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

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

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 Existing or pending regulations will be repealed or shelved

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The two bookend options for addressing this structural imbalance are:

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

OR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Changes to competitive grant programs

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Administrative actions will stop and change

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

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

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

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

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

Meeting the moment after the 2024 elections

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two federal bills for better transit service

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demand a greener future for transportation. Tell your senator to support the GREEN Streets Act.

A hazy orange sunset descends over rows and rows of cars traveling down a highway

New legislation introduced by Senator Markey, the GREEN Streets Act, seeks to establish goals for emissions reduction and resilience in our transportation system, marking a pivotal step in alleviating the climate crisis on our roadways. Tell your senator to cosponsor this legislation.

A hazy orange sunset descends over rows and rows of cars traveling down a highway
Photo by Aleksandr Popov on Unsplash

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States, and the bulk of them come from driving. To reduce these emissions, our transportation system requires more opportunities to travel outside of a car.

Yet, federal transportation policy and funding historically, at all levels, have encouraged projects that expand highway networks at the expense of public and active transportation. Our recent analysis demonstrated that even with landmark legislation like the IIJA, touted for its climate programs, states are continuing to designate billions of dollars towards expanding road capacity. Such a car-oriented design forces people to drive for longer and more frequent trips, creating more congestion—and generating more emissions.

On January 25, 2024, Senator Ed Markey introduced the Generating Resilient, Environmentally Exceptional National (GREEN) Streets Act, co-sponsored by Senator Merkley, with companion legislation introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Huffman. This bill aims to reduce GHG emissions on all public roads and create resilient transportation systems that can adapt to the adverse effects of climate change.

To achieve these goals, the GREEN Streets Act directs the Secretary of Transportation to create minimum standards for states to reduce GHG emissions, per capita VMT, and air pollutants on public roads. Furthermore, the bill requires states and metropolitan organizations (MPOs) to publish an analysis of the effects of projects that increase traffic capacity on environmental justice communities that are at higher risk of experiencing adverse health and climate impacts. These measures build on the GHG emissions measure released by USDOT, encouraging more transparency and accountability within our transportation system.

Investing in our transportation system means investing in social, economic, and environmental outcomes. It is crucial that federal investments help Americans safely, reliably, and affordably get to where they need to go. Federal legislation like the GREEN Streets Act will play a fundamental role in avoiding the worst effects of climate change and enhancing the resiliency and connectivity of our communities.

Help support this bill. Click here to ask your senator to be a co-sponsor.

Here’s what you need to know about the Inflation Reduction Act

A Black man crosses a street without a crosswalk carrying grocery bags

The Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a budget reconciliation package that includes some portions of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. This is the largest climate investment in U.S. history, and programs in it will help Americans save money and stay safe on our streets. Here’s what you need to know as the bill awaits the President’s signature.

A Black man crosses a street without a crosswalk carrying grocery bags
Roads like this one could benefit from redesign projects made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act. Flickr photo by Paul Sableman.

It’s a surprise that we even got a bill

It’s been a while since we wrote about the Build Back Better Act, the previous attempt to pass some of these provisions, so here’s a quick recap:

Congress removed climate-focused investments when the new infrastructure law passed with the hope of including these funds in a reconciliation bill, the Build Back Better Act. However, once those investments were cut from the infrastructure law, those in favor lost any leverage they had to include them in separate legislation, especially since there are restrictions that bar Congress from approving multiple programs that accomplish the same task. 

When the Build Back Better Act finally made it to the Senate floor, Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) refused to vote in favor of it. As negotiations stalled repeatedly, it became clear that the Build Back Better Act was dead.

However, in late July, new legislation appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The Inflation Reduction Act was a deal struck between Senator Chuck Schumer and Senator Manchin. Noticeably lacking the transit, biking and walking investments climate advocates had hoped to see, this reconciliation package still carried some portions of the Build Back Better Act. Though this package largely preserves the car-based status quo, there are a few wins for transportation, which we note in the section below.

Support for safety, access, equity, and reducing emissions

$3 billion in this package goes to a brand new program called Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants, which help mitigate the danger of overbuilt arterial roadways, especially in underserved areas. This is by far the biggest win.

These grants can be used to redesign roadways to make them safer, providing more mobility options for community residents. In addition, these changes can help alleviate the negative health impacts of living near heavily-trafficked roads by diverting travel to other, less polluting modes of transportation like walking, biking, and rolling. Unlike the Reconnecting Communities Program, these funds can go beyond connecting across highways and railroads to allow redesigning big roadways that create division due to the danger in crossing.

As we said in our statement after the Inflation Reduction Act was released: “By providing funds to redesign these roadways, these grants can help to connect the community, support local economic development, save people money on gas by allowing them to get out of their cars, close an obstacle to economic opportunity and, in the process, save lives.”

Safe, walkable communities are in high demand, and their scarcity makes them expensive places to live. To help ensure that the people who live near divisive or dangerous infrastructure will be able to benefit from any improvements, these grants also help fund anti-displacement efforts in economically disadvantaged communities impacted by redesign projects. $1.1 billion of these grants are specifically designated for economically disadvantaged communities, and to qualify for funding, the areas must have an anti-displacement policy and a community land trust or community advisory board in effect. After decades of making infrastructure decisions without substantial community input, the program encourages decision-makers to involve community members in the planning process. Decision-makers must also include a plan to employ local residents in the redesign process.

Because these grants are embedded in U.S. Code, they go beyond the temporary pilot programs (like Reconnecting Communities) introduced in the infrastructure law to address safety, access, climate, and equity, helping to ensure that these issues can be addressed for years to come.

Additionally, the budget reconciliation package includes clean vehicle tax credits to encourage the transition to electric vehicles. The existing clean vehicle credit is now amended to include not only plug-in electric vehicles but fuel cell vehicles as well. The credit applies to new, used, commercial, and heavy-duty vehicles. Unfortunately, the amended credit adds restrictions on eligibility based on vehicle and battery assembly, which would make many current U.S. electric vehicles ineligible for the credit and make them all ineligible in the coming years (unless EV manufacturers make significant changes). $3 billion is available to support the manufacturing of these vehicles.

The tax credit also extends to USPS vehicles, both purchasing an electric fleet and infrastructure to support the new vehicles. We’ve been advocating for the electrification of heavy-duty vehicles and USPS vehicles with the CHARGE Coalition because these vehicles are responsible for a significant portion of transportation emissions.

Unlike the infrastructure law’s investments, the Inflation Reduction Act’s funds go beyond infrastructure. Keep an eye on Smart Growth America’s blog for more information on the land-use investments that will further help tackle the climate crisis.

The status quo strikes again

This bill will be the largest climate investment in U.S. history. However, when it comes to transportation, overall the bill does almost nothing to counter the infrastructure law, which provided more funding for the same broken status quo approach that led to such high transportation emissions in the first place. Transit is entirely absent. While there are billions for new electric cars, there are no tax credits for e-bikes, which currently outsell electric cars and trucks and have incredible potential to replace car trips entirely and expand who can ride a bike. Yet Congress is still focusing entirely on vehicles, and electric vehicles alone will not dig us out of our current climate crisis. We need electric vehicles, and we need to allow people to drive less overall. The Inflation Reduction Act invests heavily in the former while mostly ignoring the latter.

Let this be a lesson to our Congressional leaders. We can’t continue treating transportation as separate from climate. The infrastructure bill is a climate bill, whether it helps or hurts. And if Congress wants to reduce transportation emissions, they can’t cave at the slightest possibility that some infrastructure programs could be included in future legislation. The next time Congress passes a surface reauthorization or any significant infrastructure investment, they must advocate for the full package outright, not only in rhetoric.

USDOT and Congress: Taking sides but not talking about implementation

Sheltered Richmond bus stop by a bus only lane

If we’re going to ensure that the historic amount of transit funding in the infrastructure law actually results in good, usable, high quality transit that improves access to jobs and services, Congress is going to need to do a better job of oversight and thinking through the very real and difficult issues at hand for transit, not just arguing about whether or not transit is a vital part of transportation and mobility in communities small and large.

Sheltered Richmond bus stop by a bus only lane
Vital topics like how to use the IIJA to institute more practical improvements to transit like Richmond’s were not on the docket during this week’s Senate Banking Committee hearing. GRTC bus rapid transit photo by BeyondDC on Flickr

Nearly two weeks ago, Secretary Buttigieg testified before the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. On paper, the purpose was to discuss implementation of the infrastructure bill. However they instead wasted much of the hearing arguing about a harmless Federal Highways Administration memo calling for investment in repair and safety projects, improving equity, and reducing emissions. One side didn’t like the existence of these priorities on a piece of paper while the other side tried to point out that these priorities are all clearly laid out in the bill (even if the bill does little to further them). There was no real conversation about implementation ideas or needs, and the very real challenges of spending this money in a way that improves the state of our country’s infrastructure and helps connect people to opportunity.

Unfortunately, that trend continued this week during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing about public transit and the infrastructure law.

While the majority showed a willingness to ignore bad faith arguments from the minority and certain invited guests about whether or not transit should even exist, they will need to do far more in the future to address very real concerns about ensuring that transit money get appropriated in a timely way, that USDOT advance new capital projects smoothly, how to handle very real workforce challenges in the transit industry, aligning transit investments with equitable transit-oriented development, and positioning transit to be a reliable and competitive mode for people to use within their community. In fact, the Federal Transit Administration is currently seeking input on their rules surrounding the Capital Investment Grants, like New Starts—a topic that would have been good to discuss.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) described the vital service that public transit provides in our communities, highlighting the example of a worker spending a day’s wage on Uber or Lyft to get to/from work on a Sunday to keep their job, because there isn’t any transit service. The Senator painted a clear picture why transit needs more investment to improve the experience of existing transit riders and make the service viable for millions of new riders, connecting this need to the current pain of high gas prices, saying “if people had reliable public transportation then they don’t need to decide between gas and rent.”

Senator Brown during the hearing

Unfortunately, ranking member Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) seems to have no real interest in ensuring that transit serves Americans well. He derided past investments in public transit, including the COVID relief funds that continued to connect essential workers to work during the pandemic, as wasteful spending and for not “paying its fair share. The senator incorrectly noted how vehicles pay gas tax to pay their fair share of the transportation system, seemingly unaware that the gas tax hasn’t come close to paying its share in 15 years or more. (Tens of billions in general tax dollars have been transferred into the highway trust fund after the gas tax declined in value and failed to cover what Congress was still sending out to states.) 

Senator Toomey

Rather than getting into the specifics of what all of the speakers said, it is frustrating that we have now finished the second Senate hearing about implementation of the infrastructure bill with little-to-no substantive conversation about implementation. How is this money going to be spent? What kinds of transit projects are going to be funded? How is USDOT going to speed up the dreadfully slow pipeline of transit capital projects (especially compared with relative ease for highway projects)? What’s wrong with the measures that the Federal Transit Administration uses to score projects for funding, and how could those measures be improved to prioritize access? These kinds of questions were completely absent from the day. 

Congress has a vital role in oversight and accountability, and prodding the administration to update old vehicle-centric rules and standards and empower transportation agencies to reduce the impact of the system on the environment and communities and better connect people to jobs and necessities. (Many of our recommendations are listed here.)  

While the rest of the speakers were a stark display of contrasts, the committee never really probed the implementation steps that USDOT or Federal Transit Administration could take to fill any holes in the legislation or better support the goals of the witnesses and needs of transit systems and riders. They didn’t even acknowledge that they exist. 

Going forward, we need Congressional committees to lead oversight efforts that focus on specific implementation steps needed, any problems in implementation, and especially the results. To do that, the members will have to be an active participant and bring a probing skepticism to ensure we are doing all we can to get the most out of the law. And unfortunately, there will need to be a discussion about how to sideline histrionics about unenforceable memos as well as members or witnesses who are totally out of step with the mainstream and seemingly have no interest in delivering a strong transportation system for drivers and non-drivers alike.

Our advice to USDOT and Congress: Make no little plans

Senator Capito uses visual aids at the EPW hearing
Senator Capito uses visual aids at the EPW hearing
Senator Capito uses visual aids to criticize the FHWA memo. Still from the hearing.

A Senate committee called Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to testify about implementing the new infrastructure law, but much of the day was spent criticizing or defending FHWA’s nonbinding memo encouraging states to prioritize state of good repair, safety, and climate mitigation—displaying a deep confusion in some members of Congress about the limits of USDOT’s authority.

On the heels of the president’s State of the Union address the night before, the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) convened a hearing on March 2, 2022 to talk about the infrastructure law. 

Senator Carper (D-DE) opened with a discussion of the pivotal work the Committee took in formulating and passing the infrastructure law last year, and continued to underscore the need to take action on climate change (with Senator Carper noting 28 percent of emissions coming from transportation) as well as safety (after an alarming increase in fatalities, especially for vulnerable road users). 

Over the course of the hearing, various senators chimed in to check on the implementation status of various programs or projects, whether the electrification of the transportation system versus alternative fuel options, truck parking, reconnecting communities, Carbon Reduction and PROTECT formula programs, transportation accessibility, Buy America, or port infrastructure. But a considerable amount of discussion from a number of senators—most notably by ranking member Senator Capito (R-WV)—focused on the nonbinding FHWA memo released on December 16 (which T4America supported as a strong statement about how states should absolutely choose to spend this historic influx of cash).

In her opening remarks, Senator Capito deemed the FHWA memo a threat to the policy framework of the infrastructure law that the committee worked so hard to put together, advancing a partisan Biden administration agenda and creating a system of winners and losers depending on the project. Using large visual aids, Senator Capito accused FHWA of plagiarizing language in the memo about fix-it-first over capacity expansion from the House’s INVEST Act. The crux of Capito’s opposition to the memo is the suggestion of a (non-existent) mandate (and a one-size-fits-all context) in the fix-it-first language over capacity expansion. In later commentary, Senator Cramer (R-ND) went further by noting that the memo was threatening the concept of federalism and the powers that states have.

As Jeff Davis at Eno noted on Twitter, this is completely false:

As Secretary Buttigieg pointed out during the hearing, the memo serves as a values document (not a mandate or part of the infrastructure law), incorporating what USDOT is hearing from states and previous transportation reauthorizations. He also noted it would be a disservice to not remind the states of their flexibility to pursue goals like repair, safety, climate change, and equity.

Secretary Buttigieg at EPW hearing
Secretary Buttigieg at the EPW hearing

Senator Carper jumped into the conversation at this point to provide a core history lesson regarding state of good repair from (1) Congressional values in the federal transportation program that are codified into law and (2) values shared by a previous Republican administration, underscoring how the FHWA memo is entirely consistent with pre-established values. Senator Cardin (D-MD) also added that these values expressed in the FHWA memo are key priorities that are also reflected in the infrastructure law and shouldn’t be surprising.

Senator Cardin uses visual aids at EPW hearing
Senator Cardin at the EPW hearing

Overall, the day was full of much fury, signifying very little.

Republicans on the committee fiercely claimed that this unenforceable, nonbinding memo was in fact enforceable. They claimed that encouraging states to improve the state of repair, improve safety, and reduce the negative impacts of the transportation system goes against Congressional intent, that it will block projects like highway expansions, and that it lays out how competitive grant applications will be reviewed. 

Let us be clear: an unenforceable memo cannot stop anything or make any state choose to spend their money more responsibly. We agree that the language of the law failed to move the needle enough on topics like safety, repair, climate, etc. But we’re frankly shocked to hear the memo’s critics admit their preference for the broken status quo so boldly. This administration will and should evaluate projects for competitive, discretionary funding that they control using their priorities, which is how competitive grant programs have always been implemented by all administrations.  

Those who spent the day vociferously criticizing this memo are either ignorant to the law and how the program works, or they are just boldly stating their lack of interest in the outcomes they promised the American people when they passed the IIJA. Both are really bad news. It’s disconcerting that the bulk of this hearing was spent fighting about a priority statement—an utter waste of time. The lesson we hope USDOT gets from this is to be bold and not waste time with little plans. This modest action they took got all the blow back of a truly controversial move while in fact accomplishing nothing. As we move forward on the implementation of the IIJA, we hope USDOT and the EPW Committee reflects on the words of the architect and planner Daniel Burnham:

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever growing insistency.

T4America statement on the passage of the 2021 infrastructure deal

press release

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

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

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

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

Strides towards Building Back Better the US transportation program

a full bus of commuters

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

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

a full bus of commuters
Image from Max Pixel

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

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

How did we get here? An explainer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where are we now?

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

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

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

Less than 30 days to speak out on transit funding

graphic element

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

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

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

The programs we can’t lose

Investing in marginalized communities

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

Investing in local communities

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

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions 

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

Increased funding for rail 

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

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

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

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

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

Transit funds could crack under the pressure of the budget deadline

entrance to the USDOT headquarters

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

Image by U.S. Department of Transportation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mostly lip service for climate and equity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rail is the deal’s silver lining

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

This bill doesn’t meet the moment

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

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

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

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

Going forward

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

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

Senate makes historic investment in yesterday’s transportation priorities

press release

Deal worsens long-term prospects for addressing climate and equity woes

“The Senate’s final infrastructure deal is certainly big, but it’s anything but bold,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne after the Senate’s 69-30 approval of the package on Tuesday.

“There are certainly welcome new additions, including a major recalibration of the nation’s approach to investing in and running passenger rail and a small program to tear down divisive old highways. But with this deal, the Senate is largely doubling down on a dinosaur of a federal transportation program that’s produced a massive repair backlog we are no closer to addressing, roads that are killing a historic number of vulnerable travelers each year, little opportunity to reach work or essential services if a family doesn’t have multiple cars, and the continued inability for local governments to have a say over what projects are built in their communities.

“The White House will soon discover that they’ve dealt themselves a challenging hand in their long-term effort to address climate change and persistent inequities, while kicking the can down a crumbling road that’s likely to stay that way. And they’ve done so while sidelining the House’s visionary INVEST Act, which would have started to finally bring a long overdue 21st century paradigm to transportation. 

“While we are excited to see a historic amount of funding for transit, the Senate also supercharged the highway program with a historic amount while failing to provide any new accountability for making progress on repair, safety, equity, climate, or jobs access outcomes. And in fact, when comparing this deal to the original bipartisan infrastructure framework announced in June 2021, transit is one of the few things cut at all (by $10 billion). Coming just a day after a dire new IPCC climate report calling for transformational change, the Senate is providing hundreds of billions for status quo programs that will be used to build new roads and produce ever-increasing emissions for decades to come.

“There were hundreds of amendments proposed to address these core shortcomings, but not only did the Senate fail to include any of them, the majority were not considered at all. This includes vital proposals requiring states to make progress on repairing their infrastructure before building expensive new things (in fact, this provision was applied to transit only), requiring measurable improvements in the number of people killed on our roads, measuring greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation system, and providing more money for removing or bridging over highways that were rammed through Black and Brown neighborhoods.

“We now turn to the House to see if they can bring more of a results-oriented approach to the transportation program. And we stand ready to work with the administration to change their internal procedures to get the best out of a very flawed piece of legislation.”

###

On infrastructure, the White House is about to trade away their stated goals on transportation in the name of bipartisanship

press release

“In its current state, this deal fails to accomplish the administration’s goal of reducing emissions, preserving both the status quo of easy money to build new highways (while neglecting basic repair needs) and the existing, complex hurdles to build transit,” said T4America Director Beth Osborne. 

Though this bill contains the largest federal investments in both public transit and electric vehicle recharging, these noble efforts to drive down emissions will be undermined by equally historic levels of highway spending that will produce higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions, as it always has. This funding package will provide a small amount of funding for reconnecting communities divided by highways and other infrastructure while providing hundreds of times more funding to build and expand highways creating new divisions. 

“You cannot fill a hole with a teaspoon that’s still being dug with an excavator.

“The good news is there  are a handful of exciting amendments the Senate is expected to consider that would improve this deal before final passage. 

“Senator Warnock is proposing to increase funding for reconnecting communities divided and damaged by highways and other infrastructure from $1 billion to $5 billion. While that’s a far cry from the White House’s $20 billion proposal, it’s a welcome start. Senator Klobuchar is proposing to halt the practice of allowing states to set targets for more people to die on our roadways without any penalty or requirement to improve safety—a long overdue improvement to better measure how we spend our money and hold states accountable to the taxpayer. Senator Cardin is proposing to require states to measure greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and set targets to reduce those emissions through their investments. Finally, Senator Kaine is proposing a strong ‘fix-it-first’ amendment that requires states to make progress on addressing their maintenance backlog before building new or expanding highways and have a plan to maintain that new asset. It also requires a demonstration that the highway project is more cost-beneficial than an operations, freight or transit improvement and that it furthers the state’s ability to reach other performance targets. 

“One important achievement in this deal is its ambitious proposal for passenger rail which was previously approved by the Senate Commerce Committee. As we wrote when it passed, ‘this represents a fundamentally new approach that will expand, increase, and improve service; focus on the entire national network; encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service; and make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects.’ 

“These positive inclusions aside, this deal pours the majority of new transportation money into the same old broken cistern. If this deal passes without significant changes the White House will have an uphill battle over the next five years to implement this deal in a way that addresses their priorities and tackles our maintenance backlog, addresses climate emissions, and removes safety and structural barriers to economic opportunity.

“There’s still time to improve the deal, and the Senate and White House need to go far beyond just more money for the status quo.”

Bipartisan infrastructure deal update: What we need to see

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s all. Thank you for your time.”

Key Senators

ALASKA
Murkowski

ARIZONA
Sinema
Kelly

COLORADO
Hickenlooper

DELAWARE
Carper
Coons

INDIANA
Young

KANSAS
Moran

LOUISIANA
Cassidy

MAINE
Collins
King

MISSISSIPPI
Wicker

MONTANA
Tester

NORTH CAROLINA
Tillis
Burr

NEW HAMPSHIRE
Hassan
Shaheen

NEVADA
Rosen

NEW YORK
Schumer

OHIO
Brown
Portman

PENNSYLVANIA
Toomey

SOUTH CAROLINA
Graham

SOUTH DAKOTA
Rounds

UTAH
Romney

VIRGINIA
Warner

WASHINGTON
Cantwell

WEST VIRGINIA
Capito
Manchin

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

Accountability to fix our roads and bridges, not just rhetoric

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

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

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

Highway-style commitment to transit

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

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

Address inequities in our communities

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

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

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

Design and invest in safety for all users

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

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

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

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

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

The bipartisan infrastructure deal: What we know and don’t know

The infrastructure deal could end up spending money just like our current transportation program does — it’s unclear. Graphic from Repair Priorities

In the midst of debates over a new long-term federal transportation law, there’s been nonstop coverage of a potential bipartisan deal on new infrastructure investment that has the White House’s backing, but much of the reporting raises more questions than it answers. What do we know about the potential deal, and what questions does T4America have? 

Capitol Hill has been abuzz in recent weeks about transportation reauthorization, whether the Senate’s dud of a highway title, the House’s much better all-in-one comprehensive proposal (The INVEST Act), or the Senate Commerce Committee’s very good rail and transportation safety title—though we’re still waiting to see the Senate’s transit proposal from the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. 

With those competing proposals to replace the FAST Act (expiring in September) in the background, a bipartisan group of 21 senators have been hammering out a standalone infrastructure package that can get the President’s endorsement and potentially pass both chambers of Congress. Just last Thursday (6/24), the bipartisan group of senators met with and secured President Biden’s endorsement of their broad deal on infrastructure. The deal’s details are still emerging and making political waves on both sides of the aisle, but here is what we know (not much), don’t know (quite a bit), and really want to know.

What we know

The infrastructure deal is a $1.2 trillion framework that would make historic investments in clean transportation, power, and water infrastructure; universal broadband infrastructure; and climate resiliency. The framework highlights proposed funding amounts and how to pay for such a transformational framework—the latter of which has received ample coverage from the Hill media at the expense of more substantial reporting on the actual real-world impacts of the deal, much to our consternation: 

One important note is that not all of this deal’s funding is new—the $1.2 trillion number also presupposes the passage of the Senate’s $303+ billion, five-year transportation bill, which we believe is largely a lackluster continuation of the badly out-of-date status quo. 

What we don’t know 

There’s a lot more that we don’t know about what’s in this deal, than what we do know.

The framework is very light on specific details as to precisely how these funds would be spent and what measurable goals they intend to achieve. Is this funding framework intended to put money into existing programs and existing transportation policy? Something proposed by the Senate and/or House?  Or something else entirely? After T4America was asked numerous times by the media last week if this bill has “enough” funding in it, there’s frankly just not enough information on “how” the money will be spent in order to make that call. 

Or as T4America Director Beth Osborne said in this New York Times’ piece about the deal:

“You can spend a trillion dollars in highways and not spend a dime on repair. So seeing something titled ‘Highways’ with a number by it doesn’t tell me what will be repaired so I can’t answer whether this is enough,” 

The bottom line here is, what are we paying for? Transportation for America believes strongly that if we are buying something, we want to know WHAT we’re buying before we decide how much *whatever it is* will cost.

What we want to know 

Will this bipartisan infrastructure framework move the needle on key issues that both sides of the aisle believe strongly about, or are they both giving up their core priorities just to get a “bipartisan” deal done? Will this framework shift the focus and paradigm in the nation’s transportation program towards addressing climate change plus equity and inclusion? Will this framework finally prioritize maintaining our existing infrastructure before expanding it, or will it just encourage yet further expansions to a dangerously growing maintenance backlog? Does the framework refocus the transportation program to serve people over vehicles, with special attention to improving our transportation safety and connecting people to jobs and communities?

Stay tuned to forthcoming developments on this potential nfrastructure deal as news becomes more clear.

Senate Commerce Committee proves that bipartisanship doesn’t have to equal terrible transportation policy

The Senate committee tasked with handling the rail portions of the larger transportation bill managed to produce a bipartisan bill that also makes the expansion of reliable, frequent rail service to more Americans a cornerstone of its approach. 

Residents of Pascagoula, MS outside the train station during the Gulf Coast Inspection Train several years ago

While the House writes their five-year transportation proposal all at once in one committee, the Senate breaks up the policy work between three committees. The Senators on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee focused on bipartisanship at the expense of good outcomes for spending transportation dollars, but the Commerce Committee Senators, charged with passenger rail, safety, and a few other related issues, managed to be both bipartisan and set policy that will create a better, more effective transportation system.

Here’s a look at the good and the bad in the Surface Transportation Investment Act of 2021 before the committee considers it in full and likely votes on it this Wednesday, June 16.

The good: A national network of robust, passenger rail service is vital for the country’s future.

These Senators are proposing substantial steps to 1) expand, increase, and improve service, 2) focus on the entire national network (rather than just the northeast corridor), 3) encourage more local, ground-up coalitions of local-state partnerships for improving or adding new service, and 4) make it easier to finance projects and expand that authority to transit-oriented development projects. They also propose some important changes to the data we gather on safety across the entire transportation system, including our streets and roads.

Funding to expand/improve passenger rail service
When it comes to providing more funding overall for passenger rail, they propose $5 billion for the same program (Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements) which provided $33 million for restoring Gulf Coast passenger rail, allowing many more communities to benefit from this program. (Current funding is about $350 million a year, or ~$1.75b over the life of the current law..)

They also provide $300 million for the Restoration and Enhancements grants that provide critical start-up operating support for new or expanded passenger service, and allow those funds to be used over six years instead of just three—recognizing that establishing new ridership on a line can take a few years. 

A lot of the country’s rail infrastructure is also badly in need of updates, and the bill proposes $1.5 billion to make long overdue repairs through what they call the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail Grants for state of repair.

Amtrak
For the country’s passenger rail operator, they propose a small but vital shift in mission and goals to emphasize Amtrak’s role in providing service both to rural communities and in long-distance routes and a national network. To help make this happen, they will require representation on the Amtrak Board from the Northeast Corridor, state-supported routes and long distance routes. They’ll require Amtrak to post station agents at stations with at least 40 passengers a day (and require them to be able to sell tickets), making it easier for people to use and navigate the service in smaller towns. And lastly, they’ll prohibit Amtrak from discontinuing, reducing the frequency of, suspending, or substantially altering the route of any long-distance route if Amtrak receives adequate funding for that route. 

Duplicate the success of the Southern Rail Commission
A new grant program will authorize up to ten interstate rail compacts, including the Southern Rail Commission, which has been key to restoring passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast, and provide up to $1 million annually for each one. (This is double what the House provided for these commissions.)  Up to $1 million—which has to be matched 50/50 with local or state dollars—isn’t a huge sum but it would be hard to overstate the potential impact of creating nine more entities like the SRC to lay the groundwork and build the coalitions required to create or improve rail service in scores of other regions. (Read more about a similar House bill and the importance of these rail compacts here.)

Improving access to financing for rehab and improvement projects
A major challenge with rail rehabilitation and improvement (RRIF) projects has been not only securing financing, but incorporating the project’s credit risk (the cost of creating the loan). This bill proposes $50 million to help offset some of these credit risk insurance premiums on financing RRIF projects. 

Making it easier to finance transit-oriented development projects

More homes, offices, and retail near transit are in high demand, but because these big, complex projects are more difficult to finance than other types of conventional suburban development. The bill makes these projects (not just their rail components) permanently eligible for financing from the above RRIF program—something we’ve been working on for more than six years.  “The areas around our country’s passenger rail stations are often economic sleeping giants,” as T4America co-chair John Robert Smith said in this 2015 T4America story about a previous iteration of this idea. “Finding ways to finance and catalyze smart development in and around them is a proven strategy to boost local economies.”

Extra: Safety provisions
While most of the road and transit policy gets written by other Senate committees, the Commerce Committee also has jurisdiction over safety data and reporting, and they propose some notable changes. 

As chronicled in Dangerous by Design, federal data on who is being killed while using the transportation system—especially people who aren’t in a car—are incredibly limited. We don’t even know how many people are killed while trying to navigate unsafe streets in wheelchairs, for example, so the committee calls for new crash data systems to be able to distinguish bicycles, electric scooters, and wheelchairs. They propose a $200 million a year grant program for local governments to develop and carry out Vision Zero safety plans to prevent death and injury on our roads and streets. Perhaps most interestingly, they require the Secretary of Transportation to finally examine updating hood and bumper safety standards for cars and trucks with a focus on how they are affecting the injuries and deaths of pedestrians, bicyclists, or other vulnerable road users. While more needs to be done on this count (and it needs to be done far faster than the bill specifies), it’s a big deal to see a bipartisan bill finally start to call out this issue in legislation.

The bad, or opportunities missed

While the bill has a ton to praise, there are just a few missed opportunities worth noting and a few places where it falls short of what was in the INVEST Act in the House.

The bill doesn’t include two exciting rail investment programs proposed by the House.
The bill lacks any funding for the PRIME program, which is devoted to expanding and improving intercity passenger rail. The Senate proposal also lacks the Bridge, Tunnels and Safety grants which would fund major capital projects, rail bridges, stations, and tunnels that are publicly owned or owned by Amtrak. The House proposed $25 billion for each of these programs.

Just because projects are big or expensive doesn’t mean they are wise investments.
A new National Infrastructure Project Assistance program is designed to help fund projects of national significance that cost over $500 million or a large portion of small states’ transportation budgets. But while these projects are indeed hard to fund, this program is far too focused on costs and price tags, and only barely mentions any measurable things we want to accomplish. Just because projects are big doesn’t mean they are smart, and we should think about what they might do before providing money for them.

A new multimodal grant program like TIGER needs to provide more money for the best local projects.
A new program called Local and Regional Project Assistance is basically like a new $1.5 billion TIGER/BUILD/RAISE program for locals, but the $25 million cap is too low and should be raised to at least $75 million so that it doesn’t keep larger but worthwhile projects with good outcomes from applying. The program’s size is sufficiently large to both advance a few larger projects while also giving out a large number of grants to the best projects. As an example, in the first round of TIGER, there was $1.5 billion available with no cap, yet USDOT made 3 grants of around $100 million while still advancing 55 total projects.

A multimodal freight program should not presume that half of the country’s best freight projects are road projects.
The bill provides $1.2 billion for Nationally Significant Multimodal Freight Projects, but for some inexplicable reason, this bill caps the funding for truly multimodal projects at only 50 percent of the program—basically earmarking 50 percent for highway projects, before they’ve ever seen a proposal or spent a dime. 

Why in the world is the committee with multimodal jurisdiction—rail, ports, and pipelines— and no jurisdiction over the highway part of the bill so intent on giving money to highway projects? And these are not gas tax dollars subject to the trust fund—this is a discretionary program using general tax dollars. Lose the cap entirely on multimodal projects and just select whatever projects will accomplish the most with the money.

How both Democrats and Republicans alike traded away their principles for bipartisanship in the Senate’s transportation proposal

Last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed a transportation reauthorization bill that would make reducing emissions, improving safety, and providing equitable access impossible. It’s clear that Democrats traded in their goals for “bipartisanship.” But so did Republicans. 

Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) announcing the revised Republican infrastructure proposal last week, days after passing a horrible surface transportation reauthorization in her EPW Committee. Read T4America’s thoughts on this proposal here. Photo credit Senate GOP.

Transportation is historically bipartisan. In the past couple of decades, this has been because it was the one policy area where Democrats and Republicans could agree to undermine their own goals for the sake of “bipartisanship,” consistently passing bills that make U.S. transportation inefficient, expensive, unsafe, unsustainable and in poor condition. They both favor flexibility and deference over accountability for good outcomes and guaranteeing the taxpayer a good return for their investment.

It doesn’t have to be this way, we wrote last week when we highlighted three effective and bipartisan policies the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee could incorporate into its reauthorization proposal. But unfortunately it was this way—last Wednesday this committee passed a deeply broken yet “bipartisan” bill, the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021 (STRA). 

We have discussed how Senate Democrats lost big: this bill makes no real effort to reduce emissions, reduce the impact of transportation on Black and Brown communities, or make our roads safer. But Senate Republicans lost big too. Here’s how: 

1. Billions of taxpayer dollars will get wasted 

Republicans often talk about avoiding government waste. Yet this bill—supported by every Republican on the EPW Committee—wastes government resources and taxpayer dollars by design. How? It’s simple: pumping billions into widening and expanding highways without any plan to maintain them or their existing system creates billions in new liabilities. Billions. 

In a press release on the bill’s passage, Ranking Member Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) said that the bill will take “meaningful steps to repair our country’s crumbling roads and bridges.” But this just isn’t true. STRA doesn’t require that states spend federal highway dollars on maintenance before expansion. This is a huge problem because states rarely spend the majority of their federal funds on maintenance—in fact, many states even spend more on expansion than maintenance. 

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimates that the cost of repairing our backlog of maintenance needs is $435 billion, and a recent Washington Post analysis found that one-fifth of the nation’s major roads were rated in poor condition in 2019. Yet “more than one-third of states’ capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog.” 

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) praised STRA for including her “Billion Dollar Boondoggle Act” in the bill, which would require that projects over a billion dollars and behind schedule be “disclosed” to the public (as if they aren’t already). She specifically complained about rail projects. But what should we call a highway expansion that runs over budget yet can pull down ever increasing federal highway funds to help cover the cost without even having a plan to maintain it when it is done, much less the rest of their system? When the bill comes due, leaders turn to the taxpayer or even seek to raise taxes to pay for it.  [For the record, T4A does not oppose a gas tax increase. We oppose any new funding for bad policy.]

STRA is $303.5 billion spent over five years. Without any requirement that that money be spent on maintenance, we will  spend billions to do exactly what we’ve done to create our current monster backlog of maintenance needs (more on that below). That is not protecting against government waste.

2. Congestion will get worse

Everyone hates traffic, but Republicans apparently don’t hate it enough to actually reduce it. Instead of acknowledging that highway expansions have only led to more traffic congestion, Republicans (and Democrats) are supporting the same-old “congestion relief” strategy: widening and expanding roadways. 

Between 1993 and 2017, the U.S, added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 metropolitan areas—an increase of 42 percent. That rate of freeway expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period. Yet this strategy made congestion worse—delay is up by a staggering 144 percent, as we found in our report, the Congestion Con. None of the largest 100 cities saw congestion decrease or even increase just a little, even those that lost population and added highway capacity.

We know that Republican senators, like Ernst, understand the value of using data to spend transportation funds on projects that improve access to jobs and services the most. That’s why Senator Ernst co-sponsored the COMMUTE Act, a bill that would create a pilot program to help state DOTs and MPOs make decisions this way. This approach looks at the whole trip and whether you get where you are going, rather than whether traffic speeds in certain areas are high (which is what we use today). Yet the overwhelming majority of funding in STRA remains targeted to moving cars faster, a policy that has only made our congestion problems worse. 

3. Roads will stay deadly 

Senator John Boozman of Arkansas praised how this bill will improve roadway safety, specifically highlighting the “restoration of flexibility for Highway Safety Improvement Program funds to better protect motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.” Oh my. 

Both parties seem to think that states need “flexibility” to improve safety. But do they really need flexibility to set targets and organize funding around having more people die on our roadways next year than died in the previous year? That’s our current approach and what STRA maintains. 

A more charitable take would be that states need the flexibility to be passive to safety problems because it is beyond their control, said our director Beth Osborne. But they will still ask the taxpayer to give them more money to “fix” it, using roadway designs that are proven to be dangerous, like slip lanes and wide roads with high speeds near lots of points of conflict and children walking to school.  

4. Local priorities will be overruled and economic opportunity disrupted

Republicans strongly emphasize giving states the flexibility to spend federal dollars as they believe is necessary, even if it undermines the desires of a local community. Which it often does. STRA continues this tradition by allowing states to design high-speed surface roadways that disconnect and disrupt local communities, trail networks, and undermine Vision 0 efforts—over the objection of the local leadership and the population.

And despite Senator Capito saying that STRA improves access to economic opportunities, this bill (like the current system) largely allows only movement by vehicle, an expensive proposition for American households. The current system has increased how much everyone has to drive and increased the exposure to danger for those trying to walk around or access transit. Hardly equitable access to economic opportunity. This approach also ignores legions of research demonstrating how safe roads and transit access attracts businesses to local communities. 

Senator Capito also praised the provisions in the bill that focused on “rural areas, like West Virginia.” But there is nothing in STRA to improve transportation access for the over one million rural households that have zero access to a vehicle. 

Both parties lost big in this bill 

“Like any successful collaborative effort, neither side got everything they want, but I am glad we were able to find common ground and put forward a bipartisan plan to rebuild and revive America’s roads and bridges,” Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said when STRA was released. 

But neither side got much of anything they wanted. STRA won’t “rebuild or revive America’s roads and bridges”—it will undermine all efforts to bring our ginormous maintenance backlog in check and double down on a transportation system where congestion keeps getting worse. People will have to spend more on transportation and taxpayers will have to spend more to make up for these failures. Both Democrats and Republicans lost big in this bill. 

As our communications director Steve Davis said: if bipartisanship is the goal, the broken status quo is the result. 

Release: Transportation for America on the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021

“The status quo is sending us backwards.”

A statement from Transportation for America director Beth Osborne on the surface transportation reauthorization bill passed today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee:

“We’re incredibly disappointed to see the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously pass—yet again—another highway bill that cements the broken status quo in place for decades. This bill attempts to solve the problems with the transportation system with small, underfunded new programs while spending way more to continue to churn out those same problems. 

“This bill is far from a down payment on the American Jobs Plan. In many ways it completely undermines it. The American Jobs Plan prioritized maintenance, climate, equity and safety; today the EPW Committee pushed those goals aside and passed a long-term bill that pumps billions into worsening these problems. 

“Neither Republican nor Democratic priorities are addressed in this bill. It wastes taxpayer dollars trying to achieve congestion relief and safety with tools that have failed for decades. It creates barriers to employment and essential services for many people, particularly carless households in rural America, low income households and people of color.  It allows states to opt out of lowering carbon emissions and continues to support strategies that are well known to raise them. In transportation, when bipartisanship is the goal, the broken status quo is the result. 

“We don’t have time for another five years of creating more problems that will take 20-50 years to solve.  We urge the Senate to engage in an open process to fix this bill or reject it and start again.” 

3 ways the Senate can pass bipartisan and effective transportation policy

We need you to take action to fix this broken bill. Send a message to your Senators TONIGHT > >

This past weekend, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released their proposal to reauthorize surface transportation policy for the next five years. The bill has bipartisan support, but it undermines both parties’ stated goals. A bipartisan and effective bill is possible—here’s how. 

Some current and former members of the Senate EPW Committee and the House of Representatives at a press conference in 2016. Photo by Senate Democrats.

At Transportation for America, often our efforts to enact policies that actually connect people to jobs and services—not build new roads to nowhere—are stymied by “bipartisanship.” Or what people think is bipartisanship. 

To us, bipartisanship isn’t passing transportation policy that just makes our problems worse, even if it undermines Republican and Democratic priorities equally as the status quo approach does. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is proposing more of the same. And where this new, bipartisan bill does seek to solve problems, it does so through several new and exciting, but toothless and/or underfunded programs. 

Bipartisan legislation should solve problems, not make existing ones worse. And bipartisan transportation policy is possible—just ask the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where freshmen members on both sides of the aisle joined together to pack their reauthorization proposal with programs that would fundamentally improve the federal transportation program. 

Here are three bipartisan policies that we urge Senate Environment and Public Works Committee members to incorporate into their reauthorization proposal at mark-up tomorrow. 

1. Fix-it-first

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have long-proclaimed the need to fix our “crumbling roads and bridges.” Yet despite continuously increasing federal transportation funding, this never gets accomplished—because states aren’t required to spend federal funding on maintenance before expansion. 

The Senate EPW Committee should require that sponsors of roadway expansion projects demonstrate that they can operate and maintain what they are building while making improvements in the state of repair. This common sense amendment was proposed by a Democrat and Republican in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last summer and passed by unanimous consent. 

2. Measure and prioritize access equitably 

The federal transportation program should prioritize investments that actually connect people to the things they need, by all modes. This is also called “getting the most bang for your buck.” Yet for decades, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have agreed to focus on increasing vehicle speed by pouring money into expanded roadways—even though not every American can afford to own or operate a vehicle, and expanding roadways only makes traffic worse. 

Measuring access to jobs and essential services and targeting federal funds to projects that improve access should be something that both political parties can enthusiastically support. It ensures that federal funds aren’t wasted and that funding can be equitably spent on rural access by developing a better understanding of rural transportation needs through data. It also improves access to the economy particularly for low-income people, communities of color, and people with disabilities. It is modern and makes more sense to the taxpayer than “delay” and “level of service.” 

3. Prohibit negative safety targets 

The number of people killed while walking is skyrocketing, but particularly in southern and Sun Belt states like Florida, New Mexico, and Alabama. Yet current law allows states to plan for more people to be killed than in the previous year with no penalties. 

Prohibiting states from setting these destructive negative safety targets can be an easy issue for both parties to agree on. It would also make a huge difference in incentivizing states to spend Highway Safety Improvement Program funds on safety improvements for people who bike and walk. 

Bipartisanship is only good if it produces good legislation

Ultimately, achieving Democrats and Republicans’ transportation goals doesn’t require vastly different policy proposals. Here’s what we wrote on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s very similar 2019 bill: 

“While Republicans say their priority is to reduce demand for federal spending, avoid wasteful spending and efficiently move goods to market, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so. While Democrats claim to want to create jobs, reduce emissions, and build a strong and fair economy, the current program and the bill they passed fails to do so.” 

Achieving all of this is possible by fundamentally updating the federal transportation program to finally invest in getting people where they need to go by all modes, safely, sustainably, conveniently, equitably, and affordably. 

Passing a status quo bill that just makes congestion worse, our streets less safe, our emissions higher, and access to opportunities more inequitable is not the bipartisan deal we should accept.  This is not something to praise or be excited about.

We must hold both parties to a higher standard: because a bipartisan and effective bill is more than possible.