As you can see, we’re currently in the “conference committee” portion of the process, where a selected group of senators and representatives meet together to reconcile the differences between the two versions of their transportation bills passed by each chamber. In this case, that’s the Senate’s full, bipartisan, two-year MAP-21 bill, and the House’s extension of current policy and funding, with a few non-transportation-related policy riders they wanted to bring to the negotiating table.

The 14 senators and 33 representatives are meeting together regularly — the meetings are not public — to negotiate a final bill to send back to the House and the Senate for a final vote. The numbers of members by party are determined by the majority in each chamber, so there are more Republicans from the House, and more Democrats from the Senate.

As you can see from the graphic, once they finalize a bill that the conference votes to approve, it will go back for what should be the final vote in each chamber.

It’s still unclear if the House will be able to muster enough support to approve any bill, especially since they haven’t had enough votes up to this point to pass any transportation bill, choosing not to even bring HR 7 to the floor for a vote. Will the House vote for a final product that is composed mostly of the Senate’s bipartisan bill, even if it does include their preferred provisions to deregulate coal ash, approve Keystone XL and gut the environmental review process?  Only time will tell.

Until then, we are continuing to weigh in with the conferees (and hope you’ll join us!) to urge them to do five important things in their final bill.

First up for action? Ensure that the final bill makes it a top national priority to repair our roads and bridges, and holds states accountable for doing it. 

As the conferees finalize this long-deferred transportation reauthorization, they must keep in mind the priorities that millions of Americans of all political and socio-economic stripes have expressed in polls, town hall meetings, and countless events. Many of these can be found in the bipartisan, compromise bill passed by the Senate and should be preserved during negotiations. MAP-21, the Senate bill, establishes funding levels necessary to preserve and expand our transportation infrastructure while beginning to update federal policy for the 21st century in these following ways:

• Establishing accountability measures for federal investment;
• Consolidating programs and ensuring faster project delivery;
• Taking care of our bridges and roads by prioritizing repair;
• Supporting local control of funds to improve our communities; and
• Protecting transit riders in areas of all sizes from drastic service cuts and fare increases.

Here’s a detailed look at the five things we believe the final conference bill must do.

1. Prioritize repair of roads and bridges, while easing the burden on local communities

The conference report should continue to provide dedicated funds for repair and upkeep – saving money and improving safety – while ensuring that local communities are not left holding the bag maintaining facilities historically eligible for broad federal support.

Our nation’s infrastructure is in dire need of repair. Less than half our road network is in good condition, and more than 69,000 of the nation’s bridges are structurally deficient. Poor road conditions not only impose safety hazards, but impose direct costs on drivers: Americans on average pay $335 each year due to rough roads. According to AASHTO, every dollar spent on highway repair can save up to $14 down the road. Both chambers have proposed consolidating the existing Interstate Maintenance, National Highway System and Highway Bridge programs into a single program focused on improving the national highway system (NHS).

The conference report should retain provisions that:

• Provide dedicated funding for repair of existing infrastructure – from Interstate pavement to more local, “off-system” bridges;
• Encourage states to practice “asset management” through financial incentives to properly maintain Interstate highways and bridges on the National Highway System;
• Direct states and regions to use performance measures and establish targets for infrastructure condition;
• Ensure that non-NHS, federal-aid bridges remain eligible for funding under any major highway program; and
• Broadened the number of roads and bridges included in the National Highway System

2. Provide for Local Access to Community-Based Transportation Funding

The conference report should provide dedicated funds to empower regions and local governments to revitalize their communities while building out a full transportation network.

Members in both chambers agree that local leaders—who know the transportation, safety, and economic development needs of their constituents— should have more direct control over funds and projects in their communities. States usually build larger projects that connect local communities, but those projects often need further connections within those communities in order to function well. These larger projects can also sometimes create health, safety or other impacts that local communities are eager to address. Local communities have a wide range of needs for travel solutions that are critical to making the overall system work for everyone.

There also are critical safety needs: Over the last decade more than 47,700 pedestrians were killed in the United States – the equivalent of a jumbo jet full of passengers crashing roughly every month.

MAP-21 consolidates the current Transportation Enhancements, Safe Routes to School and Recreational Trails programs into a new program called “Additional Activities”. The program covers a broad range of eligible projects, including Main Street revitalization, street safety improvements, street and boulevard redesigns, bus stop and rail station access improvements, creating safe routes to schools, recreational trails, among many others. It then creates a grant program so that local communities can apply for these funds to do exactly these kinds of projects (Read about the bipartisan Cardin-Cochran amendment to learn more about this provision.)

The conference report should retain provisions that:

• Continue to provide dedicated funding for activities that promote safer, healthier communities, economic redevelopment and tourism;
• Provide the opportunity for smaller communities to apply directly to the state for funds; and
• Provide funding directly to larger regions for these activities.

This would provide flexibility and funding certainty to local planning entities to ensure that a portion of their gas taxes are used to address the specific transportation needs in their communities, improving health, safety and the bottom line.

3. Allow more local flexibility for public transit funding

The conference report should provide local transit agencies with flexibility to use federal transit funds to keep buses and trains running during tough economic times.

Currently, transit providers in areas over 200,000 in population are prohibited from using federal transit funds for operating costs. While this prohibition may make sense during times of economic prosperity, it can have significant impacts on transit service during economic downturns – just as many citizens are turning to transit to save money and get to work.

Over the last several years as local budgets shrank, more than 90 percent of transit agencies cut service or raised fares. This rule change could help to prevent more of the same.

The conference report should retain provisions that:

• Allow large transit agencies to use federal funds to run buses and trains on a temporary and targeted basis during times of economic crisis; and
• Provide increased flexibility to small bus operators in regions with populations over 200,000.

4. Promote transparency and accountability in the planning process

The conference report should ensure that our limited dollars are spent in smart ways that address multiple issues at once.

Despite growing levels of highway spending over the years, we face severe congestion in almost all major metropolitan areas, rising household costs for transportation, crumbling roads and bridges, and a lack of transportation options for our changing population.

Today, states and regions engage in making “long-range” plans to guide transportation investments and meet future development needs. However, these plans typically lack concrete goals and accountability to ensure that our billions in transportation spending is leading to tangible progress on important goals. We should encourage states to move in this direction – making a commitment to taxpayers that their dollars are being spent in a way that demonstrates performance and accountability.

The conference report should retain:

• Performance measures and targets for infrastructure condition and performance, air quality, congestion, goods movement, and safety;
• Incorporating performance measures and targets into the long-range planning and short-term program- ming processes;
• The ability for regions to undertake scenario planning as a part of the development of long-range transportation plans; and
• Overarching objectives and goals for the national surface transportation program.

5. Ensure the public and local officials have a meaningful voice on projects that affect them.

The conference report should find ways to speed up construction of well-vetted projects without eliminating the ability of local officials and the public to provide input to government bureaucrats on how their tax dollars will be spent.

We all agree that it would be beneficial for transportation projects be constructed faster. However, many efforts to help speed up project construction have been focused on the environmental review process. While the process can certainly be improved, it is imperative that the integrity of environmental protection and public input is maintained. It is not appropriate to exempt potentially multi-billion dollar projects from project reviews or require that massive construction projects be reviewed in a limited number of days as the House has proposed.

Given that only about 7 percent of projects go through a full environmental review process, targeting environmental review clearly is not the silver bullet for speeding up project delivery.

The conference report should: Retain the compromise provisions on project delivery and environmental review from MAP-21. The provisions in HR 4348 will undermine the ability of citizens and local governments to provide input on how state departments of transportation spend tax dollars.

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Download this full post as a separate printable document here. (pdf)

A House provision to undermine basic environmental safeguards and squelch citizen involvement was included in the three-month extension intended for conference with Senate.

House leaders last week passed their three-month transportation bill extension to serve as a “shell” to get them to the negotiating table with the Senate. But in order to keep more conservative members happy, they included three anti-environment provisions, two of which — the Keystone XL pipeline and de-regulation of coal ash — unrelated to transportation.

Under the guise of “speeding up projects,” the third provision would undermine basic safeguards to protect human health and the environment, and limit the right of citizens and stakeholders to have a say over projects that affect them. Our coalition is eager to build publicly vetted projects as quickly as possible and we’ve put forward a number of ideas for improving and accelerating the project selection process so that moving them to construction can happen faster and more smoothly.

But the House provision goes too far, trampling on local control and potentially degrading our air, water and land in the process.

So how would these provisions work out in reality? A few examples:

• The House bill would allow only 270 days for all environmental review and challenges to completed, regardless of the impact or complexity of the project. After that it would be automatically approved. So a mega-project like Boston’s  $14 billion Big Dig – an incredibly complex undertaking that took years simply to engineer – would have to be fully reviewed in just nine months. Certainly, smaller projects should be approved in that window, but the House would treat a quarter-mile spur the same as a new super-highway. What sense does that make?
  
• Call this the “More Bridges to Nowhere” clause: Today, state DOTs proposing a big project are required to look at various locations and types of improvements to compare costs, assess the impacts on congestion, the environment and other issues. Under the new House regulation, if a powerful politician says, “I’d like a Bridge to Nowhere, please,” a DOT could just build it, without providing a full analysis. How can we ensure we’re getting the most bang for our buck if we’re not even studying whether or not a different project or option would give us a better result?
  
• Under the House bill, states would be allowed to use federal dollars to buy right-of-way for “long-range needs” and capacity for expansion for a 50- to 100-year period. But here’s the tricky part: A second change permits them to avoid environmental review for any projects carried out within that previously obtained right-of-way.  This could mean that billions of federal highway dollars could be spent on new roads without any environmental review or requirement to address citizens’ concerns about them.
  
• Another change would prevent citizens from bringing a lawsuit against a project if they didn’t formally protest it early on in the process — even if the project is changed or altered during the review period. Shouldn’t we be empowering local communities to help make better decisions, not taking them out of their hands and giving a state bureaucracy the power to treat them however they like?

Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber (pdf), one of many state and local critics of these provisions, warned in a letter to Oregon’s congressional delegation that it “goes about regulatory streamlining the wrong way, exempting most projects from NEPA review and classifying all projects within the right-of-way as categorically excluded from NEPA regardless of their impacts.”

The Senate bill — a compromise bill itself, it’s important to remember — already has bipartisan provisions on speeding up project delivery and environmental review to get transportation projects built faster while still ensuring that local citizens have a voice and that projects don’t run roughshod over local environmental concerns.

The conference negotiators would do well to stick to the Senate’s bipartisan agreement already in place.

TIGER, one of the most important programs that communities depend on to fund innovative local transportation projects, was well funded after the House proposal totally eliminated it in their budget.

Whether repairing a pair of deficient bridges that connect two communities in Michigan, extending transit service into an underserved area in Orlando, improving a busy rail crossroads in Texas to move freight faster cross-country, or bringing different modes of transportation together under a brand new roof in Moline, Illinois, the competitive TIGER grant program has been a huge boon to more than 130 communities, funding many innovative projects that often have a hard time getting funding from the state DOT or federal formulas.

New Starts, the small, oversubscribed program that funds almost all new transit construction across the country, was funded at a little more than $2 billion after being also totally eliminated by the House. It’s a prudent move: transit usage is booming across the country while vehicle miles traveled peaked a few years ago and has been slowly declining ever since — especially among people under age 34.

And the small but very influential Partnership for Sustainable Communities was funded again after receiving no funding last year. This program brings together the federal environmental, housing and transportation agencies to make decisions in concert and make small grants to communities that want to engage in better planning to ensure that their communities become or remain great places to live.

This doesn’t mean that the fight is over for this year — this budget will still have to be reconciled with the House, which is no easy feat. And we’ll have a battle at that point once more. It’s been tougher and tougher in the last few years to pass actual budgets for these individual programs. This year will be no different, especially heading into an election this fall.

The full list of notable programs and their funding levels:

• Highways: $39.1 billion.
• Transit: The summary doesn’t explicitly give an amount but it’s fairly safe to assume that it’s $8.4 billion, in line with MAP-21 levels, just as the above funding for highways matches MAP-21.
• TIGER: $500 million
• New Starts: $2.05 billion. This is the core program that funds construction of new and expanded transit systems.
• Amtrak: $1.45 billion
• Passenger Rail Grants: $100 million
• Partnership for Sustainable Communities: $50 million

Are you confused about the difference between the long-term transportation bill and these yearly budget battles? In short, it’s the difference between “authorizations” and “appropriations.”  The multi-year transportation bill is an authorization, which means the policy is put on paper and the targeted overall funding amounts are determined. We are still working to see that multi-year bill passed with important policy reforms. But in the meantime as we roll along under extension after extension of the old law, it’s still up to appropriators in the House and Senate each year to decide how much money to actually spend on transportation —especially how to divvy up the discretionary money between different programs, like Amtrak, TIGER grants, or high-speed rail, just to name a few.

Alabama – Richard Shelby
Alaska – Lisa Murkowski
Arkansas – Mark Pryor
California – Dianne Feinstein
Hawaii – Daniel Inouye
Illinois – Dick Durbin
Illinois – Mark Kirk
Indiana – Dan Coats
Iowa – Tom Harkin
Kansas – Jerry Moran
Kentucky – Mitch McConnell
Louisiana – Mary Landrieu
Maine – Susan Collins
Maryland – Barbara Mikulski
Mississippi – Thad Cochran
Missouri – Roy Blunt
Montana – Jon Tester
Nebraska – Ben Nelson
New Jersey – Frank Lautenberg
North Dakota – John Hoeven
Ohio – Sherrod Brown
Rhode Island – Jack Reed
South Carolina – Lindsey Graham
South Dakota – Tim Johnson
Tennessee – Lamar Alexander
Texas – Kay Bailey Hutchison
Vermont – Patrick Leahy
Washington – Patty Murray
Wisconsin – Herb Kohl
Wisconsin – Ron Johnson

Just a few weeks ago, Rep. Paul Ryan and the House released their budget for next year, and it proposed painful cuts to important transportation programs that our local communities depend on.

The TIGER grant program that rewards innovative local transportation projects, funding for new transit systems, passenger rail funding, and the office of sustainable communities that helps our towns and cities plan better for the future all were either slashed or eliminated.

Mr. Ryan and the House made it clear — making much needed transportation investments in our communities is not a priority to them.

But there’s a chance to make things better: Senate appropriators are writing their budget right now and they need to know that we’re counting on them to put together a better budget for transportation.

If you live in one of the states with a Senator on this powerful Appropriations Committee, can you take a minute to send them a short letter?

The small TIGER grant program has helped more than 130 communities build innovative transportation projects that are often ignored by the federal or state government — projects that improve freight rail, help give people more options to get around, fix broken bridges, or make walking or biking safer, just to name a few.

As we wait for the House to take action on the big multi-year transportation bill extended yet one more time until June, they still have to decide how much money to spend on transportation each year.

While it’s important to find ways to reduce spending, many of these important programs are being unfairly targeted by House members who are out of touch with what their constituents want and need from transportation: safe places to walk or bike, travel options that let us avoid pain at the pump, and bridges and roads that get repaired before we spend money on new things we can’t afford.

Yet the House is proposing to cut or eliminate the very programs that help do these things.

Help us defend them by writing your Senator today.

Senate MAP-21 Summary (pdf)

A word of warning: this is for those that want to go a little deeper into the specific policies and differences between the two bills. It’s long and fairly wonky.

National Goals & Performance Measures

Senate: The Commerce Committee title establishes national transportation goals and performance measures. It requires states and metro areas to use performance measures in long-range planning and short-term programming processes. It explicitly covers key indicators such as congestion, road condition, reducing environmental impacts, improving the reliability of freight movement, increasing access to transit, and reducing traffic fatalities across all modes.

House: It contains no comprehensive national goals. It requires US DOT to establish a qualitative “national goal” but the intent is unclear. Requires states to establish performance measures for a broad set of target areas.

State of Good Repair

Senate: The Senate bill has strong repair provisions. 60% of the funds in the newly-consolidated highway program are required to be spent on repairing roads and bridges. (Click to enlarge this helpful chart at right — the new consolidated program is at the top right.) It also requires DOT to establish minimum condition levels for roads and bridges and includes penalties for states for not meeting them.

Repairing other non-National Highway System bridges are eligible under the flexible 40% pot of funding — the second blue box from the top on the graphic. States must establish targets for infrastructure condition. (Read this post from our blog for more about repair: A closer look at the Senate’s MAP-21: state of good repair.)

House: The House’s newly-consolidated highway program requires reporting on progress towards state of good repair by states but without similar fixed requirements for spending on repair. There are penalties if a State’s National Highway System or other bridges are very bad (10% of NHS bridge deck area structurally deficient or 15% of off-system bridges are structurally deficient).

Possible House amendment fix:  Boswell 116 establishes minimum standards for National Highway System bridges and requires funds to be spent on bridge repair unless states meet those levels. Boswell 117 requires states with a significant number of federal-aid bridges to spend funds on repairing them.

Planning & Suballocation

Senate: Ties planning to performance-oriented goals and defines scenario planning. Divides metropolitan area planning organizations into tiers according to size. The amount of federal transportation funds given directly to metro areas is roughly equivalent to what they receive under current law, though the actual percentage has decreased.

House: Like the Senate bill, suballocated funds are roughly equivalent though the actual percentage has decreased. The above-mentioned penalties for not meeting minimum bridge requirements could reduce the funds available for metro areas. This bill also allows states (and the Governor) to override local planning decisions for projects on interstates. (See #3 in our list of top ten provisions being opposed in the House bill.)

Possible House amendment fix: Nadler 25 would restore the ability of metro regions to develop a transportation plan that meets their community needs without unilateral amendment by the Governor, addressing part of that #3 from our top ten list.

Public transportation & transit-oriented development

Senate: Continues dedicated funding for public transportation at traditional 20 percent share. Creates some new flexibility to spend federal funds on operations, i.e., keeping buses and trains running, not just buying new equipment. A new transit-oriented development planning program was incorporated into the bill via the Banking title.

House: Original bill ends 30 years of dedicated funding for public transit — read the letter we organized by more than 600 groups and individuals in opposition. Allows loans for transit-oriented development as an eligible expense under the TIFIA loan program. It doesn’t provide large transit operators with any flexibility to spend federal money on operating their transit systems. There’s also a provision to restrict any transit agency that operates a rail system from being eligible for grants that help build bus systems and bus facilities — resulting in unnecessary bureaucracy as large transit agencies split into two agencies to continue receiving those grants.

Read more about that provision in our recent post: Fixing the House Bill: cutting regulatory burdens and bureaucracy.

Possible House amendment fix:  LaTourette/Carnahan 16 would allow all transit agencies to use a portion of their federal transit funding for operating expenses during times of economic crisis. (This amendment is similar to this bill the two representatives offered back in 2011.)

Walking and bicycling, local control of funds

Senate: Due in part to this amendment offered by Senators Cardin and Cochran and incorporated into the bill, MAP-21 consolidates programs for making biking and walking safer (as well as for other small local projects) and gives 50 percent of this consolidated program directly to metro areas. States and metro areas must create a competitive grant process to distribute that funding to local communities that apply. The Commerce Committee title also includes a new Complete Streets provision.

House: Eliminates most dedicated funding for bicycling & walking. Those uses remain “eligible” but without any dedicated funding for them. The bill also deletes numerous references throughout the bill that encourage multimodal projects. The bill retains the Recreational Trails program.

Possible House amendment fix: Petri-Blumenauer 103 creates consolidated program for bike/ped and other local projects and provides local governments access to new consolidated pot of funding.

Rural Issues

Senate: Ensures rural roads are properly considered for safety projects. Provides flexibility to invest in street networks. Consolidates rural and specialized transit programs to ensure that service is better coordinated.

House: Ensures rural roads are properly considered for safety projects. Consolidates rural and specialized transit programs.

Congestion and Air Quality

Senate: Retains the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program but with a new focus on PM2.5 (particulate matter 2.5: diesel emissions). Air quality is not included in new statewide planning goals.

House: Moves CMAQ program into the Alternative Transit Account. Allows construction of single occupant vehicle projects with funds. (Read more about this provision in our blog post: Fixing the House bill: reducing air pollution by providing more travel options)

Possible House amendment fix:  Ellison 97/Blumenauer 191 restores CMAQ program to original intent.

Workforce Development

Senate: Requires urban transit agencies to spend a portion of their funds on workforce development activities.

House: No new workforce development provisions.

Passenger Rail

Senate: Requires National, Regional and State comprehensive passenger and freight rail plans, including a Northeast corridor high speed rail plan. Includes Amtrak authorization language and adds eligibility for other high speed rail projects.

House: Includes Amtrak authorization language but with a 20-25% cut in operating funds for Amtrak. No high speed rail funding.

Freight

Senate: Establishes a new national freight program and new national freight strategic plan. Read more about the FREIGHT Act that was incorporated into MAP-21. Allows up to 10 percent of highway freight program and 5 percent of flexible Transportation Mobility Program funds to be spent on rail. States and regions must establish performance targets for freight movement.

House:  No new freight program. Encourages States to form freight plans tied to achieving broad goals. Read more about the freight provisions in the second half of our recent post: Fixing the House Bill: cutting regulatory burdens and bureaucracy.

Last week the Senate struck a deal to begin debating the bipartisan MAP-21 transportation bill and vote on 30 amendments that leadership of both parties agreed to consider. We are tracking the votes on the amendments with these tables below, where you can also find summaries of each amendment. Note: If you bookmarked last Thursday’s post with the amendment table, no worries — the same tables are embedded in that post as here, so they’ll update in both places at the same time. We just wanted to push out a new, simpler post today.

The Senate does have a vote scheduled for the full bill after the amendments but due to how the Senate operates with time limits and votes, they may not have time to consider the full bill today. Check back throughout the day for updates, and follow us on Twitter for updates in real time.

Final transportation-related MAP-21 amendments

Final amendments totally unrelated to transportation

Just one day after a procedural vote failed, the Senate late last Wednesday reached an agreement that will allow them to begin debating the MAP-21 transportation bill and start voting on amendments today.

The hangup on moving the bill forward was disagreement on which amendments would be voted on — there were over 200 amendments filed, many of which didn’t have anything to do with transportation, and there was no way that all of them would be considered. A handful of them were included in a manager’s package that essentially folds them into the overall bill, including the Cardin-Cochran amendment and several others that T4 America is supporting.

A total of 30 amendments will be considered by the Senate, with no possible way for others to be offered or debated, per the agreement.

The real point of contention and the reason the cloture vote failed on Tuesday was the fact that many Senators wanted to debate and vote on potentially contentious amendments that have little or nothing to do with transportation, like opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling, or approving the contentious Keystone XL oil pipeline — both of which are included in the 30 amendments that will be considered starting today.

Along those lines, there are 18 amendments having to do with transportation policy in some way, and 12 that have nothing to do with transportation, known as  ”non-germane” amendments. Tables of both of those are below, and we’ll be filling in the summaries throughout the day as we read and decipher them.

The Senate made it through 7 amendments last Thursday, leaving about 23 for today, and a possible final vote on the Senate floor as early as tonight. But when or if they do pass MAP-21, per the agreement, they are not going to move it immediately to the House, giving the larger chamber another chance to pass a bill of their own. (The House is on recess this week.)

You can track the amendments with the tables below.

Last updated: 3/13/12 12:30 p.m ET  — Summaries added for each amendment and vote totals will be added as they happen.

Final transportation-related MAP-21 amendments

Final amendments totally unrelated to transportation

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Senator Boxer, one of the four main architects of the Senate’s bipartisan transportation bill, meets with Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe and Los Angeles MTA Executive Director Art Leahy to discuss transportation issues.

In case you missed the news Friday, thanks in part to the drumbeat of tweets and messages and letters and phone calls from many of you, the Senate made some important changes last week to strengthen their two-year transportation bill.

But with a March 31 deadline still looming for shutdown of all transportation programs without a new bill and a crucial vote scheduled for tomorrow (3/6) at noon, your Senators need to hear that they must move this bill without delay.

Help keep the pressure on and take a moment to urge your Senator to support moving the bill and get it one step closer to passage.

We celebrated a big victory late last week as the Senate agreed to include three amendments we have all been working for, including the Cardin-Cochran amendment to give local governments a say over small projects in their communities — projects that make bicycling and walking safer and more attractive, revitalize our Main Streets, or make better connections to transit, among many other uses.

A “cloture” vote to end this phase of debate and move the bill to the Senate floor is scheduled for noon on Tuesday, 3/6. While this vote won’t be the last word, it is key toward solidifying the Senate’s progress and a failed cloture vote could stall the bill significantly.

Last week we learned just how effective our 500-plus coalition members and the thousands of you have been with your advocacy, specifically on the Cardin-Cochran local control amendment that was incorporated into the bill last week.

“Oh, we’ve been hearing about that Cardin-Cochran amendment,” we heard repeatedly, as we visited numerous Senate offices last week with 30-plus T4 America coalition members who flew to D.C. from all over the country to lobby their members of Congress on the transportation bill. Staffers in numerous Senate offices said they’d been getting phone calls and emails about that amendment specifically for the last few weeks.

While we are certainly still working for several more improvements to the bill, it’s time to move it one step closer to winning passage. We need to make sure that the Senate moves this bill forward without delay. The cloture vote expected Tuesday would help to make this much-improved bill the starting point for further debate as it moves toward a final vote.

Our Senators need to hear from their constituents that we can’t wait to pass a bill that will improve mobility and travel options for all Americans while preserving our existing infrastructure. We need to keep this Senate bill moving forward.

Send a message to your Senator anytime before noon on Tuesday with this page. 

And after you send that email, come right back and make a quick phone call and tell them to support the Senate transportation bill on the floor Tuesday. Keep the pressure on!