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The country’s civil engineers agree: $1.5 trillion didn’t produce good infrastructure

Despite historic levels of investment in infrastructure over the last twenty years, America’s 2025 infrastructure grades for roads, bridges, safety, and transit look mostly the same. No one should consider putting a single penny more into a program with such bad results. Unfortunately, raising new money is at the top of the list for our country’s association of civil engineers.

The 2025 infrastructure Report Card, released by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) today, grades every aspect of U.S. infrastructure every four years.1 While ASCE has made some notable improvements (we’ll cover some below), they’ve also stuck to their guns: The #1 solution to the poor condition of our roads, bridges, and transit systems is to spend more money. We just aren’t spending enough.

Consider:

  • Roads scored a D in 2001 and a D+ in 2025
  • Bridges scored a C in 2005 and 2025

Noting that these failing scores happened during a period with a huge infusion of funding in the 2009 stimulus and historic amounts of money for roads in the 2021 infrastructure law, perhaps it’s finally time to stop calling for more money as a potential solution?

There’s an obvious problem with telling taxpayers the price before they tell us what we’re buying. (Especially coming from those employed in building the stuff. ) ASCE has been described by Strong Towns over the years as part of the “Infrastructure Cult”—those who believe that prosperity can always be achieved through more growth, and that any and all infrastructure spending is always a good financial investment that leads to growth. ASCE’s report cards of years past were sometimes comically half-baked when it came to the math: Chuck at Strong Towns examined the numbers in the 2011 report:

…The total cost to households and businesses is $1.042 trillion. Well, ASCE states that to reach “minimum tolerable conditions” (a pretty sad standard) would take an investment of $220 billion annually. Over 10 years, that’s $2.2 trillion. Yeah, you read that right. The American Society of Civil Engineers wrote a report suggesting that over the next decade we spend $2.2 trillion so we can save $1.0 trillion. And you wonder why we’re broke.

Credit where it is due

ASCE has made some significant improvements to their specific recommendations and how they talk about some of the problems. Having read these report cards for 15 years now, they have truly evolved and improved many of their specific recommendations, even just compared to the 2021 edition. (“Solutions That Work” in their parlance.) But there’s a real likelihood that these specific improvements in their recommendations will just get lost in the overall clarion call to the public and the media this week of “bad U.S. infrastructure needs more money.”

The obsession with many states and transportation agencies to fight congestion and delay is a fool’s errand, according to ASCE. We need to instead “dedicate resources to preserving a state of good repair, because no nation can build its way out of congestion,” according to this year’s recommendations. That’s a pretty stunning admission you’re not likely to hear from your state DOT and definitely not from the trade association for concrete manufacturers. They recommend focusing instead on “travel time reliability,” which is much closer to what people actually care about.

And they call for more frequent, accurate, and up-to-date data on road/bridge condition, along with more transparency within state DOTs to explain how they chose individual projects. For bridges specifically, they rightly note that the rate of improvement for repairing bridges in poor condition has drastically slowed in recent years, and they call attention to the skyrocketing number of bridges in “fair” condition, which is really where deferred maintenance shows up as good bridges degrade because maintenance is deferred.

When it comes to roadway safety, they are coming around on the power of design in impressive ways: “Incorporate infrastructure design choices that can help save lives, including reducing lane width and implementing low-cost features such as asphalt art, which can heighten the visibility of crosswalks.”

All of these changes represent a pretty significant departure from past report cards, and a pretty stark break from how they talked about these things 16 years ago. But if no new money is coming, how hard will they fight for more disruptive ideas like halting the expansion of the system in order to prioritize repair? We have learned a clear lesson from numerous reauthorization debates over the years: once new money is identified and in the bank, the impulse to talk about any policy changes evaporates.

More money will not get us where ASCE wants without making some hard choices

Here are a few facts on infrastructure spending:

  • We can’t even afford to maintain the system that we currently have. ASCE says we need to spend $87 billion per year from 2018 to 2038 just for basic rehabilitation of highways. By comparison, states reported in 2022 that they spent ~$89 billion collectively across all capital costs for roads.
  • We certainly cannot afford to keep expanding our system. Each new lane-mile costs ~$24,000 per year to preserve in good condition. (And those are estimates from 2019!)
  • From 2008 to 2018, even with the one-time infusion from the 2009 stimulus, the share of roads in poor condition eligible for federal funds got worse overall, increasing from 16 to 23 percent.
  • The 2021 infrastructure law (the IIJA) increased highway funding by 50 percent. In 2022, states reported that they spent $22 billion on highway expansion.
  • Voters don’t want to keep expanding highways. In a 2020 T4America poll, 79 percent agreed the government should fix existing roads before building new ones and 73 percent said state governments should have to justify building any new roads. In another 2023 poll, “building new highways and freeways” was the least popular long-term solution for reducing traffic.

It’s clear that ASCE values their role as the clear-eyed engineers in the room, and they do not want to prescribe how new money should be spent. But they fail to understand: To refrain from prescribing how money should be spent is to reinforce the broken status quo of how that limited money is currently spent.

The INVEST Act—a much better version of what became the 2021 infrastructure law—included an unprecedented change. States aiming to use formula highway dollars to build new road capacity would be required to demonstrate that they could maintain that road long-term. Paired with other provisions in the law, the INVEST Act would have finally started to prevent states from expanding their road networks when it comes at the expense of their repair needs. This incredibly responsible approach from 2020 was not mentioned in either the 2021 or 2025 Report Cards as a real world solution.

We really need groups like ASCE (and others) to look more critically at a federal program that has failed to deliver on priorities like safety and maintenance and may have outlived its usefulness. Can ASCE think in these terms? Despite all the good recommendations throughout this report that we really like, they’re still focused on an overall number: According to ASCE’s Bridging the Gap report, surface transportation needs from 2024 to 2033 about $3.5 trillion, of which $2.2 trillion represents the nation’s roadway system. If funding levels included in the IIJA become the new baseline for annual investment, the nation’s roadways will have a funding gap of $684 billion over the next 10 years.

Just to translate that a bit, if the IIJA—which increased highway funding alone by 50 percent—becomes the new baseline for federal transportation investment for the next 7 years, we’d still need $684 billion more? And that’s just for roads.

After 27 years, ASCE has evolved. But they aren’t quite ready to admit that the federal government has spent $1.5 trillion since 1991 on surface transportation and it’s resulted in subpar transit systems, crumbling roads and bridges that aren’t improving enough, historic levels of traffic deaths, and the largest sector for emissions. If you think that doubling that price tag is going to improve those outcomes, I’ve got a (poor condition) bridge to sell you.

We don’t need a penny more for a program with failing scores that have barely changed in 25 years—no matter how you measure them. We need better priorities.

What President Trump should tackle on transportation

If President Trump is interested in claiming the mantle of “infrastructure president,” here’s a list of specific actions the president can take to make significant improvements to the federal transportation program.

As we’ve done for past presidents, we’ve put together a list of specific actions that President Trump should take on transportation in his final term. Buckle up for this detailed list of 14 specific to-dos across five different areas:

  1. Finally fix stuff
  2. Actually improve safety
  3. Streamline the process
  4. Reconsider the (broken) models
  5. Improve transparency

As T4A director Beth Osborne wrote recently, the federal transportation program has been failing to deliver for decades. Spending more money has failed to improve congestion, emissions, efficient access to jobs and daily needs, or reduce the number of people struck and killed while walking. President Trump could make a powerful statement by acknowledging that our current strategy isn’t working and urging Congress to beach this rudderless ship of a program that’s sailing off in no particular direction at all.

1) FINALLY FIX STUFF: President Trump can be the first to finally focus federal spending on fixing things first

He should aim to have “the best” infrastructure rather than just “the most”

Unsurprisingly, the American public doesn’t know much about the federal transportation program.2 Most Americans do not realize there’s no requirement to first repair existing infrastructure before building new assets that require decades upon decades of new, additional maintenance costs. Requiring states to repair things first would likely have immense public support if Congress proposed it, yet a bunch of supposedly fiscally conservative Senators lost their minds at USDOT merely suggesting that states consider doing so.

At some point, we will have to stop expanding a transportation network that is already too large to realistically maintain, or go broke trying. Repair Priorities showed that we’d need $231.4 billion per year just to keep our existing road network in an acceptable state and bring the backlog of roads in poor condition into good repair over a six-year period. Yet across all units of government, in 2015, we spent just $105.4 billion on all highway capital projects. Step one is to stop digging the hole, especially when the gas tax, the primary source of federal funding, has only been covering a fraction of checks that Congress has been writing since as far back as 2008.

President Trump should step in and tell the freeloading members of Congress that the free lunch is over. Tell them their states can’t just expand their transportation system forever with zero thought given to how their children and grandchildren will pay for its upkeep.

(A) Reward areas that are making improvements in the condition of their roadways with competitive grants and limit the grantmaking for those who are not.
More than $200 billion of the $643 billion in the IIJA went to competitive grants, and every administration puts its own stamp on the projects they choose to advance. Add in criteria to reward those who are being the best stewards of the other federal dollars they have received. Those who are begging Congress for more free taxpayer money to expand roads they can’t afford to maintain should not be rewarded with more grant funding to do anything.

(B) Before providing funding for anything new, require transportation agencies to demonstrate they have funding for its maintenance and repair throughout its useful life.
This is another fact that tends to shock people we’ve surveyed: agencies don’t have to prove they can afford to maintain anything they are building. And they can build something new even if it will jeopardize their ability to maintain things they’ve already built. If you or I are buying a house, we have to prove to the bank that we have stable and sufficient income. But when your state DOT takes federal highway formula money and decides to build a new highway with it, they don’t have to prove to anyone that they have enough money to maintain it even for just the next five years, let alone the next 50. It’s time for that to change. USDOT could institute a requirement like this tomorrow with many competitive programs. For formula programs, President Trump can tell Congress to institute this change in the replacement for the IIJA, which is due in September of next year.

(C) When infrastructure fails, whether by natural disasters or otherwise, require that it be updated for current needs.
When floods, fire, extreme heat, or other changes in weather lead to the loss of a road, bridge, transit line, or anything else, transportation agencies should consider whether that asset needs to be replaced, what needs to be done to reduce the chance of a repeat failure, and how the design should be updated to improve priorities like safety and connectivity. Expanding that asset should only be considered if there is a plan to maintain it, as discussed above.

(2) ACTUALLY IMPROVE SAFETY: Stop paying lip service to safety and get the U.S. off the bottom of the rankings

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy came in with a stated interest in improving safety. It’s sorely needed—the U.S. sits at the bottom of the rankings of the developed world on traffic safety. The numbers are even more dire for people walking. Safety is always described as a top priority, though states face no penalties for injuries or fatalities increasing on their roads. It’s time to put safety above all else, penalize those who use federal dollars to make it worse, and reward those who are moving things in the right direction.

(A) Reward improvements in safety.
Reward the cities, metro areas, and states with roadways that are getting safer with increased access to competitive grants, and limit the grantmaking for the places that are not. Consider serious injuries in addition to deaths, and especially evaluate the numbers for people walking, biking, or getting around outside of vehicles.

(B) Make it clear that cities and states can and should be testing to see what safety improvements work in what conditions, and fund them to do so.
The Secretary should write a memo making it clear that the guidance in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is never an excuse to stand in the way of progress on safety. If provisions in the MUTCD are leading to bad safety outcomes, states, and other agencies should not follow that guidance and submit reports to USDOT about provisions that make safety worse. USDOT should consider updating the guide to better prioritize safety or, even better, pare it back entirely to only cover the design of signs, markings and signals. The MUTCD was never intended to govern street design.

(C) Cap vehicle safety ratings at four stars for any vehicles that impede the driver’s ability to see in front of or around them.
As the vehicle fleet gets bigger, taller, and heavier on average, people in older vehicles, and especially people outside of any vehicle, are more at risk. Collisions that were only injuries 20 years ago are becoming fatalities today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other relevant USDOT offices should stop dragging their feet and update the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) on crashworthiness and crash avoidance systems to account for people walking and biking. This is something that’s already been proposed by the National Safety Council. (Page 42)

(3) STREAMLINE: Cut red tape and speed up (good) projects

The President and Secretary Duffy are partially right—good projects do take too long. While we’re also glad that terrible, destructive projects also take too long, there’s absolutely some low-hanging fruit when it comes to improving the process by which projects get planned, designed, and built. Here are three:

(1) Streamline the grant application process for all USDOT grants so that rural and lower-capacity agencies can better compete.
While not easy for any unit of government to navigate, smaller and midsized cities face an uphill challenge with the complex process of applying for USDOT competitive grants. USDOT could do two things to improve that process: First, create an online application and a simple plug-and-play benefit-cost analysis (BCA) calculator so that these places don’t have to hire overpriced consultants. Second, reduce the paperwork and speed up the process for signing a grant agreement. What you might not know when you see that list released of RAISE grant winners (or any other grant program) is that it can take months to years to receive any funding because they have to negotiate a grant agreement with USDOT. Speed that up and simplify that process.

(2) Ensure that project streamlining efforts consistently extend to all modes, all regions, and all transportation agencies.
One reason transit projects get built more slowly (and at higher cost) than highway projects is because Federal Highways (FHWA) district offices and Federal Transit (FTA) regional offices interpret many of the same rules differently. For example, FHWA applies streamlining laws and regulations much more liberally than FTA does. Environmental review should be bypassed or abbreviated for more projects that have clear benefits. And the state DOTs demanding streamlining changes from Congress or USDOT, who subject their local governments to arduous requirements when they subgrant money to them, should stop. This process disproportionately harms the smaller and rural areas this administration claims to prioritize because these places don’t have the funding to take over the project or the size and clout to push back.

(3) Remove burdensome federal requirements to bring down costs.
Highway agencies often feel pressure from FHWA under existing design standards and project development protocols to do things that increase costs, like designing roadways with lanes that are unnecessarily wide for streets where lower speeds are the goal or having to do a costly traffic study before making commonsense improvements like new crosswalks or signals. FHWA claims that state and local agencies have flexibility, but their experience counters that claim.

(4) RECONSIDER THE MODELS: Stop wasting money based on bad data and travel models

(A) Take down the Secretary’s value of time memo.
Rescinding this single memo would have a significant impact overnight. USDOT’s enshrined guidance on the “value of time” leads to an enormous waste of federal money, with billions going toward trying to save certain people a few seconds at a time, claiming that those seconds add up to tens of millions of dollars in economic benefit. Rather than explaining further, just watch our video:

We’ve had the technology for years now to measure the actual time of trips instead of assuming that “slightly faster vehicles on road X = a better system.” The time for inaccurate and misleading proxies has long passed. President Trump should direct Secretary Duffy to rescind this memo yesterday.

(B) Review the accuracy of travel demand models.
Traffic models predicted unimaginable congestion without widening The Katy Expressway in Houston. Yet even after widening it to 26 lanes in some places, traffic got worse, failing to deliver on the projections from the flawed traffic models used to justify the billions spent on it. Yet those same models will be used again and again to justify other similar projects. Agencies (or Congress) almost never look back to evaluate if new projects delivered on the promises made or if the new reality comes close to the rosy projections. Like a weather forecast, we’re mostly just concerned about the predictions for tomorrow and rarely go back five years to consider the accuracy of a past forecast. USDOT should start rigorously comparing past projections with actual outcomes, reporting their findings, and updating the models when there are discrepancies.

graphic combining 20+ increasing projections of VMT

This near-comical graphic from the Frontier Group combines past federal projections of future growth in vehicle miles traveled. The darkest line is reality. Every year the models continued to project basically the same growth in miles traveled, even though every one continued to prove false.

(5) IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY: Make it easier for taxpayers to understand where their money is going and what is being accomplished

The simple truth is that it’s nearly impossible to get up-to-date data on where transportation money has been spent, and the conditions and performance of the transportation system. In fact, when the IIJA expires in September 2026, we’ll just have (an incomplete) picture of where the money went during its predecessor (the FAST Act) from 2015-2021. This means that the members of Congress who will decide how much of your tax money to invest in transportation and how to invest it, have almost no idea about how well the money has been spent for the last 3-4 years. Would you give your employees a raise when you have no idea if they’ve done a good job for the last year? This is yet another reason why public faith in the federal program is incredibly low.

(A) Require project sponsors to report on what their projects have accomplished.
Understanding where and how money is being spent is only part of the question. The administration should also make it easier for taxpayers to learn what has been accomplished with the billions handed out to states and metro areas each year. USDOT should create a new requirement for project sponsors to submit simple reports five years after completion to report on the performance of the project. Did the project deliver all the promised benefits? Did the promised congestion relief materialize? Did the project accomplish its stated goals for improving safety? How does today’s reality match up with the lofty promises used to justify each project?

(B) Standardize transportation spending data format and availability for annual state/metro area spending.
The State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) is a four-year list of projects a state has committed to funding, planning, and building. Though these STIPS are intended to help the public understand how and where their tax dollars are going and hold leaders accountable, good luck deciphering (or even finding, in some cases) your state’s STIP. USDOT should standardize the format and availability of this data so that the public can easily understand how their tax dollars are spent, compare spending across states and metropolitan planning organizations, and hold their agencies and elected leaders accountable.

(C) Require transparency regarding compensation in leadership positions, including bonuses at Amtrak.
One way to fulfill Amtrak’s mission of reliable, quality passenger rail service is by ensuring that every dollar possible helps them improve or expand service. It’s not unreasonable to provide good compensation to smart, motivated, and competent staff or executives, but salary and bonuses should be tied to serving passengers and justified by quantifiable, measurable results in improved service and travel experience. There should also be accounting for the total number of executive staff, their salaries, and all bonuses.

Stay tuned! We’ll be checking in on these items from time to time throughout this administration and reporting back.

New resource for state DOTs

The State Smart Transportation Initiative just released its new framework, Innovative DOT. This comprehensive framework offers specific recommendations designed to support state transportation officials in positioning their agencies for success in today’s evolving transportation landscape.

Developed with input from top transportation professionals—including T4America— and state DOT staff from across the country, the State Smart Transportation Initiative’s new framework highlights innovative approaches that leaders are adopting to enhance transportation system efficiency, government effectiveness, and constituent satisfaction. Learning from peers can help state transportation officials tackle shared problems without reinventing the wheel.

This comprehensive resource covers everything from planning to operations and agency culture. It shows how your agency can build a path to resilience while implementing policies and practices that prioritize people over cars.

It also highlights one of our principles, fix it first, and calls on states and local governments who aren’t already doing so to advocate for dedicated funding streams to invest properly in a state of good repair, focusing on maintenance rather than expanding existing transportation infrastructure.

We encourage transportation professionals, policymakers, and stakeholders to explore this valuable resource to continue innovating and improving their organizations to address contemporary challenges state DOTs are facing.

The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) is a joint program of Smart Growth America and the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin.

Lessons learned from the missed opportunities of the Biden Administration

With the Biden presidency in the rearview mirror, we can look back at where the administration succeeded and failed and what lessons we can take for the future.

Joe Biden promised to tackle the climate crisis and address equity in transportation investments. Despite passing major legislation and hiring great spokespeople for reform, his administration did little to change the nation’s broken status quo. Here are the lessons we should take from this failure.

Talk does not equal action

The Biden Administration hired folks at USDOT who could speak eloquently about the need for transportation options and the system’s impact on the environment, both good and bad. Most notable was Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose oratory skills painted a picture of the multimodal transportation system we would build together.

But talk is not the same as action. Despite Transportation for America outlining 12 executive actions Biden could take without Congress, only two were implemented: repealing a Trump-era rule to make it easier to fund transit projects and supporting and implementing the Reconnecting Communities Program.

The administration left other priorities only partially completed. Reestablishing the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance measure for transportation was extremely slow, and they were unable to defend it from a court challenge. It took nearly four years to appoint a full Amtrak Board while failing to correct overrepresentation from the Northeast Corridor. Improvements to pedestrian safety in car and street design were modest, at best.

Another missed opportunity: some of the tasks they left untouched were more technical and likely to go unnoticed by political opponents, even though they would also have been extremely impactful for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (a goal the administration was explicitly committed to). Even as housing prices skyrocketed, the administration failed to revive the Location Affordability Portal and apply location efficiency and equitable development criteria to decisions involving the location of new federal facilities. The administration applied outdated, inaccurate, and inequitable value of time guidance to discretionary funding decisions focusing on vehicle speed without considering actual projected time savings for those traveling, whether they travel by car or use other modes of travel. They also failed to require the measurement of induced demand and review the accuracy of current travel demand models that are notoriously biased toward roadway expansion.

Fear of conflict is paralyzing

The administration shied away from the fights worth having (see our comments on the GHG rule above). An illustrative example was the saga of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) memo asking staff to encourage state DOTs to focus on their repair needs, take advantage of the law’s flexibilities, and endeavor to reduce emissions and improve safety.

This nonbinding internal memo angered Senator Shelley Moore Capito (WV), who grilled Secretary Buttigieg in a 2022 Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) hearing on the implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The crux of Capito’s opposition to the memo was the suggestion of a (non-existent) mandate and a one-size-fits-all context in the fix-it-first language. Despite Capito’s argument being wholly illogical—it was not a mandate—FHWA eventually replaced it with a memo that said FHWA maintained the same priorities but wouldn’t encourage the states to do anything to support them.

The real problem was this incident’s chilling effect. The conflict discouraged USDOT from taking other actions that might be met with objections. We’re left to question, if there is no opposition at all, are you doing anything that is actually meaningful?

Prioritize your priorities

What would eventually become the IIJA started as dueling proposals from the House and Senate. The House’s superior INVEST Act proposed bold, bipartisan reforms to the transportation program, prioritizing maintenance, safety, and access to jobs and services. However, the weaker text in the Senate’s version eventually won out, mainly due to pressure from the White House.

Additionally, the Biden Administration’s signature legislation continued a longstanding approach to fixing problems with the transportation system by creating small, discrete programs to fix problems that the much larger program would continue to make worse. For example, 9 percent of the highway program was dedicated to safety (6 percent to the Highway Safety Improvement Program and 3 percent to Transportation Alternatives). However, no policies, regulations, or standards were changed in the rest of the system, which meant we would keep digging that hole deeper.

The same is true in carbon emissions, with the IIJA leading to substantial emissions increases directly attributable to the bill. For the Reconnecting Communities program, funding went to projects that divided more communities than they were reconnecting. While the IIJA has provided immense funding overall, the legislation dedicated more money to the same old system and little funding to fix its problems. We got what Congress should have expected: more of the same.

Moreover, the separateness of the Administration’s new programs have made them that much easier to unwind and end.

Don’t over-process

Another problem was the administration’s obsession with process over outcomes. The administration published lots of reports, guides, and best practices that hit all the right notes. For example, The U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization from the Joint Office on Energy and Transportation (JOET) masterfully describes the need for both electrification and improved transportation options to reduce GHG emissions from transportation. But it’s hard to say whether these reports changed how anything was actually done.

The administration’s obsession with process prevented it from simplifying grant applications, particularly grant agreement processes for the beneficial discretionary grant programs in the IIJA. T4America was involved in a grant agreement amendment process, which included multiple rounds of edits from more than a dozen editors, making a simple process long and complicated.

Combine this with the slow pace on rules for the new Carbon Reduction Program and the inflexibility and slow rollout of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, and you can see how there was little to show on the ground three years after IIJA passage when Biden’s Vice President stood for re-election. Now, Biden’s plans are being pulled down from government websites.

Make it hard to dismantle

We’re watching much of Biden’s signature policy achievements evaporate as the Trump administration takes actions (albeit many of them probably illegal) to set its direction on transportation for the nation. For example, three years into the NEVI program, only 200 EV chargers have been installed, and Trump is pausing the program. Even with more chargers in the works, it’s hard to imagine NEVI will produce the number of chargers needed to catalyze transformative electrification of our transportation system. On top of that, the administration failed to publish a map of where the planned chargers would be installed so that people would feel a loss if they were pulled back until after the election (instead, this was done by nonprofits T4America and Plug-in America).

Once something is built and operating, it’s harder to take away. The lack of visible impact not only weakens the case for keeping the programs but was inexcusable given the urgency of the climate crisis.

As excited as people were about the Biden Administration’s well-written plans and guidebooks, it is now clear how little of an impact they had as they are paused or removed from federal government websites.

Outcomes matter

The key lesson from all this is that outcomes matter, and you can produce outcomes by moving forward forcefully with purpose. An inclusive process can be helpful, but to ultimately serve people, especially disadvantaged communities, you need to deliver tangible results. We will look to work with this White House and Congress where we can find common ground on accountability, economic development, and safety. And we’ll be urging leaders at all levels of government who wish to advance a fix-it-first, pro-safety, pro-transportation options, smart growth agenda to focus on the outcomes they can generate under their purview during their term. American communities don’t have the time to lose on anything less. 

After spending over $1 trillion, the roads are still crumbling, unsafe, and congested. Does Congress care?

Congress is starting to talk about the next federal transportation bill, due next year. But they seem more concerned with how the money is distributed, to whom and how fast it is being spent rather than what the American people are getting for their tax dollars.

With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) sunsetting in 19 months, Congress has to prepare a bill to reauthorize the federal highway, transit and rail programs. But numerous committees so far tasked with that work has not even started to consider the most fundamental question: how well is the highway system working? 

The federal government has spent $1.5 trillion of American taxpayer dollars over the past 30-plus years to build a world-class surface transportation system. In 2012, a strong bipartisan majority—373 to 52 in the House and 74 to 19 in the Senate—passed a transportation reauthorization bill that refocused the program on national transportation goals, increasing accountability and transparency and improving project decision-making through performance-based planning and programming.

The seven national goals Congress wrote into law (23USC150) are safety, infrastructure condition, congestion reduction, system reliability, freight movement and economic vitality, environmental sustainability, and better project delivery. 13 years later, how have we fared on these goals?

Safety

The United States has the most dangerous roads in the developed world. By a lot. Twice as deadly as Greece, three times as deadly as Israel, and six times as deadly as Norway. In fact, the U.S. is twenty percent more deadly than Chile and 30 percent more deadly than Serbia. Most of these countries are getting safer, but not us.

Roads in the United States are so deadly and unsafe that our numbers change the narrative on worldwide traffic safety in the developed world. The 2024 roadway safety report on the 70 countries in the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) notes that overall road deaths would have actually fallen by 12.8 percent if the US had been left out. We are dragging the performance of the rest of the developed world in the wrong direction.

For people walking, it’s even worse. Compared to a 29 percent improvement in the rest of these countries, pedestrian fatalities in the US have increased 75 percent since 2010, which you can find in the National Complete Streets Coalition’s report on pedestrian safety, Dangerous by Design.

While the federal transportation program has included a specific program to address safety, the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), which has existed since 1973, has always been a tiny part of the overall program—currently, 6 percent of the highway program. Add in the Transportation Alternatives program, which helps build sidewalks and other infrastructure to help people without a car get around safely, and you get up to 9 percent. Whatever constitutes our approach to safety is failing for everyone who uses the road.

Congestion reduction/Reliability/Freight

USDOT chose to assess congestion reduction, system reliability, freight movement, and economic vitality through overly simple measures of vehicle speeds, so we will address these areas together. One of the biggest excuses for not taking established steps to improve safety (the steps every nation doing better than us is taking) is the need to support the economy by eliminating congestion. Saving lives with slower speeds has taken a back seat in favor of trying to eliminate congestion at all costs, which has been the ultimate goal of all federal transportation spending for the last 30 years. Yet, no matter how you measure this effort, it has failed.

Between 1993 and 2017, the most populous 100 U.S. cities added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles, 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. So congestion should have gone down, right? Nope, it went up 144 percent. Congestion increased in every single one of these 100 metro areas. It went up in places that tried really hard to build their way out of congestion, like in Brownsville, TX, where the population increased 73 percent, they increased freeway lane miles by 287 percent and congestion increased by 1230 percent. It also went up in places that lost population, like in Detroit, MI, where the population decreased by 5 percent, they increased freeway lane miles by 15 percent, and congestion still increased by 45 percent. Let that sink in. Fewer people, more highways, and congestion increased—a lot!

Infrastructure condition

What have record levels of investment in infrastructure gotten us when it comes to the basic condition of our roads and bridges? USDOT’s Conditions and Performance Report for 2024 found that the share of federal-aid highway pavements with good ride quality improved during the 2008–2018 period—from 40.7 percent to 47.2 percent (not even half). But the share of federal-aid highway pavements with poor ride quality also worsened during that time, rising from 15.8 percent to 22.6 percent. In terms of bridges, the share of federal-aid bridges in good repair decreased from 47.8 percent to 46.0 percent; however, the share of federal-aid bridges in poor repair also decreased from 10.1 percent to 7.6 percent. Pretty lackluster results.

USDOT likes to note that the busiest roads (by amount of vehicle miles traveled) are in (slightly) better condition, as they likely have more repair dollars spent on them. While this is true, either all roads you’ve built are important enough to maintain, or they should not have been built in the first place. This claim also runs directly counter to rhetoric often deployed about the “importance” of rural areas—as if it’s ok if their less trafficked roads are poorly maintained.

Emissions

We covered this just two months ago. Based on current investment patterns, over the course of the current infrastructure law, federal surface transportation spending could increase emissions by nearly 190 million metric tonnes of emissions over baseline levels through 2040 from added driving. This is the emission equivalent of 500 natural gas-fired power plants or nearly 50 coal-fired power plants running for a year.

And we weren’t doing well before the IIJA either, as we showed in our 2020 report, Driving Down Emissions.

Speeding up project delivery

Why would we want to speed up the delivery of projects producing such terrible results? Slow them down. Stop them.

Members of Congress preparing the replacement of the IIJA this year and next should be warned that the collective failure to make improvements in these priority areas will be given as the primary reason to pump more money into the same programs we have been funding for decades. They may have changed names, shifted from formula to discretionary or vice versa, or seen their proportions change, but they are basically the same programs.

If you point out that the results have been truly disappointing, you will hear how the transportation agencies aren’t to blame, even as they ask for more money to do the same things. For example, we regularly hear that roadway fatalities are up because of the misbehavior of people using those roadways rather than the design or function of those roads. Their counterparts in other countries don’t feel that way, which is one reason they are successfully saving lives. If state DOTs aren’t able to improve safety, then we should give funding to other entities that can.

Senator Shelley Moore Capito, whose committee will be writing a large chunk of this law, is starting with the wrong questions and assumptions. She told POLITICO that she wants to look at formula vs. discretionary to see if the discretionary [grants] getting out and to determine kind of efficiencies need to be made. The most essential question to ask is whether or not the enormous amount of spending on transportation has resulted in better outcomes, like the goals Congress overwhelmingly supported and put into the U.S. Code: making the roads safer, reducing congestion, improving infrastructure conditions, and reducing emissions. If the answers are no, then clearly it’s time to stop throwing good money after bad.

Congress is looking at spending another $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. People will point to the overwhelming bipartisan support. Inevitably (as happens at every reauthorization), there will be calls for more money for the same programs, more flexibility for states to spend federal funds however they like, and less accountability overall.

This strategy has failed to deliver, and it won’t deliver anything different, whether we give it more money or less.

We shouldn’t spend another dime on a program that fails so completely to deliver on all of the priorities we have set for it. This is the issue that Congress should be grappling with over the next year as they prepare the next transportation law.

 

Steven G. Bradbury, transit and Vision Zero opponent, named Deputy DOT Secretary nominee

Though transportation has often bridged party divides, just two weeks into President Trump’s second term there are numerous signs that this trend may shift. As General Counsel for USDOT during Trump’s first term and a current Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Steven Bradbury has made clear his dislike of public transportation, clean energy reform, and pedestrian safety efforts. His key role in authoring Project 2025’s Chapter 19 on transportation helps clarify his views on American transportation.

President Trump’s choice for Deputy DOT Secretary authored the transportation section of Project 2025, which calls for ending federal support for transit projects, Vision Zero, and fuel economy standards. Photo courtesy of Transport Topics.

Hostile towards transit

While DOT’s mission is to connect communities, increase accessibility, safety, and promote mobility choice, Bradbury has called for the opposite. In Project 2025, he proposed completely abolishing all federal funds for new transit and major improvements or expansions. Abolishing transit Capital Investment Grants (CIG) would cut billions from major transit agencies across the U.S. and hobble efforts to build new transit, expand transit, or make substantial core improvements to existing transit. It is interesting, however, that he has not called for the end of federal transit formula funding. Still, the demand for expansions and improvements is likely to grow, as transit usage is finally growing post-pandemic.

Transit is already severely underfunded, particularly compared to highways, yet Bradbury wants to “move away from using the Highway Trust Fund to prop up mass transit.” Never mind that the Highway Trust Fund has been subsidized by all taxpayers with general fund dollars to the tune of more than $275 billion since 2008. While motorists benefit every day from subsidized roads, he seems to think transit riders should not receive the same treatment.

Electric vehicles are in his crosshairs, too

Bradbury has attacked all things emissions-regulating, launching an attack against electric vehicles. He criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s “radical EV goals,” claiming Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which aim to lower emissions harmful to health and the environment for new cars, will only force lower-income families to drive older, unsafe cars.

The claim that older cars are dangerous is an old argument that was more true before safety regulations put into place 15 years ago requiring backup cameras and high crashworthy standards. It also seems to ignore the danger caused by brand new SUVs and trucks with huge front blind zones and hood heights so tall that crashes hit pedestrians in the head and chest making them 45 percent more likely to kill.

He seems to think speed is more important than safety

Despite the number of people killed while walking increasing 75 percent since 2010, he wants to abolish Vision Zero as a federal policy, calling it an approach “actively seeking congestion for automobiles to reduce speeds.” T4America’s top priority is Safety over Speed, whereas Bradbury wants to “refocus the FHWA on maintaining and improving the highway system.” Apparently, “improving” does not include safety improvements. (We wonder what his position would be on creating a requirement for states to spend formula dollars on repairing their roads and bridges before making costly expansions?)

USDOT has already shut down the National Safety Council’s Road to Zero program on the grounds that it violates one of President Trump’s executive orders, though it is unclear which one. This administration has been focused on ending vehicle efficiency, diversity, climate and environmental justice programs, but this is the first piece of evidence that USDOT may view saving lives as a partisan cause. 3

While Bradbury won’t be running USDOT, his appointment to this top post is a decent signal that we should expect to see USDOT either slow down or completely halt all grants for new transit projects (ramping up what we saw in the first Trump administration), an assault on electrification overall, and every effort made to roll back any modest improvements on prioritizing safety.

Three opportunities to work with incoming USDOT Secretary Duffy

Last Wednesday (Jan. 15), former Congressman Sean Duffy faced questions from the Senate Commerce Committee, tasked to vet the next Transportation Secretary. Here are three things T4America gleaned from the hearing as opportunities for working with Secretary-designate Duffy.

Image Source: CSPAN (37:13)

While it’s difficult with almost any eventual USDOT Secretary to try and anticipate precisely how they’ll choose to run the department, these confirmation hearings (and the nominee’s record to some degree) can help give a rough sense of what they care about before they are confirmed. And the limited amount of time to prepare in this specific case might mean that this hearing is more of a look at Duffy’s priorities and interests rather than revealing what he may be directed to prioritize by the president and the executive branch.

As one example of how these differences are already emerging, Duffy responded to questions about future spending under the infrastructure law (the IIJA) by pledging to follow that law and see those funds spent. Yet, on day one of the Trump presidency, President Trump issued an executive order aimed at suspending all IIJA funding for 90 days. (This could be challenged in the courts, as those spending decisions are determined by Congress and existing law.)

It won’t be clear for quite some time what the Trump administration wants to accomplish in transportation—which appears to be farther down their list of priorities. But with that in mind, here are three areas where some doors could be opened to collaborate or work with USDOT over the next four years.

1) Safety

Mr. Duffy strongly affirmed his desire to leave a legacy at USDOT on safety. We suspected this could be an area where he brings a strong interest due to his personal connection to the issue: His wife Rachel was critically injured in a traffic crash years before they were married, he was on an Amtrak train that crashed in West Virginia that killed a truck driver, and has frequently spoken about safety issues.

Questions from the committee touched on various safety issues, from autonomous vehicles, to passenger and freight rail (including the issue of blocked railroad grade crossings impeding traffic and emergency response), and briefly on active transportation safety. On that note, Duffy said he would be willing to explore and engage in advancing and eventually implementing the Sarah Langenkamp Active Transportation Safety Act, which would make changes to the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program to help spur states to build and complete protected bike and pedestrian networks. Mr. Duffy even spoke about the need for proactive federal rules on autonomous vehicles that would focus on safety, which is not the direction Congress has tried to go in over the past few years. With roadway fatalities continuing to rise, despite advances in vehicle safety technology and innovation that the committee spent extensive time on, this area could be an opportunity to work with the incoming USDOT Secretary. Automated vehicles should not be tested without greater transparency and safeguards. With a legacy emphasis on safety, Secretary-nominee Duffy also provides an opening to focus on addressing existing standards for the nation’s roadways that are inherently Dangerous by Design and need to be fundamentally reworked.

2) Multimodal transportation investments

Members from both parties of the committee raised issues that touch on a wide spectrum of different modes of travel, including passenger rail, the resilience of public transit operations, and rural community connectivity.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) reminded Mr. Duffy that he is up to “be the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, not just the Department of Cars.” Mr. Duffy expressed support for a multimodal transportation point of view, in addition to supporting a robust and innovative automotive market that is inclusive of electric vehicles. (This is another area where differences with the President are already emerging: the President is trying to reverse incentives and mandates for electric vehicle adoption.)

Senators Baldwin (D-WI) and Duckworth (D-IL) also highlighted the need for Mr. Duffy to not forget and integrate the mobility needs of 70 million Americans with disabilities, who may be mobility, cognitive, vision, or hearing impaired. Light on details, Mr. Duffy did repeat on multiple occasions the need to support a transportation network that facilitates consumer choice. This leaves room for advocates and others to help USDOT understand their charge to promote safe and efficient movement of all Americans, regardless of ability and the community they live in.

3) Transparency and streamlining

This could be one of the areas of common ground for making much-needed reforms to the (arduous) process of how transportation projects get approved and built—especially transit projects—and how much they cost. Nearly every Senator touched upon implementing the 2021 infrastructure law and other related congressional mandates, project delivery, the NEPA process, and how to speed up efficient and cost-effective transportation projects. Over and over we find transportation projects held up over onerous permitting and review processes, which rightfully slow down highway boondoggles, but also hold up solid public transit and zero-emission mobility projects. There’s a dire need to shake up the status quo to streamline beneficial community-led projects and hold back projects that divide by design.

Senator Fischer (R-NE) requested that Duffy tackle the issue of guidance consistency, when USDOT headquarters says and interprets a policy or guideline, then FHWA division offices use unique, creative interpretations of the same policy or guideline. Senators Cruz (R-TX), Capito (R-WV), and Cantwell (D-WA) requested firm commitment for transparent delivery of information to the committee, especially on how USDOT is evaluating projects for discretionary programs and program effectiveness.

A constant concern from transportation stakeholders has been if existing infrastructure laws would be undercut by the incoming administration. Mr. Duffy has indicated he intends to abide by congressional mandates and laws if confirmed as USDOT Secretary. There is an opening to engage Secretary nominee Duffy on the standardized reporting, oversight, and efficient use of federal transportation dollars.

Looking ahead

Mr. Duffy is likely to enjoy a relatively smooth confirmation process. With the next surface transportation reauthorization looming, Duffy’s USDOT will be charged with helping Congress understand what can or should be changed with the overall transportation program to produce better outcomes. While it will take some time for their agenda to emerge, these openings in safety, multimodal transportation investments, and transparency revealed in Mr. Duffy’s confirmation hearing could provide some possible pathways to make a substantial impact on U.S. transportation.

Three transportation policy recommendations for state legislators and governors

As new and returning governors and legislators prepare to take office, Transportation for America urges them to consider key transportation policy recommendations in this transition memo.

Come January, thousands of new and returning elected officials across the country will return to legislative and executive offices, with a task to represent their constituents and make responsible decisions. If they want to ensure they get transportation right, we have three major recommendations to help newly elected and returning governors and state legislators ensure that communities have access to a safe, sustainable, and well-connected transportation system.

Fix it first

Despite major infusions of federal funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, states are still not prioritizing responsible management of their transportation assets. We are falling behind when it comes to maintaining the condition of our roadways, perpetuating an expensive backlog of roads in poor condition that will cost significantly more to repair in the future. As a result, drivers are forced to travel over miles of deteriorating bridges and highways, which can decrease fuel efficiency, damage their vehicles, and expose them to increased safety hazards. 

To prevent this problem from worsening, states need to assess whether they have sufficient funding to maintain any new infrastructure they plan to build while simultaneously being able to make progress on existing infrastructure. Setting and implementing aggressive repair goals, as well as publicly tracking them, creates visibility for constituents and bolsters the case for increasing funding for repair. The pressure to build more highways is strong and may sound more glamorous than maintenance, but an approach that values fixing what we have will deliver on high standards of repair, and key social, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Build more transit and more housing near it

Public transportation offers numerous benefits to communities, from saving hundreds of dollars a month by not having to maintain a private vehicle, to expanding economic growth for localities. Proper investments in transit can reap these benefits and more through creating more livable and efficient communities. However, states have often left the responsibility of managing transit services to local governments, creating an imbalanced approach to transit planning and spending. State-level funding for transit services is just as imperative as it is to building out highway systems, and should be treated as such.

The benefits of public transit can be further enhanced when housing access for all incomes is built near transit hubs. This allows individuals the opportunity to live in well-connected communities without the burden of owning a car. Current approaches to zoning encourage building single-family homes rather than allowing developers to respond to the market demand. States can address this by updating zoning codes to allow cities and developers to respond to market demand and build more housing near transit, rather than according to a decades-old zoning ordinance.

Build Complete Streets in all communities

We are in the midst of an alarming increase in pedestrian fatalities, with the number of people who are struck and killed or injured while driving reaching record highs in 2022. This epidemic continues to worsen because our nation’s streets are designed to move cars quickly, which comes at the expense of keeping people safe. Complete Streets offers an alternative approach to planning, building, and maintaining streets that provides safe access for all users, including pedestrians, motorists, bicyclists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities. This approach enables greater access for communities and increases economic activity, all while avoiding the costs associated with traumatic roadway crashes.

State DOTs can create and adopt Complete Streets policies that are designed to respond to your community’s unique needs and dedicate funding, staff resources, and accountability measures for its implementation. Historically, states have considered active transportation initiatives as local issues. Yet some of the most dangerous roads for walking and biking are owned and managed by state DOTs. State leadership in designing, funding, and maintaining active transportation infrastructure can make a big difference for improved safety and mobility outcomes.

While these recommendations stand on their own as common sense policy, it’s important that your politicians know that these policies are supported by you, their constituents. That’s why we strongly encourage you to share our transition memo yourself with your newly elected and re-elected officials. Doing so helps ensure that they know what matters most and how they could make sure their offices’ transportation policy would have the greatest impact for your community.

If you’re a new or returning legislator, we encourage you to review and share our recommendations to guide state transportation efforts memo.

 

Divided by Design: Quantifying the damage of our transportation program

Our new report examines the racist roots of our current transportation system. Most importantly, it demonstrates how today’s policies and practices were shaped by the past, leading to racial disparities today. Without a fundamental change to the overall approach to transportation, today’s leaders and transportation professionals, no matter their intent, will perpetuate and exacerbate the damage.

Beginning in the 1950s, highways devastated communities of color and changed our cities forever. But the consequences continue, even as we begin to acknowledge our past mistakes.

To create a better system, we can’t settle for small changes. We need a total shift in approach. To learn more about the report and our analysis, join our webinar on July 25 at 2 p.m. ET.

Read the report

Register for the webinar

A guide to this report

Part I examines the damage and inequities deliberately created by and in the federal transportation program from ~1950 onward. It concludes with a unique analysis of both an unbuilt and built highway segment within Atlanta and Washington, DC to quantify what was lost, who bore the brunt of the damage, and what could have been lost with highways that were never built.

Part II examines our current transportation program to demonstrate how the programs, standards, models, and measures have their roots in the previous era and exacerbate inequities—whether intentional or not.

Part III outlines what needs to change—concrete steps we can take to fundamentally reorient the program around unwinding those inequities.

Two cities divided

Divided by Design also quantifies the damage caused by highways in two U.S. cities: Atlanta, GA and Washington, DC. Like hundreds of others in the U.S., these cities are forever scarred by highways that demolished communities of color, robbing them of opportunity and potential.

Atlanta’s I-20 displaced over 7,500 people and destroyed 1,400 occupied homes. In DC, I-395/695 displaced over 5,000 people and demolished 2,200 homes. These numbers only scratch the surface of the full damage and dislocation.

More significant damage was also avoided in these cities. To understand what might exist in these communities if they hadn’t been disrupted by highways, we looked at two planned highway segments that were never built and the hundreds of businesses, office buildings, and homes that wouldn’t exist today. Click to read these stories:

The damage continues

The models, policies, and practices we use today took root in the highway era, and they continue to inflict the most harm on people of color. Our approach leads to worse health outcomes, greater congestion, and deadlier roadways. It leaves millions of Americans without access to reliable transportation options to get where they need to go. We can’t build a better system on a rotten foundation. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

We need a new approach.

Read Divided by Design

Explore the report’s full content—jump to one of the three parts with the graphics below.

report cover graphic showing a stylized highway cutting through a city.graphic showing a stylized scene of construction of a highway through a city neighborhoodgraphic showing a stylized scene a few blocks away from a highway running through a city neighborhoodgraphic showing a stylized scene of what a neighborhood could look like after tearing a highway down

Don’t miss supplemental maps, videos, and animations in the DC and Atlanta case studies which are not in the hard copy. Download a PDF version of the report.

 

Little-known university research centers could hold the key for transportation solutions

The infrastructure law sets aside funding for university transportation centers (UTCs) to research and provide actionable recommendations on emerging transportation issues. However, in the face of mounting climate resiliency, equity, safety, mobility access, and state of repair concerns, are UTCs poised to meet the moment?

Map of university transportation centers under the prior infrastructure law, the FAST ACT (2017-2021). Image from USDOT.

Tucked away in the IIJA funding is about $500 million, a drop in the bucket compared to the cash stream for infrastructure. This money funds UTCs, which are made up of universities and other institutions of higher learning that collaborate to propose research on a specific emerging transportation issue and find actionable solutions.

comic illustration
States often follow Congress’s lead and devote the majority of their time and resources to more of the same.

The research that UTCs produce is critically important to the transportation industry. Considering that states have received an unprecedented federal investment, they can either make transformational changes to improve safety, state of repair, and access to opportunities…or they can keep up the status quo strategies that propel economic, social, and health disparities.

State DOTs are under pressure to deliver on core services, leaving little room for thinking about innovation. Private sector consultants are under similar constraints because they have to focus on client deliverables and deadlines. With little time and resources to develop new ideas, these entities are best equipped to deliver more of the same—which is exactly what they tend to do.

UTCs don’t have the same pressure to deliver a core service to the public. In fact, the resource a UTC provides is innovation: they’re the implementation think tank that tests out applications, operations, materials, and approaches that can be readily used by transportation professionals. In addition, UTCs serve as a proving ground for future transportation professionals, educators, and businesses, allowing the ideas UTCs form to flow into the transportation industry through the people and businesses that helped develop them.

Here’s the challenge

Congress has identified key national priorities for the transportation system. Those goals are further translated into research priorities, which UTCs must choose from to compete for federal funding. In other words, UTCs obtain funding by focusing on one of these goals:

  1. Improving mobility of people and goods
  2. Reducing congestion
  3. Promoting safety
  4. Improving the durability and extending the life of transportation infrastructure
  5. Preserving the environment
  6. Preserving the existing transportation system
  7. Reducing transportation cybersecurity risks

These are all valuable goals, but they also intersect. For example, the prevailing solution to congestion is highway widening projects, even though these projects often fail to improve mobility, increase the risk of traffic fatalities, add to the ever-growing number of lanes that require maintenance, and lead to more emissions. If an innovative UTC is looking for a new solution for congestion, they would benefit from the perspectives of UTCs focused on promoting safety, preserving the existing transportation system, improving the mobility of people and goods, and preserving the environment. This collaboration would allow them to find better solutions that don’t run the risk of repeating past mistakes.

Unfortunately, UTCs don’t work together in this way. Under the current approach, we could have a UTC in the Northwest focusing efforts on climate resiliency while a UTC in the South focuses on freight management. Then when it’s time to share their trailblazing research, state DOT politics come into play, meaning the findings might not penetrate equitably across the United States.

This approach creates inequities in perspectives and divides urgent transportation priorities that should overlap. It’s a great approach to help focus efforts for a project, but considering the role a UTC has in churning out future transportation professionals and the latest business venture, plus the inconsistent distribution of UTC research findings, this approach ultimately hinders innovation and leaves us entrenched in the broken status quo.

So how do we make a difference with UTCs?

The federal rules guiding UTCs can’t change at this point—the Notice of Funding Opportunity has already been released and the application process has started. However, as it does with all competitive grants, the USDOT has discretion in its review process. It will be crucial for the USDOT to nudge and encourage applicants to think holistically about their target goal by also considering other intersecting national priorities. This will make it easier for state DOTs to share research, and it will enable emerging transportation professionals across the country to gain more exposure to transportation issues and research development. The latter will be particularly important as the emerging professionals working for UTCs could one day join state DOTs and shape policy-making, operations, and implementation. The more they understand about today’s urgent transportation issues, the better.

Get to know Washington state’s new artists-in-residence

We announced earlier today that Kelly Gregory and Mary Welcome have been selected to serve as artists-in-residence with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) in a new fellowship program created by ArtPlace America and T4America, bringing a dose of creativity to the statewide transportation agency. Get to know this team of two artists with this brief Q&A.

WSDOT is launching the country’s first statewide artist-in-residence program, embedding this team of two artists within the agency for a year starting later this summer. Kelly Gregory (left, above photo) and Mary Welcome (right) will help develop new ways to achieve WSDOT’s goals through a first-of-its-kind program. They took a few minutes to answer a few questions from Ben Stone, the director of arts and culture for Smart Growth America.

What was it about the WSDOT artist residency that inspired you both to apply? Now that you’ve been selected, what excites you most about the residency?

As artists and activists, we have a history of working in collaboration with non-arts communities and building relational bridges between fun and function. We are excited for the opportunity to shape what a statewide artist-in-residence can look like on a national level because we really believe in the power of artists to bring fresh perspectives and strengthen community connections. As a nationally recognized transportation agency, WSDOT addresses the needs of every resident and visitor of the state and we are excited to help build relationships with communities across the entire state. What an incredible opportunity—to study the communities of Washington based on how we move around.

While you’ll have a lot of time to formulate project ideas once the residency starts, what are your initial thoughts on how you’ll approach the residency?

We’re especially interested in the statewide services and the many different people (from road crews to planners) and places (both rural and urban) that make up the WSDOT community. We think some of the best outreach is done on a conversational level, spending intentional time with folks outside of formal meetings and work hours (riding in a snow plow! hanging with the captain of a ferry!). During this residency we hope to develop meaningful, equitable, and impactful ideas into a long standing project that WSDOT can take ownership of in order to continue to be national leaders in the transportation sector.

Tell us about one of your recent projects that you feel is relevant to the residency.

Our collective Homeboat has spent the past three years working with the town of St. James, Minnesota with funding from an ArtPlace America grant. Using an extensive community research process, we collaborated with city employees and local leaders to create a Community Advocate Program that equips community members to connect neighbors, family members, and friends to critical resources, information, and opportunities. We also collaborated with the St. James community on a Healthy Housing Initiative that developed strategies for improving options for affordable, safe, housing to neighbors.

This kind of work is really relational, necessitating a lot of listening and grappling with the complex layers of what makes up a community in order to identify invisible barriers. We appreciate the added challenge of problem solving within our creative practice, but we’re also pretty good at keeping it fun for everyone involved.

In our Arts, Culture, and Transportation Field Scan, we profiled seven roles that artists play in solving transportation challenges, from generating creative solutions to healing wounds and divisions. How would you describe your roles as artists working on transportation projects and how to do these roles match up with or expand beyond those seven roles?

The seven roles profiled are focused on equity—from planning and construction to collaboration and engagement. Equity is at the core of our work, and manifests in our practices by working toward equal access, collaborating with the spirit of a place, building hyperlocal, designing for shared stewardship, moving at the pace of trust, and including all community voices. It is critical that all of our transportation systems are equitable, safe, and inclusive for all people from rural to urban places.

How do our transportation systems shape the places we inhabit or experience? We feel especially close to role number five: Fostering Local Ownership. Local stewardship of valuable shared resources, like our streets, that serve as the country’s connective tissue, are critical to more equitable, connected communities.

What kind of professional or personal experiences do you have in Washington state? What lessons from your work outside of Washington do you hope to bring to the residency at WSDOT?

Mary is based in Palouse—a small rural town on the eastern edge of the state that is inaccessible by any type of public transportation and sits at the intersection of three small highways. She cares deeply about cultural equity in the state of Washington. Her projects seek to build systems of exchange across the rural-urban continuum and she’s excited to collaborate with an agency that recognizes—and also has to effectively serve—the entire state. WSDOT is more than the sum of its parts. The agency is a living network of people and place. She brings a keen and curious place-based practice, a deep affection for the hinterland, and extensive experience as a long-haul cross-country driver who has never taken the same way twice.

Kelly has long been an advocate for alternative transportation. She has worked on a number of transportation related initiatives throughout the last decade. With the urban design firm Gehl, Kelly helped create the National Street Service, a participatory social movement to transform America’s streets into enjoyable and fulfilling places for all people. She also co-founded Post-Car Adventuring—a micro-publisher which creates guidebooks for outdoor adventure using public transport and bicycles. She loves long train travel and rides her bike everywhere.

Full artist and team bios

Mary Welcome (Palouse, WA) is a multidisciplinary cultural worker collaborating with complex and often under-represented rural communities. As an artist-activist, her projects are rooted in community engagement and the development of intersectional programming to address hyper-local issues of equity, cultural advocacy, inclusivity, visibility, and imagination. She collaborates with local schools, city councils, civic groups, youth, summer camps, libraries, neighbors, and friends to build cooperative environments that encourage civic engagement, radical education, and community progress. She believes in small towns, long winters, optimists, parades, and talking about feelings. www.bangbangboomerang.com  

Kelly Gregory is an itinerant social architect based on the Pacific coast. Her practice is rooted in socially-engaged work: affordable housing projects, exhibitions, reimagining spaces of incarceration, democratic public space, and in-depth community-driven research. Her projects fold current communities and future solutions into functional, beautiful spaces for collaboration and engagement. www.rovingstudio.com

As a team, with a multi-disciplinary backgrounds in arts, outreach, architecture, and activism, they listen with communities and imagine new solutions in collaboration with neighbors.

Minnesota Department of Transportation to host a Community Vitality Fellow to advance transportation goals

Minnesota Department of Transportation joins Smart Growth America’s artist-in-residence program, by hosting a Community Vitality Fellow to creatively meet the agency’s goals of promoting economic vitality, improving safety, supporting multimodal transportation systems and creating healthier communities.  

A Community Vitality Fellow will spend a year working with the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to help develop new ways to achieve agency goals through a program created by ArtPlace America and Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America. MnDOT will be among the first state transportation agencies in the country to participate in the artist-in-residence program by hosting a Community Vitality Fellowship position.

Applications are now open for artists interested in the year-long Fellowship position, which will be located within the St. Paul Office of MnDOT. The call for artists and application can be found here: https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/program/arts-culture/mndot-air

Learn More & Apply Here

Have questions? Watch a recording of our recent webinar about the program.

Recognized as a tool for pioneering innovative and creative solutions, artist-in-residence programs have been piloted across the nation in municipal governmental agencies, including the cities of Los Angeles and Seattle, but never before at a statewide agency. In Fergus Falls, Minnesota, artists-in-residence have increased cultural programming to support community development. In Lanesboro, MN, the artists-in-residence have used art as a catalyst for deeper community engagement. In Minneapolis, artists-in-residence have used theatre to help the city’s Regulatory Services Department staff develop more empathetic policies and better relate to their constituents, while St Paul’s artists-in-residence have worked to make community meetings more creative, fun, and productive.

Several organizations collaborated on the Community Vitality Fellowship position, including Smart Growth America, ArtPlace America and MnDOT. Transportation for America (T4A) will administer both the funds and the overall program, including providing staff and consulting assistance. The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) will also provide staff support. Both T4A and SSTI are programs of Smart Growth America. MnDOT will supply in-kind contributions consisting of work space for the selected Fellow and staff time for agency workers to collaborate on the groundbreaking new program.

“Artists can provide fresh approaches and new ways of doing things, interpret complex processes, and provide unique perspectives for existing programs,” said Ben Stone, Smart Growth America’s director of arts & culture. “While a handful of cities have embedded artists in various departments over the years, MnDOT will be the second statewide agency to embark on such a program. We’re excited to be a part of helping Minnesota harness arts and creativity to create better supported and more beloved transportation projects that help accomplish the state’s goals.” Minnesota will join Washington State DOT in joining the artist-in-residence program with Smart Growth America by hosting a Community Vitality Fellow.

Why employ a Community Vitality Fellow?

MnDOT is interested in creative ways of engaging communities and bringing in new partners to help solve problems in the delivery of efficient and dependable transportation systems. Transportation infrastructure that reflects the assets and distinct character of communities will enhance economic vitality and community development efforts across the state.

What will the Community Vitality Fellow do?

The Fellowship will run for one year with rotations through MnDOT’s core divisions to gain knowledge on the agency’s operations, priorities and challenges. The Fellow will then propose process improvements to address MnDOT’s overarching goals while improving community engagement, supporting safe places to walk and bike and enhancing equity in the planning, building, operations and maintenance of transportation infrastructure. The Fellow will develop processes and procedures to further evaluate and integrate elements that elevate the unique character of each community within the transportation system.

Cities across the country have engaged fellowships and artists-in-residences to support their efforts. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s artists-in-residence have installed interactive artistic elements to bus shelters, taught storytelling skills to the DOT staff to help them better communicate their projects to the public, and served as a bridge between transportation advocates and DOT staff.

“We are delighted to support the establishment of a Community Vitality Fellowship to the Minnesota Department of Transportation. Embedding artists in state government can transform the way transportation challenges are solved,” said Sarah Calderon, ArtPlace America’s Managing Director. “MnDOT will establish a valuable Fellowship model for how artists can contribute toward the planning, creation and utilization of safe, sustainable and integrated multimodal transportation system and share results with state departments of transportation across the county.”

The Fellow will be based in MnDOT’s headquarters in St Paul, but may also work from one of MnDOT’s district offices in greater Minnesota for part of the Fellowship.

CONTACT: Ben Stone, bstone@smartgrowthamerica.org / 410.370.3843 and Jessica Oh, jessica.oh@state.mn.us /651-366-4939.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Equal opportunity and having a diverse staff are fundamental principles at Transportation for America. Employment and promotional opportunities are based upon individual capabilities and qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation/preference, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as established under law.

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Transportation for America is an alliance of elected, business, and civic leaders from communities across the country, united to ensure that states and the federal government step up to invest in smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions — because these are the investments that hold the key to our future economic prosperity. T4America is a program of Smart Growth America. www.t4america.org

The State Smart Transportation Initiative promotes transportation practices that advance environmental sustainability and equitable economic development, while maintaining high standards of governmental efficiency and transparency. It is jointly operated by the University of Wisconsin and Smart Growth America.

ArtPlace America is a ten-year collaboration among a number of foundations, federal agencies, and financial institutions. We began our work as an organization in 2011, and will finish in 2020. Our mission is to position arts and culture as a core sector of community planning and development.

Minnesota Department of Transportation oversees transportation by all modes, including land, water, air, rail, transit, walking and bicycling. The agency is responsible for maintaining, building and operating the state highway system to ensure a safe, accessible, efficient and reliable transportation system that connects people to destinations and markets throughout the state, regionally and around the world.

Capital Ideas 2018 Conference— Call for session proposals now open

Mark your calendars for the 2018 edition of Transportation for America’s national conference for those interested in forward-looking state transportation policy and funding solutions.

In light of the Trump administration’s rhetorical and policy shift away from direct federal funding for transportation investments, the spotlight again turns to states and localities when it comes to policy and funding for transportation. Over 30 states have stepped up and passed new transportation funding legislation since 2012. An unfortunately much smaller number of states have passed smart policies to reform how those dollars are spent.

Capital Ideas 2018, will offer a highly interactive curriculum of model state legislation, campaign tactics, innovative policies, and peer-to-peer collaboration to help participants advance successful proposals to raise new funding for transportation and ensure those dollars are wisely spent to accomplish tangible goals and help states stay competitive in the 21st century. Our 3rd biennial national conference to be held in Atlanta, GA on Wednesday, December 5, 2018 and Thursday, December 6, 2018.

Call for session proposals now open

Transportation for America invites cutting-edge proposals for conference roundtable sessions and general plenary sessions that pertain to the emerging paradigm shift characterizing our transportation landscape today—disruption and uncertainty. The plenary and roundtable discussions at Capital Ideas 2018 seeks to address the following questions:

  • How will states manage their role in transportation funding & policy during this time of dramatic transition and change?
  • What is the appropriate role of state government in a disruptive world of transportation policy?
  • What can states do to ensure that our transportation network is equitable, accessible, safe and affordable?
  • Are our investment decisions today ensuring stronger local economies, greater access to opportunity and jobs, cleaner environments, healthier populations or better mobility for everyone in the future?
  • With a continually shifting and uncertain future for federal transportation funding, how can states successfully fund transportation investments and how will they demonstrate the value of their investments?

All plenary and session proposals are due on June 15, 2018 at 8 p.m. EDT.  Submitted your plenary and or session proposal here. Also remember that as a T4America member you get a discounted member ticket price. Conference registration opens on May 8, 2018. Learn more here.

 

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of January 26th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • “Should Transit Agencies Panic? Many predict that new technology will doom public transportation. They’re wrong.” (CityLab)
  • “3 Transportation Predictions for 2018.” (U.S. News)
  • “White House plan would reduce environmental requirements for infrastructure projects.” (The Washington Post)
  • “Uber lays out infrastructure principles.” (The Hill)

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of January 19th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • The U.S. Senate voted to end the current government shutdown today. (Politico) See T4America’s member summary for more details.
  • “Trump administration’s infrastructure plan taking shape.” (Reuters)
  • Brightline’s private All Aboard Florida service launched last week between West Palm Beach and Ft. Lauderdale. Service is expected to be extended to Miami later this year. (USA Today)
  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has proposed implementing congestion pricing in New York City. (Citylab)
  • Costs for the California High Speed Rail System have increased another $2.8 billion. (LA Times)
  • Waymo announced they will test their self-driving minivans in Atlanta. (The Verge)

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of January 12th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is supporting a 25 cents increase in the gas tax to fund an infrastructure package. (Washington Post)
  • Congress must pass an extension of government appropriations this week or a government shutdown will happen. (Vox)
  • “GOP leaders face most difficult shutdown deadline yet.” (The Hill)
  • Cities and researchers are finding clever ways to get data that transportation network companies (TNC) like Uber and Lyft refuse to provide. (Citylab)
  • GM says they plan to have a car with no steering wheel Or pedals ready for streets In 2019. (NPR)
  • Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton has proposed a $1.5 bond for infrastructure projects that would fund a variety of types of infrastructure, including express bus service in Minneapolis. (Minnesota Star Tribune)
  • Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has proposed a $600 million highway improvement plan for the state. (The Advocate)

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of December 8th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • President Trump will apparently release his infrastructure plan in January. (Bloomberg)
  • U.S. Sets January Push for $1 Trillion Infrastructure Revamp. (Wall Street Journal)
  • After his tax bill becomes law, President Trump is looking to localities to raise revenue for infrastructure. (Washington Post)
  • Governing Magazine explores “how small cities can attract and keep millennials.” (Governing Magazine)
  • “San Francisco is now the first U.S. city to implement a surge pricing program at all of its meters, parking garages and city-owned lots.” (Smart Cities Dive)
  • Streetsblog explores how the United States, unlike Europe, has not implemented any safety regulations for cars to reduce the likelihood of death or severe injury in automobile crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists. (Streetsblog)

Recent Federal Activity Summary – Senate passed its version of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy.

This weekend, the Senate passed its version of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” by a vote of 51 – 49. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) was the only Republican to join all Democrats in opposing the bill. While deeply flawed, the Senate bill retains private activity bonds, which are a critical tool for financing investment in a variety of infrastructure projects.

The President has set an ambitious goal of signing tax reform legislation into law before Christmas. While it has been suggested that the House could simply vote to send the Senate bill to the President, indications are that the House would prefer to work out the differences between the two bills. Therefore, the next step is for the House and Senate to reconcile their differences through a Conference Committee. The House is expected to vote to proceed to conference on Monday evening, and formal negotiations are expected to begin immediately (informal negotiations have been ongoing).

The House version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repeals private activity bonds and eliminates the ability of employers to deduct the cost of providing transit benefits to employees. These proposals undermine efforts to rebuild our infrastructure and make it difficult to envision how the Administration can achieve its stated goal of creating a new, $1 trillion infrastructure package.

Furthermore, both the House and Senate bills would dramatically increase the federal debt. This will force the Administration and Congress to make difficult choices, or trigger substantial cuts to important programs, including infrastructure. The Administration and Congress have proposed deep cuts to transportation programs in their FY18 budget and appropriations proposals. It is therefore likely that, once a deficit increasing tax bill is law, the Administration and Congress will use the required $150 billion in annual spending cuts to target investments in roadways, transit, and other infrastructure needs. The law requires Congress to pay for a budget-busting bill. Unfortunately, Congress will likely pay for these tax cuts by cutting programs that reinvest in our country, including critical transportation programs.

As the House and Senate head to conference, our top priority is to inform the public and Members of Congress that these bills will create, and green light, a torrent of cuts to transportation and infrastructure programs.

Please contact your Representative and Senator today to make sure they understand all that is at stake. Make sure they are talking to their leadership and letting them know how important it is that they not cut infrastructure programs!

 

Recent Federal Activity Summary – Week of November 17th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy.

Tax Reform

House: On Thursday November 16th, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” also known as the Republican’s tax reform package. The bill passed by a vote of 227-205; 227 Republicans voted for the legislation, and 192 Democrats and 13 Republicans voted against the legislation.

What Does this Bill Mean for Transportation?

The bill proposes changes to commuter tax benefits for parking, van pooling, and riding transit and terminates private activity bonds (PAB’s). Employers will no longer be able to deduct or “write off” the subsidy they provide for fringe benefits, including commuting benefits. The bill maintains the ability for employers to provide either a pre-tax benefit or a subsidy. In the case of a subsidy, while the employer can no longer write off this expense, they will not have to pay payroll taxes on the fringe benefit. There is no change to the benefits associated with providing the pre-tax benefit.

Private activity bonds are tax-exempt bonds used to fund a whole range of infrastructure projects that have a “private” use of at least 10%. PAB’s have been used to finance a wide range of infrastructure projects around the country, including roads, highways, housing, hospitals and airports. Recently, PAB’s have been used to fund a lot of transportation projects that are using private public partnerships for financing, including the Purple line in Maryland and the Rapid Bridge Replacement Project in Pennsylvania.

The House’s elimination of PAB’s will greatly harm the ability for state and local governments and private entities to obtain financing and build infrastructure projects that use financing tools, such as toll roads and transit and rail stations. This step is directly at odds with President Donald Trump’s proposal to expand the use of PAB’s to help fulfill his promise to rebuild America’s infrastructure.

Senate: The Senate Finance Committee approved the Senate version of the tax reform package on Thursday November 16th by a party line vote of 14-12. All Republicans voted in favor and all Democrats were opposed. The Senate bill keeps both the commuter benefits and private activity bonds intact, but does eliminate the $20 a month benefit for people who bike to and from work. The House bill also eliminates the bike benefit. T4America is joint signatory of a letter to members of Congress urging them to preserve the bike benefit because it promotes physical activity, reduces traffic congestion and air pollution and promotes walkable communities.

The Senate is scheduled to consider the Senate Republican tax bill when they get back from Thanksgiving recess. Congressional Republicans and the White House hope to have a tax bill on President Trump’s desk by Christmas. It is still unclear whether the Republicans have the votes to pass the tax bill in the Senate. All the Democrats are opposed to the bill so Republicans can only lose two votes and still pass their bill. Right now, Senator Ron Johnson (WI) says he is opposed to the bill in its current form and other senators like Susan Collins (ME), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Bob Corker (TN) and Jeff Flake (AZ) continue to be undecided on if they will support the bill.

One final possible hiccup for the Republican tax reform bill is a congressional budget provision known as the “Pay As You Go” (paygo) rule”. Paygo requires immediate, across-the-board spending reductions to many mandatory programs like Medicare and Medicaid for any bill that reduces taxes and doesn’t fully offset them with revenue increases elsewhere. The GOP tax cut plan would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. Under paygo rules, the government would have to make $150 billion in mandatory spending cuts every year for the next 10 years, unless that provision is waived with 60 votes in the Senate, which would require Democratic support. If the Paygo rule is not waived, not only will mandatory spending programs like Medicare take an automatic 4% spending cut, Congress will have to cut a lot of discretionary spending elsewhere to comply with the Paygo rules. Cuts to defense spending are a non political starter right now, so Congress would likely cut from the non-defense discretionary spending accounts. This fact means that funding for popular programs like TIGER, Capital Investment Grants and Amtrak are at risk to be severely cut back or even eliminated entirely if this tax reform bill passes.

The bottom line is that the Republican tax reform bill, especially the House version, will make it harder for state and local governments to make much needed infrastructure investments by stripping away financing tools that governments and private entities rely on. Additionally, the tax bill will potentially lead to devastating discretionary spending cuts that could eliminate programs like TIGER that we fight to fund every year because they are vital to our communities and economies. These two outcomes break the promises made by both the President and Congress to invest more in our infrastructure, not less.

U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) Nominations Confirmed

During the week of November 13th, the U.S. Senate confirmed two U.S. DOT nominations. Derek Khan was confirmed to be Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy and Steven Bradbury was confirmed to be General Counsel for U.S. DOT. Mr. Kan’s nomination hearing was held in June and he had bipartisan support, but his nomination was held up by New York and New Jersey Senators concerned over the Trump’s administration’s withdrawal from a non-binding commitment with New York and New Jersey to fund half of the Gateway project. Mr. Kan was confirmed by a vote of 90-7.

Mr. Bradbury was confirmed by vote of 50-47. His nomination was more controversial because of his work at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice under President George W. Bush. All Democratic Senators and Republican Senators John McCain (AZ) and Rand Paul (KY) opposed Mr. Bradbury’s nomination.

Nomination of Lynn Westmoreland

Additionally, the Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee on November 8th, reported favorably via voice vote the nomination of former Congressman Lynn Westmoreland to the Amtrak Board of Directors. There is no timeline right now for when the full Senate may consider his nomination.

Westmoreland served in Congress for twelve years, including a six-year stint on the Railroads Subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. During Westmoreland’s tenure in Congress he voted twice to cut Amtrak’s funding, including a vote for a failed bill in 2009 that would have eliminated all federal funding for the passenger railroad.

At a confirmation hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee on October 31, Westmoreland said he does support Amtrak funding, but that “the Board should look at the long-distance routes” and “should shutter these ‘unprofitable’ routes.” In his response to written questions from Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), a member of the committee, about his votes to cut funding for Amtrak’s long distance routes, Westmoreland deflected and said his vote for the 2015 FAST Act demonstrates his support for Amtrak because it “reauthorized funding for Amtrak.”

Amtrak will only survive politically if it is a robust national system that serves as many states and communities as possible. Mr. Westmoreland has not adequately justified his prior votes to cut Amtrak funding and considering his Senate Commerce Committee testimony; we remain extremely concerned about Mr. Westmoreland’s commitment to funding long distance train routes. Given the vital importance of long distance Amtrak routes and Mr. Westmoreland’s record in opposition to those routes, we don’t think he is a good fit for the Amtrak board.

Sign-on letter to support transit capital funding

Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN) are leading a sign-on letter calling for funding for the transit Capital Investment Grant program in the FY2018 federal funding bill. These champions are collecting signatures on this important letter, which they will then send the to senior appropriators and leadership. Please let your Representatives know how important transit funding is to your region and encourage them to sign on to this letter. We will keep you updated on the timing of the appropriations process and negotiations.

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of November 10th

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • Almost 50 members of Congress, led by Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao asking her to keep the greenhouse gas emissions rule and not move ahead with plans to repeal it. (Senator Cardin’s Office)
  • The U.S. Senate is expected to vote to approve Derek Kan’s nomination today to be Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy. (Railway Age)
  • Representatives Randy Hultgren (R-IL) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) explain in an op-ed the importance of a tax reform bill keeping private activity bonds. (Northwest Herald)
  • “Self-Driving Taxi Service From Waymo Set To Begin Shortly” in Chandler, Arizona. (CleanTechnica)
  • Forbes Op-Ed: “Waymo Tests Its Self-Driving Cars In My Town. Here Are The Odd Things I’ve Seen.” (Forbes)
  • The American Transportation Research Institute, part of the American Trucking Association put out a report that concludes a “federal fuel tax increase is the ‘only meaningful mechanism’ to pay for President Donald Trump’s proposed infrastructure improvements.” (Talk Business and Politics, ATRI Report)
  • Reed Cornish, a White House Advisor, shed a little more light in an interview with Recode on the Trump’s administration’s infrastructure principles and reveals he encouraged Elon Musk to start building a tunnel between New York City and Washington D.C. (Recode)