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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apparently not.

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

Fix it first

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

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

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

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

3) The slightest of head nods toward repair accountability

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

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

4) Reconnecting Communities is functionally dead

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

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

Safety over speed

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

5) Safe Streets for All local grant program survives

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

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

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

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

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

Invest in the rest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10) Passenger rail loses out big time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Safety over speed

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

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

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

Fix it first

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

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

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

Invest in the rest

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

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

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

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

Looking ahead

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

How reauthorization can halt the highway harm

Transportation for America’s Fix it First principle is not just about fixing our crumbling roads before building new ones. We must also look at policies to fundamentally repair the communities that have been historically harmed and divided by the highway system and put a stop to any further damage.

T4A’s policies to rebuild local economies by reconnecting communities

Under our Fix it First principle, we want to fix the communities that have been harmed by highways in addition to avoiding any more damage from the status quo. This post will explain how to assist in reconnecting communities by:

Combine the Reconnecting Communities Pilot (RCP) and Neighborhood Access and Equity (NAE) Program grant programs and protect the effort to redesign or deconstruct outdated infrastructure that has hindered growth in low-income communities. Ensure funding levels are protected and increased to meet the demand to address transportation infrastructure, particularly highways and rail.
Modernize transportation models for accuracy. Transportation agencies do not have the necessary tools to accurately assess the impacts of various highway project alternatives on traffic and development.
Include housing in programs like RCP/NAE to preserve affordability. Funding must be available for strategies like land trusts, property tax abatements, and the construction of affordable housing units to ensure current residents benefit from the improvements.
Don’t allow new barriers to be created. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) should do a review of all of its regulations, procedures, and guidance documents, identify practices that lead to projects that create division and hardship to local mobility and economic development, and implement changes.

How highways have harmed

The Interstate Highway System has played a large and detrimental role in dividing communities, making people more dependent on private cars to move around. In 1956, the Federal-Aid Highway Act, passed during the Eisenhower administration and established what would become the modern federal highway program for funding and building the current system. As a result of highways cutting through the heart of cities and white Americans taking advantage of moving to the suburbs, many marginalized groups saw the worst of the effects.

While Eisenhower may have conceived of the program as a means to build roads to cities, in practice, the program more often than not built roads through cities. Building highways through cities gave white and wealthy suburbanites access to urban centers while segregating themselves from communities of color. These communities were usually targeted intentionally by openly racist leaders, such as Sam Englehart in the South and Robert Moses in the North. The displacement and devastation from the construction are brazen and obvious in these neighborhoods. Pedestrian access has been disrupted and de-prioritized, air quality has worsened due to increased congestion, and opportunities for homes have been replaced by dangerous corridors with speeding cars. This upcoming reauthorization is a serious opportunity to not only repair the communities that have been most harmed by highways, but also stop any further damage the status quo has laid.

Protect the reconnecting communities program

The Reconnecting Communities Pilot program (RCP) is a discretionary grant program that was authorized with $1 billion in the IIJA. The purpose of this program is in its name: to reconnect communities by removing or mitigating transportation facilities (such as highways) that have created barriers to community connectivity, access or economic development. Although the grant program is very new (and definitely has room for improvement), this program is a step in the right direction to repair the damage from disconnecting highways.

RCP is an opportunity that should be continued in the upcoming reauthorization. The grant focuses on improving access to jobs, education, healthcare, nature, and recreation that have otherwise been hindered due to years of destruction from bad highway planning. By continuing to provide them discretionary funding opportunities, communities can begin to undo the damage of misguided highway expansion. Congress must protect this grant program to ensure the efforts to fix the damages of the past are given ample opportunity and priority for communities.

Modernizing transportation models

Although the RCP grants are a great funding opportunity, we need to remove systemic barriers that hold back these projects. To keep RCP projects moving forward, transportation agencies need better tools to accurately evaluate the impacts of highway project alternatives. Reliable and encompassing tools to measure these alternative projects are needed to highlight how RCP projects can have accurate impacts and benefits. These forecasting tools should be accounting for variables such as individual trips that shift to other corridors or that involve a different mode of transportation. However, because of outdated models that presume everyone drives, state DOTs are often the first to freak out at the thought of removing a portion of a highway and use the argument that traffic will explode. These models are holding back RCP projects and not painting the whole picture.

Traffic forecasting tools must account for individual trips that shift to other roadways or occur at different times of day, and can be made using other modes of transportation. In order to receive federal funds, transportation agencies should be held accountable for their projects’ results and be transparent about what traffic forecasting tools they are using and how they use them. True accountability includes making public the past accuracy (and inaccuracy) of highway agencies’ predictions versus ground truth, and providing clarity on what assumptions and inputs are being used in traffic forecasting models. This also means that, if highway project sponsors are going to claim benefits for air quality improvements from reduced delay, they need to account for emissions and pollution from increased travel volume from induced demand. Instead, they must clearly demonstrate that any environmental benefits are sustained over a long term period and result in lower pollution levels than the baseline.

Ultimately, the crux of our policy proposal is to eliminate obstacles for RCP projects and ensure the greatest accuracy within transportation models. In order to repair the damage of the past, we must also stop any hindrances that are in the way, which starts with accurate transportation traffic models.

Update the NAE program to include housing

The Neighborhood Access and Equity program was established under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and provided $3 billion to improve connectivity in communities that have been impacted by divisive infrastructure. This same divisive infrastructure also disproportionately targeted communities of color and systematically removed existing housing and businesses deemed “substandard.” Instead of properly investing in these marginalized communities, the interstate system displaced nearly 475,000 households (over two million people) in less than twenty years. We cannot talk about mobility without integrating housing into the solution.

Funding must be allowed for strategies like the construction of affordable housing to ensure that current residents can benefit from mobility improvements and reduce displacement. Leveraging additional housing in land reclaimed by RCP projects would provide those living in the community with options, and even opportunities for those originally displaced to return. This is imperative to ensure that the people who have suffered from the damage can reap the benefits of investment in their communities.

Don’t let new barriers be created!

The damage caused by disconnecting highways is not just a thing of the past—it continues very outwardly today. Our current approach towards infrastructure still consists of obsolete transportation policies, funding systems, and models that have their roots in the 1950s, which often directly harm vulnerable and marginalized communities. Harmful highway expansions are still being planned through or near low-income neighborhoods, like I-49 in Shreveport, Louisiana, which is destroying homes and churches.

The system still does not prioritize moving people—only cars. This priority presents itself when state DOTs fail to consider local pedestrians, transit riders, and bicyclists when expanding corridors for the benefit of drivers from far-off neighborhoods. This ends in a never ending cycle of sprawling land use and displaced economic development in favor of storing and moving cars. This practice remains justified due to old practices never being retired and consistently disproven claims that congestion can be alleviated with just “one more lane”.

We need to halt the practices that got us here today. If we completely stop creating the same problems, then we would not have to keep repairing them! The RCP grant was authorized $1 billion over five years in the IIJA, which is a grand start to undoing the damage. But that investment is pathetic in comparison to the $154 billion that state and local governments spent on highways in 2021 alone.

Currently, the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) regulations, procedures, and guidance documents only encourage the same old destructive practices. In order to stop the damage, these regulations need to be reviewed and updated—otherwise, we are stuck in the same loop. In reauthorization, we are calling for updates to the regulation and guidance determining how agencies use value of time, benefit-cost analyses, highway and road design guides, and project selection procedures. These processes guide how agencies design and build projects, and reforming them would address the root causes of the harms that transportation planning can still perpetuate today.

Looking ahead

Decades of devastating practices have destroyed communities, especially the marginalized. But it’s not too late to undo the damage! Reauthorization is the chance to reconnect communities and allow a wider range of options to move around. Check out the rest of our reauthorization policies here.

A need to rethink how we assess the health of our nation’s bridges

A year after the Key Bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board is urging the owners of 68 bridges across the U.S. to assess their vulnerability to collisions. This moment also presents an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the state of the practice for assessing the health of our nation’s bridges and ensure agencies target taxpayer funds to the bridges that most need repair.

In the days after the Key Bridge collapse, questions were swirling on the state of repair of our bridges and what could be done differently to avoid a bridge collapse. But in the year since, the number of bridges classified as in poor condition has ticked down less than 1 percent according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

This is not the first bridge collapse in recent history: The Silver Bridge collapse, between West Virginia and Ohio in 1967, brought about the development of the National Bridge Inspection Standards. After the 1980 Skyway Bridge collapse, infrastructure design was altered for future projects to create structural redundancy and fortification. But are our leaders motivated to take similarly bold action today

A year after the Key Bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is asking states to revisit collision vulnerability assessments of 68 bridges scattered across 19 states. They are also recommending that FHWA, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provide guidance to bridge owners on how to reduce the risk of vessel collision. Congress should require this, if the guidance is not forthcoming in the near term.

However there is a broader problem: several past bridge collapses were the result of problems undetected by bridge inspections or from DOTs failing to heed the problems identified. In the case of the 2007 I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the NTSB determined that the bridge failed because of design errors, subpar components, and bridge modifications that adversely affected bridge load capacity. These critical flaws were not caught by bridge inspections, and the NTSB recommended changes to the inspection regime.

In the 2013 I-5 Skagit, WA bridge collapse, the NTSB determined that repeated overhead bridge structure damage was due to low clearance truck strikes and no additional warnings or countermeasures to avoid future strikes. Nine of the 10 inspections before the collapse showed high load bridge strikes, but nothing was done in response to these repeated warnings.

In the 2017 I-85 bridge collapse in Atlanta, the NTSB determined flammable materials that had been improperly stored for five years under the bridge led to an excessive heat fire, impacting the structural integrity of the bridge. The presence of these flammable materials was overlooked by bridge inspectors and not included in their inspection.

Lastly, in the 2022 Pittsburgh Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, the NTSB determined poor quality inspections led to a failure to identify fracture-critical issues and incorrect load rating calculations. They also found insufficient oversight of the City of Pittsburgh’s bridge inspection program by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.

These bridge inspection protocols heavily rely on visual inspection, theoretical calculations, limited training and recertification of inspectors, and “engineering judgment” to determine the bridge’s health. In the earlier examples, that approach undercompensated the bridge’s respective poor health and collapse vulnerability. In other cases, bridges are being weight restricted for fear of structural issues when that is not, in fact, the case. For example, 10 bridges with load restrictions in Nebraska were load tested in 2021 across three counties using load testing sensors to emulate loads and assess the bridge’s response. As a result, six of those bridges had their restrictions removed. The standard visual inspection found conditions to be worse than they really were.

We are identifying bridges in need of immediate repair while not recognizing critical needs elsewhere, meaning we are not targeting funding correctly. This is all happening while agencies are spending funds on new roads and bridges that further stretch our resources.

Using technology like load testing sensors (which are widely available and relatively inexpensive) can more accurately assess and identify structural issues invisible to the naked eye. Pairing visual inspections with frequent data collection via sensors can better identify bridge health issues and result in proactive maintenance This fix it first approach would lead to few-to-no bridges in poor condition and no bridge collapses. Furthermore, there is a need to support robust and frequent bridge inspector training, to keep current with the required skillsets and tools to assess bridge health. Looking ahead to the next surface transportation reauthorization, it’s not just about securing more funding—it’s about getting more from every dollar. The next federal transportation bill must set a new standard, prioritizing modern tools for accurate assessments, diligently trained inspector workforce, and a fix-it-first approach to ensure resources go where they’re needed most.