that will always prioritize the agencies with the oldest buses, creating a rolling funding increase targeting the oldest buses as we try to modernize the nation’s transit fleet.

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 an epidemic of death on our nation’s roads and the highest number of people being struck and killed while walking and biking in three decades—disproportionately killing Black Americans and people in other communities of color. In this bill, safety goes from a talking point to action, focusing on making our roads safe for everyone and providing the money and standards for transportation agencies to build Complete Streets.

For starters, this proposal would take away the ability of state DOTs to set negative annual targets for safety. In other words, they can’t set a target for more people to die on their roads next year. Last year the National Complete Streets Coalition pointed out that not only were more people walking and biking being struck and killed by drivers in many states and they were 7 times more likely to be people of color, but many of those states were setting “safety targets” that assumed more people would die and there was nothing they could or would do to stem the tide. (Many “succeeded.”) The House bill should push those states to realize that there are things they can and must do in the design of their roadways to improve safety.

The proposal also dedicates more funding to protect the most vulnerable users and make communities more welcoming to pedestrians and bicyclists. This includes: 1) requiring states with the highest levels of pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities to set aside funds to address those safety needs;3 2) increasing Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) funds by 60 percent from $850 million per year to an estimated $1.5 billion per year (which typically funds biking and walking projects); and 3) preventing states from transferring any of those TAP funds to other programs unless they make funds available to local governments who could identify no suitable projects. In a typical year, states transfer $150 million from this small program into the much larger highway programs.

There are also several provisions to embed safety into the planning and standards of transportation agencies. The bill would require FHWA to update its Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) to require speed limits to be set 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, 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. States would also be allowed to use various funds to create plans for Complete Streets and Vision Zero plans—an effort to completely eliminate traffic fatalities, in part through street design. Finally, the bill would require each state to conduct a vulnerable road user safety assessment as part of its strategic highway safety plan.

This bill is markedly different than its predecessors and if enacted it will most certainly create a safer transportation system and save lives.

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

Our third principle is measuring transportation success by how many jobs and services people can access, not how fast cars can drive on specific segments of road, as our current program does. 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.

Access to technology like GIS and cloud computing allows us to now measure travel by all modes from residential areas to jobs and services. With this information, we can consider all kinds of transportation projects and all transportation users equally. We can also see when it is more cost-efficient to build the things people need closer to them, rather than defaulting to building more transportation projects to make far away necessities less inconvenient to travel to.

This is where this bill most hits the mark. 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. Right now, the program assumes if vehicle traffic is moving that trips are easy and access is high. This ignores those who can’t or don’t drive, which are much more likely to be those who are low-income, people of color, or those who are mobility-impaired. Under the House bill, state DOTs and MPOs must consider whether people traveling (not just driving) can reach jobs, schools, groceries, medical care and other necessities. And they will be penalized if they fail to use federal funding to improve that access.

Additionally, the House proposal creates an Office of Transit-Supportive Communities within the Federal Transit Administration to provide funding, technical assistance, and coordination of transit and housing projects within the USDOT and across the federal government. Putting housing (and especially attainable housing) close to transit is a powerful way to increase access to jobs and necessities. Further, this proposal adds affordable housing into the planning considerations for MPO and state DOT Transportation Improvement Programs, as well as for future transit capital grants. Through this legislation, the House authors recognize the connection between transportation, housing and development and propose bringing them together in federal policy and investments.

The score:

The INVEST Act checks two of the three boxes in our scorecard, but especially access and safety where the authors showed real comprehension of the problems and innovation on the solutions. On repair, the final verdict will be decided in the regulatory work that is done by USDOT, which is not ideal. We strongly recommend that the House strengthen their language on repair to ensure that we don’t end up with a much larger overall program with the same problem as before: neglected maintenance needs while states find creative ways to continue building things they can’t afford to maintain. On the whole, we’re glad to see the House move the program in a new direction, which is a vast improvement over the current proposal from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which got an “F” for their costly status quo approach.

Learn more: Read our follow-up post that delves into nine other (mostly positive) things to note about this bill.

What’s inside presidential candidates’ transportation plans?

Our director Beth Osborne often jokes that transportation is the first agenda item on politicians’ second to-do list—which is why it never gets done. Most presidential candidates are no different, advocating for business-as-usual transportation funding or embedding transportation across multiple plans.  Here’s what’s in them. 

Photo of an Amy Klobuchar campaign event in Des Moines by Phil Roeder on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

At Transportation for America, we believe that transportation shouldn’t play second fiddle. Rethinking transportation policy has enormous potential to solve so many of our problems, from economic inequality to climate change. But transportation is consistently glazed over by our political leaders. 

Which is why we ranked leading presidential candidates on how well their platforms meet T4America’s three guiding principles for transportation policy: prioritizing maintenance, safety over speed, and access to jobs and services.

But before we begin: If any campaign wants to reboot their transportation platform, give us a ring—we are happy to help! 

Donald Trump: Fail

Our 45th president is under the false impression that the private sector will “gift” government money to fix our infrastructure. But it will never happen. 

Both President Trump’s proposed infrastructure package and the Senate bill that POTUS endorsed during the most recent State of the Union—America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act—fails to achieve our three principles. Billions of new dollars for the existing, broken transportation program with no call to use those funds on repair first, address the unsafe design objectives of the main highway program or measure how well the transportation program connects people to jobs and services.  This failure to address the major flaws of the underlying program overshadow the Senate bill’s notable new programs, like a climate title and Complete Streets requirements. 

We appreciate that President Trump tried to eliminate the funding silos between modes and infrastructure categories and shake up the transportation program. But his administration’s hostility to transit has slowed the release of transit grants and resulted in a $500 million cut to the critical Capital Investment Grants program—the main source of federal funding to build and expand transit around the country. If President Trump wants to make a difference in transportation, he needs to grapple with the fact that transportation investment will require public dollars.

Joe Biden: Fail

Former Vice-President Joe Biden’s plan is business-as-usual. Under his infrastructure plan, federal transportation policy sticks to its storied role as a pass-through program to states and transportation departments, with no real accountability for how the money is spent. 

His plan talks about the importance of repairing roads and bridges, but there’s nothing in the proposal to guarantee that it happens. As we learned in our report Repair Priorities, many states spend more on road expansion than maintenance—which is completely legal and would continue to be kosher under the Biden proposal. 

To his credit, Biden tries to make up for the emissions and economic damage wrought by the baseline program by funding some side projects—like transit, passenger rail, and Complete Streets. But layering good programs on top of a program that causes the problems isn’t smart policy. 

Lastly, Biden’s plan makes no mention of measuring the success of the transportation program by improving people’s access to jobs and services, which is why he flunks on access.

Michael Bloomberg: Pass

There’s a lot to like in Michael Bloomberg’s infrastructure plan. The former New York City mayor is the only candidate who leads with updating and improving the structure of the transportation program itself—not just pouring more money into a broken system. He calls out the transportation program’s total lack of goals and his proposes assessing how transportation projects improve “connectivity to jobs, equity, accessibility, development efficiency, health and environmental effects,” according to his plan. 

Additionally, Bloomberg’s plan spends a lot of time detailing the importance of street design in ensuring safety for all road users, which is why he passes our safety metric. He specifically sets a safety goal of saving 20,000 lives by 2025 “by adopting safe street designs, lowering speed limits and implementing other measures.” Setting goals for improved safety at all is a step forward, as there is no federal requirement for states to set safety targets that actually call for fewer fatalities than currently occur in a state. 

We’re not thrilled that his first priority is to “fix congestion and bottlenecks.” Oftentimes people interpret this as widening highways; but as many of us know, widening highways only makes traffic worse. However, his proposal calls for addressing congestion by repairing roads and bridges as well as expanding transit.

Pete Buttigieg: Pass

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg would make big changes to the formulas at the heart of the transportation program. His plan would require states plan for maintenance before they’re allowed to build new or wider highways with federal funding. Requiring maintenance before expansion earns Buttigieg a ✓ by our standards.

Pete’s plan calls for instituting a national Vision Zero plan, which is radical for a country where states are allowed to set targets for pedestrian fatalities above the actual number of deaths. He would require that states “actively improve their safety records or road design processes, or else lose federal funding for other roadway projects,” according to his plan. 

Lastly, Mayor Pete’s plan scores high on access. He would require that states, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and any other recipient of federal transportation funding demonstrate how projects improve access to jobs and services. That is key: requiring progress towards goals—and even setting goals—in order to receive funding is common sense. Sadly, it is not a feature of our current transportation program. 

Pete’s plan is similar to Bloomberg’s. The big difference is in how he communicates it: Buttigieg leads with funding, not what he’d do with the transportation program. We think this is a bad way to do policy. After all, in what other policy area (or facet of life, for that matter) do people tell you the price before they tell you what they’re selling? 

What isn’t clear is how funding will be shifted between modes, if at all. With a President Pete, are we still in a world where highways get 80 percent of the funding pie, leaving only 20 percent for transit? 

Elizabeth Warren: Fail

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s transportation “platform” leaves a lot to be desired. Her campaign lacks a dedicated transportation plan, embedding the proposal within other policy platforms. 

Similar to Biden, Warren proposes new grant programs designed to fix the problems caused by the traditional federal transportation program, but it doesn’t call for fixing the the program itself. She includes additional funding to electrify our vehicle fleet, but there is no mention of creating safe streets for all users and improving access for non-drivers so that people can emit less by using more efficient modes (while having more equitable, affordable access to economic opportunity).

We admire the creative thinking behind Senator Warren’s “Build Green” program, which is modeled off of USDOT’s successful TIGER program (before the Trump administration watered it down and renamed it BUILD). But without changing our current transportation program—one that builds highways we don’t need while our infrastructure crumbles—Warren’s plan wouldn’t bring about the transformation we need.

Bernie Sanders: Fail

Senator Sanders’ platform includes so much money.

But as we have learned time and time again: more money won’t solve our transportation problems. The problem is what we’re funding, not how much. In fact, more money might make the problem worse. 

Sanders’ plan includes $75 billion for the Highway Trust fund “to improve roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure,” based off of high 2015 Rebuild America Act. But there are no assurances in the proposal that this money would be dedicated to repair first. We know that when states are not required to repair their infrastructure, they often spend those funds on expansion first. Ribbon cuttings for new things are more fun that maintaining the things we already have, like dessert is more fun than flossing.

While he includes a laudable goal to increase transit ridership by 65 percent by 2030 with a $300 billion investment targeted toward transit-oriented development and improving transit service for seniors, people with disabilities, and and rural communities, there is no mention of investments to make our streets safer so that people can walk to the transit stop. Further, the lack of focus on improving access for all means we would be likely to continue building a program that does not provide equitable, affordable access to economic opportunity. 

Amy Klobuchar: Fail

Senator Klobuchar’s plan is even more traditional than Joe Biden’s. Her hope is that putting more money into the current program will inspire it to behave in ways it never has before. 

Klobuchar—who represents the state where the notorious 35W Mississippi River Bridge collapsed in 2007—pledges to make “smart investments” to repair our infrastructure, but doesn’t guarantee that states will be required to spend federal dollars on maintenance before expansion. This gives Amy an “F” in our book. 

Unlike Biden’s plan, however, Klobuchar doesn’t mention Complete Streets—or any safety measures, for that matter. In addition, Amy doesn’t mention measuring the success of transportation programs by how well they connect people to jobs and services. In fact, performance standards don’t come up once in her plan. 

In conclusion…

Only two of the presidential candidates—both former mayors—receive passing grades on their transportation plans, according to our three principles. Only two of the many politicians vying to be the most impactful person in the country understand what it takes to save Americans time, money, and from the dangerous effects of unchecked climate change.

Further, not one candidate speaks honestly about how to pay for their proposed funding increases. In fact, they all seem to propose that we abandon the user pays system, which in many ways we already have. If so, bye-bye, trust fund. They all seem to propose we fund this by deficit spending (as we have been for the last decade) or maybe taxing the wealthy or getting magical private funds? 

This reminds us of something former Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee once said about transportation funding: “If something is important enough to have, it’s important enough to pay for.” We’d like to add: If you aren’t willing to pay for it then you don’t believe it is important enough to have.

More money isn’t the solution to our transportation problems. It’s rethinking what we fund. But lawmakers often rely on the rules set by the outdated Highway Trust Fund to make this critical decision for them. 

The Senate’s first transportation reauthorization bill gets an F

EDIT, March 2021: If you represent an organization or are an elected official, please sign our letter urging the Senate to pass a long-term law completely unlike this one—a bill that orients the program transportation program around what counts: getting to where you need to go.

Authorizing federal spending on surface transportation is complicated, with different Congressional committees writing separate portions of the bill. That’s why we’ll score every reauthorization bill by how well it achieves our three simple principles for transportation investment. The America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act fails on all counts. 

With the current authorization for federal transportation spending—the FAST Act—set to expire in 2020, it’s time for Congress to set transportation policy for the next five to six years. Once passed, this legislation will set federal funding levels for transportation for another five to six years.

We’re tired of the same old transportation bills that pump money into building highways at the expense of our crumbling roads and bridges, people’s access to essential jobs and services, and human life. That’s why we’ll score every reauthorization bill on how well they achieve our three simple principles.

By our scorecard, the first reauthorization bill—America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act, which the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee approved in July—gets a big fat F. Here’s why. 

Maintenance

This bill fails to take steps toward cutting our country’s maintenance backlog in half because it contains zero new, binding requirements to ensure that states use federal funds to actually bring their roads and bridges into good condition. The bill provides an additional $32 billion annually—on top of the $40 billion they already receive— for existing road building policy. History has shown that without any requirement to invest in maintenance, many states simply won’t. While the inclusion of a new bridge maintenance program is a welcome step, it’s a relative pittance at just 2 percent of overall funding. 

Speed

We are in the midst of a massive safety crisis for people walking, with an alarming 35 percent increase in people struck and killed by drivers while walking from 2008-2017.  And nearly 40,000 people die each year in traffic crashes.

This bill includes significant new formula and discretionary safety programs and language encouraging states and planning organizations to adopt complete streets designs and plans. However, we’re concerned that these programs will be undercut by substantial funding increases for high speed roadways in the base formulas without any additional constraints to improve safety. Complete streets designs shouldn’t be optional, as this bill considers them. History has shown us that “optional” will result in many states failing to take action to save lives. 

Access

We were happy to see that the bill included a pilot program based on the COMMUTE Act to help a select group of states and metros measure whether or not their investments are connecting people to jobs and services. But a pilot program isn’t enough. Access to jobs and services has to be the core of any transportation authorization. We need to reward the boldness of this pilot proposal by measuring whether all $358 billion in this bill is connecting people to jobs and services. 

Multiple states, including Virginia and Hawaii, have already started prioritizing their spending on projects that improve access. It’s possible—and necessary—to prioritize federal spending this way. We can’t afford another five or six years of wasted investment from using vehicle speed as our outdated measure of success.

Click on any image below to learn more about our brand new principles or download a sharable card