Back in May, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed their portion of a new five-year federal transportation law. The BUILD America 250 Act utterly failed to rethink or reform our country’s broken and bankrupt approach to transportation funding and policy. As I noted back in May, “as with the IIJA before it, the BUILD America 250 Act fails to orient this broken program toward the measurable outcomes that are promised over and over to the American taxpayer.”  The BUILD Act was just one more in a long line of bipartisan “compromises” on transportation where everyone agrees to undermine their own priorities in the name of keeping the program limping along and the money flowing.

But this week’s elections totally transformed the dynamics of the next Congress. The House T&I Committee will see significant turnover, with as many as a third of the seats changing due to retirements, lost elections, and new assignments. The full House never debated or voted on the BUILD Act and is unlikely to do so in the less than 20 working days left before the new Congress.

So why bring it back to life? Why would current Ranking Member Rick Larsen—who will take over the gavel on the transportation committee when Democrats take over the House in January—want to use the BUILD Act as the starting point for negotiations in the 120th Congress starting in January? Why start with a bill written at the pleasure of a Republican majority that no longer exists? Is this bill really the best deal that Democrats can get on transportation? 

Here are a handful of reasons why House Democrats should tell Rep. Larsen that it’s time to bail on the BUILD Act. Bounce it, bin it, boot it, bury it. Start over and create something better. 

The BUILD Act was just more of the same

Back in the spring during a briefing for congressional transportation staffers, we asked them to stop and consider: What’s the purpose of the federal transportation program? Why do we need this bill? Why does this program exist? The answers we heard were not about accomplishing anything concrete: 

“To provide steady, predictable funding. To allocate transportation money to states. To make a ‘better’ transportation system.”

To be fair, most of their bosses think about the program in the same exact way. Most are interested in keeping the money flowing to their state in a predictable way. Just keep this thing moving. More money than last time. Maybe create some new programs for this or that noble purpose. 

Considering the total insolvency of the country’s transportation program and the terrible outcomes it consistently delivers, we’ve been hopeful that the House would respond with a law aimed at producing measurable progress on outcomes that matter. A bill that improves safety, reliability, and predictability. A bill that would produce real, measurable progress on the state of repair for our crumbling roads, bridges, and transit systems. A bill that would invest heavily in more ways to get around quickly and affordably.

Instead, we just got more of the same with the BUILD Act. This is what you get when “bipartisanship” is a more important goal than producing good policy that maximizes the measurable benefits for the traveling public in exchange for the mammoth levels of deficit spending required to cover this bill’s cost. 

We think everyone should be dissatisfied with getting so little for so much money. And with the changes coming in January, we ask: Do congressional Democrats really think that this bill is the best deal they could get in the new Congress? 

The BUILD Act went 0 for 3 on producing important outcomes

Repairing and caring for what we’ve already built, improving safety, and making it easier for everyone to get where they need to go are widely supported by the public, and should be fundamental purposes for the program. That’s why our three priorities encompass all three. But the BUILD Act struck out across the board on them.

Prioritize repair first

Nearly 80 percent of all voters believe the government should fix existing roads before building any new roads. The BUILD Act would do nothing to institutionalize this basic, commonsense requirement, which is perhaps the most basic aspect of running a transportation system with finite resources. The BUILD Act would not require states to demonstrate progress toward any hard and fast targets for road or bridge conditions. And it makes zero improvements to the current check-the-box performance management exercise, where states can set whatever targets they want with no accountability for improvement.  Performance optional.

Safety

We don’t need a new safety program. Say it again. We don’t need a new safety program. We don’t even need more money for the existing safety programs. With safety numbers that are among the very worst in the developed world, we need to orient the entire program around improving safety. The BUILD Act did preserve the Safe Streets for All local grant program, though with a massive 50 percent cut. And it did nothing to keep the Trump administration from continuing to weaponize the program by removing all mentions of vision zero and banning the use of bike lanes or other proven methods to slow speeds and improve safety and mobility at the same time.

Invest in the rest

It’s simple. The BUILD Act increases guaranteed funding for highways, and reduces guaranteed funding for transit. Two decades after completing the interstate system, the BUILD Act fails to invest in the rest and build a world-class transit system. And it did nothing to ensure that money they authorize for transit even gets spent over the next two years. Where’s the good deal, exactly? 

BUILD gives the Trump admin more money to control without any new safeguards 

Back in 2021, the IIJA created exciting new programs to support emission reductions, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, expanded transportation options, and safe street redesigns; provided historic funding for passenger rail; created a new program to reconnect communities divided by highways; and poured more money into transit than ever before. So what happened to all these things over the last two years, many of which were Democrat priorities? 

• Transit grants to build new or expanded service have been frozen by the administration, with just one grant approved in nearly two years. And a recent policy move by FTA could threaten the existence of dozens of transit projects deep in development.
• The main program for planning passenger rail service expansion has been put on pause by the administration.
• Funding for new electric vehicle charging infrastructure  was rescinded to go toward the cost of the budget-busting budget reconciliation bill.
• Safe Streets for All program weaponized and the latest round of grants were focused on things like helping people get to the hospital quicker after they get struck while walking on unsafe streets that won’t get fixed.
• Carbon reduction program eliminated.
• Reconnecting Communities program eliminated and promised grants were taken back from local communities.

For the last two years, the Republican-led House and Senate stood by while the administration flouted the intent and will of the bipartisan agreement Congress made to create these programs. The BUILD Act failed to take the initiative to restore these programs, bring back canceled grants, or create any new protections to ensure that their intent is fulfilled by the administration.  

Why would Democrats strike a new “bipartisan” deal on transportation when only their priorities were eliminated in the last deal? 

The last time Democrats controlled the House, they produced a terrific bill

While the BUILD Act needs to get tossed in the trash on the merits, the past can also produce good ideas as the House drafts a new bill. The INVEST in America Act, produced by Chairman Peter DeFazio and the House T&I committee in 2020, was excellent. It went 3 for 3 on our priorities, and had bipartisan support for the best repair provisions Congress has ever produced. Unfortunately, the House then got steamrolled by the Senate during negotiations, which produced the IIJA, which was not nearly as strong. Incoming leadership in the House should look to the INVEST Act for inspiration in 2027.

A new Congress should produce a new bill

Incoming House leaders should not advance a bill that was produced with the help of so many members of Congress who just got sent home by their voters. And on the flip side, the huge influx of new members who were just sent to Washington should get their chance to craft a different approach to transportation—a new Congress should mean a new sheet of paper. 

The dynamics have certainly changed. A better deal can be had. Congress should bury the BUILD Act and start over fresh.

The post Bury the BUILD Act and start over in 2027 appeared first on Transportation For America.

Transportation for America is especially proud of our work with the Rankin County Board of Supervisors and Waggoner Engineering on a successful $56.2 million grant application that will address the existing at-grade crossing at Highway 18 and the CPKC Meridian Speedway rail line, bringing immense safety benefits near Mississippi’s capital.

This project paves the way for the Interstate 20 Corridor, an expansion of passenger rail from Meridian, Mississippi, to Fort Worth, Texas, along the CPKC main line through Rankin County. The I-20 would effectively connect central Mississippi, northern Louisiana, and the megaregions of Atlanta, Georgia, and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. This route would improve access to healthcare services, local businesses, employment centers, and educational institutions, especially along the technology corridor from Meridian, Mississippi, to Monroe, Louisiana. 

We congratulate Rankin County and look forward to working with the Federal Railroad Administration to continue expanding passenger rail across the region.

The post Passenger rail corridors set to benefit from $431.5M in new rail crossing grants appeared first on Transportation For America.

A strong, modern transportation system supports prosperous communities where businesses thrive, and people of all incomes and ages can live healthy, productive lives. But that’s not what we’re getting from our investments. Despite spending billions of dollars on transportation, we’re not seeing measurable improvements in how the system performs because we’re not making spending decisions based on the results we want to achieve.

Safety, state of repair, and transportation choices are three outcomes that matter most to people who use our transportation system. Whether it’s concerns about traffic around your dinner table or complaints about potholes at your town hall, people are fundamentally unhappy with what they’re getting from our transportation investments. When you consider that we spend billions of dollars a year to maintain this poor performance, it’s clear something needs to change.

Transportation for America has tools to help state and federal policymakers address these essential dinner-table issues. The good news? Our comprehensive policy solutions get to the foundation of why our transportation investments fail to deliver on outcomes, and provide the tools to start making real change. The bad news? Fixing the foundation takes more than throwing money at the problem.

State policymakers can focus their DOT investments on outcomes that matter

Now is the essential time to refocus your DOT on achieving the outcomes you want, rather than throwing more money at the broken transportation system.  It is time to stop asking “how much money should we spend?” and start asking “what are we getting from the money we’re investing?” to improve accountability and prioritize spending on the results promised to taxpayers—and the everyday experience of people across your state. 

Learn more about how to refocus and improve your state DOT through priority setting, removing barriers to innovation, and updating project delivery here >>

Where to start:

• Look into your state DOT’s ranking and see how their performance measures up (hint: it’s likely failing to meet outcomes).
• Download the book, review it, distribute it across state offices, and determine paths forward to reform your state DOT.

Federal policymakers can focus their energy on reforming reauthorization

The federal program is failing to deliver on its promises, even with deficit spending of more than $275 billion. Despite spending more than $1.5 trillion since 1991, roadway safety has worsened, infrastructure conditions have stayed about the same, congestion has worsened, and emissions have increased. It’s time to replace the failing, bankrupt federal transportation program with something new and make it more accountable to taxpayers by building a new federal transportation program from the ground up.  

Read more about the need for different federal investments, changing surface transportation reauthorization, and prioritizing performance and accountability here >>>>>

Where to start:

• Download the book, review it, send it to your newly elected officials, and start the conversation on better transportation outcomes before the new year.

Transportation for America is here to help

Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America, is a national non-profit working to create a transportation system that safely, affordably, and accessibly connects everyone to jobs, services, and opportunities. Subscribe to our emails, use our reports, and contact us to ask about our expertise or available support.

The post Welcome to elected office: Transportation for America is here to help improve your transportation outcomes appeared first on Transportation For America.

Since returning to office, President Trump and his administration have prioritized encouraging people to have more children. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in particular has pushed to increase birth and marriage rates, and now those rates are being considered in how several USDOT programs award funding. The latest is the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program, which has historically been the primary federal funding source for transit improvements and expansions.

On October 1, FTA finally released proposed updated policy guidance for the CIG program. Rather than focusing on building better transit in places where people will actually use it, the proposal is using criteria that have nothing to do with improving transit.

Before we explain why, it’s worth noting that the Trump administration has ground this pipeline of transit projects to a total halt, advancing only one minor transit capital project during its 21 months in office. So we’re talking about an administration supposedly wanting to improve a program it has already brought to a complete standstill. Projects are stuck in the development pipeline with little information about when they might move forward. And projects that were expecting to sign grant agreements months ago—including projects that have already started construction, like Maryland’s Veirs Mill Road “Flash” bus rapid transit project—have been left in limbo. Now, these projects might have to navigate a completely different set of rules in the eleventh hour.

How the marriage and birth rate “bonus” would work

Historically, transit projects funded through CIG have received up to 60 percent of their funding through the federal government, though most receive closer to 40 percent. That means transit projects typically have to secure more than half of their funding from state or local sources, whether through a local sales tax dedicated to transit or a state budget allocation. Highway projects, on the other hand, are typically covered at 80 to 90 percent. 

FTA uses metrics such as projected cost-effectiveness, mobility improvements, and environmental benefits to calculate how much federal cost share a transit project should receive. Under the new guidance, after calculating the base rate, FTA “proposes to increase the CIG [federal] percentage share by an additional five percentage points if the average birth rate in the corridor is more than one percent above the national average” and “proposes to apply the same approach to adjust the CIG percentage share based on average marriage rates.” 

A corridor that exceeds the national average by more than one percent on both measures would receive up to 10 percentage points more in federal cost share. For example, a project that would otherwise receive 50 percent of the total project cost in federal share could instead receive 60 percent.

FTA is careful to call this a “bonus,” not a penalty. That may be technically true, but new transit projects depend heavily on federal funding, so a higher or lower federal share can could be the difference between a project moving forward and getting shelved. And because CIG also has a fixed pot of money each year, giving more to one community means another will receive less.

These measures are irrelevant to the program’s supposed goals

Birth and marriage rates don’t predict transit ridership. 

If FTA wants to maximize ridership on new transit, it could use population projections for surrounding census tracts or various transportation modeling software that already exist. Adding birth and marriage rates to a program where they have no relevance might serve the administration’s agenda, but it does nothing to actually build cost-effective transit that people will use.

FTA’s proposed methods are also unclear and murky. Birth rates are an absolute figure (births per 1,000 women), while marriage rates are defined as the share of adults 15 or older who are married (i.e., a percentage figure).  For marriage rates, it’s unclear whether “one percent above or below the national average” means a relative or absolute difference. The marriage rate bonus is calculated using the share of adults who are married rather than the number of marriages that occur per capita, so while some places like Washington, D.C. have a relatively high number of marriages, they do not qualify for that bonus. It is also unclear whether FTA will include all census tracts that intersect with the one-mile buffer of the project corridor or only those fully within it when calculating average birth and marriage rates. These bonuses have clearly not been thought through.

How the bonus could impact actual transit projects in development

To understand the potential impact of the proposed “bonus,”  we looked at county-level census data on birth and marriage rates to estimate the size of bonuses that projects in a given county would receive.

FTA’s proposed guidance would only apply to the census tracts within one mile of a project’s actual corridor, not to entire counties, so this analysis does not capture variation within a county. This is particularly relevant for counties with large populations, such as Maricopa County, Arizona.

Two examples show how arbitrary the result can be. In Snohomish County, Washington, both rates are more than one percent above the national average, so the Swift Gold Line Bus Rapid Transit project would likely qualify for an additional 10 percentage points in federal funding. In Orange County, North Carolina, home to Chapel Hill and a major public university, both rates are more than 1 percent below the national average, so the North-South Bus Rapid Transit project would likely not qualify for any additional funding. Orange County’s low rates likely reflect its large university student population, which says nothing about whether people there would ride transit.

The bigger problems with the guidance

The biggest problem with the proposed guidance is that FTA does not plan to grandfather in existing projects. Instead, it would apply the new rules to projects that have already spent years in development under the parameters of the old guidance. 

It’s one thing to change the rules for new transit projects trying to enter the federal pipeline today, but it’s astonishing that the FTA would propose moving the goalposts in such a significant way for transit projects that have been in development for years. 

In many cases, transit agencies have already identified corridors, local funding has been secured, and thousands of hours of planning have been dedicated to the project under the existing rules. Now, at the eleventh hour, they may have to adapt their projects to an entirely new set of rules. It’s not dissimilar to spending an entire semester studying for an anatomy exam, only to learn days before that the exam will focus on literature. It’s a massive waste of resources and is deeply unfair to transit agencies and future riders who would benefit from these projects.

The lack of grandfathering for projects that have been planning on CIG funding for years is likely to hurt transit projects far more than the birth and marriage bonus will. But the bonuses are still irrelevant to building better transit and shouldn’t be part of the final guidance.

The post Birth and marriage rates have nothing to do with funding transit appeared first on Transportation For America.

Every single one of the 100 most populous metro areas has experienced increasing congestion, decade after decade—even when they are losing population and adding highway capacity (see: Congestion Con). This is no easy feat.

Many mistakes have been made both in the public and private sectors, across different levels of government and different agencies, and through many successive leaders. In fact, much of what we do to address congestion seems to just make it worse. So I decided to treat this as a thought exercise:

What if we brought everyone together in order to maximize congestion? In other words, if we were trying to create the most congestion with the fewest number of people, what would we do and how would it be different from what we are doing now? 

A Congestion-Maximization Playbook

A field manual to achieving the greatest amount of congestion possible for your region

Traffic congestion is growing across the country and has been for approaching a century. This has required a lot of people doing their part to optimize their community for congestion. While most cities are making great strides, none have reached their full congestion potential. There is more work that we can do.

What follows is a congestion checklist. It will be a long list, but there are a few themes in terms of what has been done and must continue. We must:

1. Limit coordination between land use and transportation because it tends to lead to more and longer trips for people to accomplish their daily needs —a fundamental element of congestion;
2. Discourage people from getting out of their car by making the travel environment hostile and dangerous; and
3. Avoid checking the predictions or assumptions that have gotten us here to prevent any learning, innovation, or change.

As Daniel Burnham famously said, “Make no little plans.”

The “benefits” of congestion

Congestion actually supports multiple priorities, a fact that is too often overlooked. For example, the safety benefits of congestion are underappreciated, with pro-traffic strategies left off lists such as the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) proven safety countermeasures. Increased congestion lowers vehicle speeds, reducing the risk of crashes, especially those that lead to fatalities and serious injuries. Unfortunately, this safety benefit might create a rebound effect, making more people comfortable walking or biking and undermining the goal of maximizing congestion. However, if regions focus on the other strategies in this playbook, this problem will be overcome by other efforts to discourage all walking and biking. Eventually, this approach will bring crashes with non-drivers to zero because there will be no non-drivers.

Additionally, there are quality of life benefits from congestion that are often overlooked. For example, with the increased travel time from congested roads, families can spend dedicated time with one another in the car, having uninterrupted conversations as they wait for traffic to ease forward. Further, driving in congested conditions provides people with the freedom and time to think and reflect, or use their time in other productive ways, like taking business calls or listening to music, audiobooks, and podcasts.

Further, congestion is often treated purely as an economic drag, but every hour a commuter spends idling in traffic means more fuel purchased, refined, and delivered through a supply chain that employs millions of Americans, from refinery workers to pipeline technicians to the gas station attendants ringing up the sale. Higher fuel consumption driven by stop-and-go traffic translates directly into revenue for energy companies, tax receipts for state and federal governments through fuel taxes, and sustained demand for the extraction and refining sectors that anchor entire regional economies.

Congestion also reshapes consumer preferences in ways that ripple through manufacturing. Drivers who have to drive more and farther gravitate toward larger, more powerful vehicles that offer more comfort and space, as well as a greater sense of safety and control in unpredictable travel conditions. This shift supports higher-margin vehicle segments for domestic automakers, sustaining assembly line jobs, parts suppliers, and dealership networks that depend on selling larger and upgraded models rather than economy cars.

Finally, congestion is one of the clearest and most politically durable justifications for infrastructure investment, building public and legislative will to fund new highways, interchange redesigns, and new lane construction—projects that employ construction crews, engineers, surveyors, and material suppliers for years. In this sense, congestion functions as a demand signal that keeps an entire transportation construction and engineering ecosystem employed.

So how do we do this, you ask. Where is my checklist? Stay tuned over the next few weeks for checklists covering several sectors: active transportation, housing, roads and streets, vehicles, transit, and zoning. In the meantime, feel free to share your ideas for inclusion.

The post Are we actually trying to generate traffic congestion…question mark? appeared first on Transportation For America.

Current processes for building necessary infrastructure produce costly delays and lawsuits, especially for transit projects. But permitting reform alone won’t fix America’s inability to build.

Some provisions in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act—which was introduced at the end of September and is expected to reach the Senate after midterm elections—would shorten agency review timelines and designate a lead agency to avoid duplicative reviews, potentially helping speed up projects. Parts of the bill could also successfully encourage state departments of transportation to prioritize state of repair projects.

As Stephanie Pollack noted in a blog for the Eno Center for Transportation:

“…critical projects would be relieved of NEPA delays or claims of controversy: rail agencies could correct dangerous highway crossings, transit agencies could add infill stations or make stations accessible, bridge owners could lift weight restrictions and correct structural problems, highway agencies could make roads resilient to flooding, high temperatures or earthquakes, and local agencies could build safe infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.

Agencies that want to expand the capacity of a bridge or highway do not receive this exemption from NEPA: BAAJA excludes any bridge or highway project that results in additional travel lanes from the definition of lifeline infrastructure. Indeed, with NEPA review required for capacity expansions and eliminated for state of good repair projects, agencies may choose to direct more federal dollars to building the easier, faster ‘fix it first’ projects.”

But other changes could be harmful and limit opposition to bad projects like unnecessary, budget-busting highway expansions. With the bill still in draft form and many of the details left to implementation, it is unclear whether the bill will be effective at pushing state departments of transportation toward a “fix-it-first” approach.

Streamlining should still give communities clear opportunities to challenge bad projects

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act would limit lawsuits to members of the public who commented on that specific matter during the given period. This may not sound like a major change, but it could create unfair advantages for more engaged and wealthy residents and interest groups, which are more likely to be aware of proposed projects and have the time and resources to submit formal comment.

Another part of the proposed legislation says that no federal agency would be “required to consider scientific or technical research that becomes publicly available after the date of publication of a notice of intent or decision to prepare an environmental document for a proposed agency action.” That means federal agencies would not be required to consider research that becomes publicly available after a certain point in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review. As it exists, NEPA is an important tool for communities to speak up against harmful infrastructure decisions, and parts of this bill will undermine that. And some formal analyses of proposed agency actions are not finished before a Notice of Intent is released. 

Highways get the fast lane while transit projects get stuck

This bill is also missing critical components to speed up new transit and active transportation infrastructure—the kind of transportation infrastructure that brings the most benefits, especially in accessibility and environmental outcomes. While 95 percent of transit projects already qualify for a categorical exclusion under NEPA, securing that exclusion takes time and effort, defeating the purpose of the exclusion in the first place. A categorical exclusion would help advance projects with no significant negative environmental impacts, allowing faster project delivery. 

Unlike highway projects, transit agencies have to prepare extensive documentation and get approval from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) before work can begin. This requirement puts local agencies in delay-plagued holding patterns determined by FTA capacity and their eagerness to advance projects, which is at an all-time low under the current administration. Highway projects don’t face this same bottleneck because state departments of transportation are allowed to handle low-risk environmental reviews themselves. 

For example, the Texas Department of Transportation has been conducting its own NEPA reviews since 2014. That allowed nearly 30,000 lane-miles of public roads to be added across the state between 2014 and 2024, while transit options barely changed. Groups across the political spectrum, from the Institute for Progress to the Build America Caucus, have suggested providing transit agencies the same opportunity as state DOTs to get transit projects moving faster. 

Beyond that potential change, the federal transit program needs to be dramatically reformed to speed up project delivery and to ensure that projects are actually achieving their stated goals. For more on T4America’s reauthorization priorities for transit, see here.

Streamlining alone isn’t enough to fix our transportation system

Permitting reforms in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act will fail to achieve their stated outcomes without other reforms. More than anything, we need policymakers to actually track outcomes and make decisions based on those findings. Capacity at all levels of government has been systematically undermined over the last 50 years, affecting our ability to collect critical information and get projects across the finish line. Changing an agency review period from 90 to 45 days is not going to be a magic solution to get America building again.

We don’t just need streamlined processes and more resources to create a modern, safe, and sustainable transportation system that achieves its intended outcomes. We also need new priorities for what we’re trying to build or accomplish in the first place—not just streamlining the building of the same expensive stuff that serves yesterday’s needs. For starters, we need transportation reauthorization to actually make state departments of transportation prioritize safety and hold them accountable for improving the condition of their roads, bridges, and transit systems.

T4America recognizes the need for permitting reform as one part of a new approach to transportation. But at the end of the day, any permitting reform that impacts the buildout of transportation infrastructure must center a fundamental value: It should not be easier to expand highways than to build new transit infrastructure or other low-cost facilities like sidewalks, crosswalks, and bike lanes that improve safety and connection within our communities.

The post Bipartisan permitting reform bill is a step forward, but not a silver bullet appeared first on Transportation For America.

Every five years, Congress is supposed to renew the roughly $77 billion federal surface transportation program, which sets the policies, priorities, and funding for the nation’s highway, transit, safety, and rail programs. As we anticipated, lawmakers missed the end-of-September deadline to pass a new reauthorization and instead extended the current program, leaving out billions in funding for transit, rail, safety, and other priorities. (Extensions are nothing new: Congress has relied on extensions about a third of the time since 1997.) 

New to reauthorization? Read our guide to understand what it is and how it works.

Rather than simply hitting pause to focus on the midterm elections, Congress should treat this extension as an opportunity to rethink the federal transportation program,  ensure it will be faithfully implemented by any administration, and establish stronger accountability measures so the next one can actually deliver its stated goals. While every reauthorization offers another opportunity to make long-overdue changes, several issues make the current process especially urgent: The program’s failure to deliver on past goals, an administration refusing to implement the congressionally approved program, rising costs, and emerging technologies that require new rules.

Here are five reasons why this reauthorization matters more than ever:

1. Tracking progress on past goals

The lead-up to a new reauthorization is an ideal time to evaluate whether the program has made progress on its stated goals of improving safety and infrastructure conditions, reducing congestion, and protecting the environment and public health. Over the past 30-plus years, the U.S. has spent $1.5 trillion in taxpayer dollars without making any meaningful progress toward its goals. And despite a historic increase in funding, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) doubled down on the same failing status quo—even before the Trump administration began withholding and delaying funds Congress had already approved for the program. 

Take safety, which should be the number one priority in our transportation system. The U.S. faces a safety crisis unlike that of any other peer country, marked by a 72 percent increase in people struck and killed while walking on our roads between 2009 and 2024. If the U.S. had taken the same steps as every other peer country, 63,441 lives could have been saved over the last decade alone.

2. Protecting our priorities

The federal transportation program doesn’t have enough funding to cover every priority. Its funding model has been broken for years, with user fees failing to cover costs since 2008, requiring repeated infusions of additional taxpayer dollars. With funding levels under closer scrutiny and the Trump administration already withholding funding for public transit projects, transit investments face a very real risk of cuts during the next reauthorization.

The administration slowed transit funding during its first term, but made history during its second by not approving or advancing a single transit capital project—including metros, light rail, and bus rapid transit lines—during its initial year and a half in office. And stalling, canceling, rescinding, or pressuring changes to approved projects doesn’t seem likely to stop anytime soon. Last year, USDOT floated ending all federal transit funding, and this summer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed eliminating the entire Mass Transit Account. 

Transit isn’t the only priority at risk. USDOT recently removed proven safety solutions such as speed cameras, bike lanes, and road diets from its official online list of Proven Safety Countermeasures, making it harder for communities to secure funding and make these improvements. Unless we closely watch the reauthorization process, any remaining support for these interventions could disappear.

Congress can use reauthorization to make safety the top priority by strengthening accountability and by encouraging more transparent data, roadway safety research, and evidence-backed guidance for roadway design. To make transit a priority, lawmakers should start by restoring recent cuts to the IIJA’s Division J advance appropriations, which slashed previous investments in public transit and passenger rail. And while drafting the next program, Congress can give transit the same funding levels and streamlined project processes as highways.

3. Gaining leverage with the current administration

This reauthorization offers Congress an opportunity to make agencies more accountable to taxpayers, especially as the current administration continues to withhold or delay funding for programs Congress has already approved.

As outlined above, the Trump administration has refused to advance projects through programs like Capital Investment Grants. If the administration is already undermining existing programs, why should Congress assume that a new bill—even one with meaningful policy improvements—would be implemented any differently? And why is there a rush to put together a new bill when the last one hasn’t even been seen through? 

Congress shouldn’t be eager to advance the next reauthorization while the administration keeps refusing to implement the current program. That’s why we’ve recommended extending it for at least one year. Congress should use that time to include airtight language in the next bill that would ensure consequences for any administration that refuses to carry out the law.

4. Improving affordability for everyday Americans

Americans across the country face an affordability crisis across many aspects of daily life. Studies from 2023 show that nearly half of all people live in economically insecure families, and one-third of middle-class Americans cannot afford basic necessities. Transportation is already the second-highest expense for most households, and given the rising costs of owning and operating a car, reauthorization is a critical opportunity to provide much-needed relief. 

In a recent letter to the bipartisan leaders of four committees, Senate Democrats acknowledged transportation’s role in addressing this crisis: “Families deserve affordable options for daily travel, including transit, passenger rail, walking, and biking. By developing other ways to get around, families can save money on fuel, reduce vehicle maintenance costs, reduce insurance costs, and even avoid purchasing additional vehicles altogether.” 

Through reauthorization, Congress has the opportunity to invest in more rail, transit, and active transportation options that give people across the country cheaper ways to reach jobs, school, and other essential services. These investments could save the average American household an estimated $750 annually in gas and vehicle maintenance and $1,300 in vehicle depreciation.

5. Charting a course for emerging technologies

As we speed toward another major technological transformation with the emergence of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the federal government has not established meaningful guardrails, leaving the private sector free to operate with little oversight. Although they present an opportunity, especially for non-drivers, AVs could also threaten safety, public health, the environment, and the overall functioning of our transportation system. 

We’ve already outlined how the federal government can ensure AVs meet their potential: require transparent data reporting on general operations, any incidents, and other anomalies; audit new vehicle models; allow localities to determine how AVs operate on their own streets; and penalize empty AVs that congest our roads. Without meaningful standards, empty AVs have already started crowding streets and even neighborhoods across the country.

To learn more about reauthorization, see our existing resources on the process, including our platform outlining the policy proposals we’d like to see and explainers on the process and how to engage.

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Earlier this summer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to Congress outlining the administration’s priorities for the next federal transportation law due by September 30 this December. In that letter, under “Expanding and Modernizing Infrastructure,” Sec. Duffy asked Congress to create “a new competitive grant program targeted at expediting the completion and expansion of the Interstate system… The Administration’s objective is to launch completion of the Interstate Highway System, including the start of construction for unbuilt, congressionally designated highways.” (Emphasis ours.)

Even in a world of today’s uncreative thinking on transportation, this proposal is wildly out of sync with what people actually want and need from the federal transportation program, which is decidedly not “interstate system #1 was great, let’s run that back again!”

Here are five quick reasons this is a silly, counterproductive idea that would fit better in a black-and-white film strip from the 1950s: 

1. 1990s priorities are not what we should be pursuing in the 2030s
2. The interstate system doesn’t need “completing” since it was finished in 1992
3. We can’t afford to maintain the existing interstate system
4. Every single potential highway project is already eligible for “completion” through federal highway formula funding programs—and states don’t have to compete for those
5. Why spend billions more within a bankrupt federal transportation program?

1) 1990s priorities are just not worth pursuing in the 2030s

There are somewhere around 33 or 34 “priority” corridors identified by Congress—mostly in the 1990s and early 2000s—for potential addition to the interstate network. But these designations did not result from careful study or thoughtful growth projections. (If such a thing actually exists.) And they are certainly unhinged from today’s realities. Many were “designated” by members of Congress who are no longer even in office and possibly no longer even alive.

Here are some other things that were important to us in 1990: Getting an updated copy of the Yellow Pages. Choosing a movie to rent at Blockbuster. Worrying about the Soviet Union.  Programming your VCR. Thinking about what to wear to hang out at the mall tonight.  Wondering if your 32-volume encyclopedia is current. Wanting a new phone with a longer cord so you can talk in another room.  Hoping the family computer was free. Waiting ’til tomorrow morning to read all the news in the paper.

Goodbye 1990s! Why should highway lines drawn on maps by members of Congress from that decade have any bearing on what we build to serve us in the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s, or beyond? I know the 1990s were pretty sweet for Secretary Duffy, but most Americans are thinking about tomorrow.

No one should ever forget that building the interstate system came at immense expense to certain people. The first part of our Divided by Design report explains how building the interstate system displaced more than 475,000 households and over a million people in less than two decades—most often in communities of color with lower incomes—and how today’s system hasn’t really changed and continues to inflict incredible damage. 

2) The interstate system doesn’t need “completing” because it was finished in 1992

We actually completed the Interstate Highway System in 1992.  Mission accomplished. Prep the ticker tape and start up the parade. There’s no reason to write a thousand words here—Chuck and Strong Towns wrote and released an entire report about it earlier this year.  

The United States set out in 1956 to build a unified, high-speed, limited-access highway network that would connect the nation, strengthen defense, and support commerce. That mission was completed in 1992 with the final link of Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon. The Interstate era — one of the most ambitious and successful infrastructure projects in world history — achieved exactly what Congress and President Eisenhower envisioned: a national system that stitched together regions, opened new economic frontiers, and redefined American mobility. 

Congress also acknowledged this fact in the 1991 and 1995 reauthorizations, by the way. 1991: “Congress declares that [these are] the final authorizations of appropriations and apportionments for completion of construction of such [sic] System.” 1995: “By 1991, that critically important mission—of connecting America and providing the core transportation infrastructure needed to sustain and promote interstate commerce and national economic prosperity—was largely accomplished.”

But the system hasn’t been in stasis. Even after its 1992 completion, states have continued to expand existing portions, build new segments, and convert existing highways into interstate-level roadways. The result is an interstate system that expanded from 200,000 in 1992 to more than 230,000 lane-miles today. Why? As the Strong Towns paper continues: 

But instead of winding down a finished program, Congress left the machinery of that achievement running. A federal transportation system designed for a clear, finite purpose was gradually transformed into a sprawling, permanent institution, one that now continues spending not because of any remaining national mission, but because the system has come to depend on its own momentum.

How many more lane-miles do we actually need? More importantly, how many can we even afford to build?

3) We’re underwater on maintenance costs for what we’ve already built

Expanding the interstate system would create billions in new repair obligations. Every single new mile of road locks in decades of ongoing maintenance costs that can actually end up costing more than initial construction. A new program focused on expansion with zero plan for maintenance got us into this current mess.  Read about the costs required just for ongoing maintenance in our Repair Priorities report from this year:

Maintaining the lane miles of roads that were in good and fair condition in 2024 would require an estimated $32.6 billion on average annually for routine preservation and maintenance. On top of that, addressing the existing backlog of roads in poor condition would cost an additional $10.6 billion per year over the course of a typical six-year federal transportation bill. In total, this amounts to $43.2 billion annually—more than $259 billion over six years—just to clear the backlog and keep the system in acceptable repair.

The $43.2 billion annual bill for basic state-of-repair road maintenance is more than what the gas tax brings in each year. (~$35-39 billion.) And that number doesn’t even include what’s needed for the 624,000-plus bridges eligible for federal dollars. No rational person would consider expanding a system that our current funding source cannot sufficiently pay to maintain—even if we devoted every single dollar of existing revenues to that purpose.

4) Every single possible zombie interstate expansion project can receive federal funding right now

A new grant program for “completing” interstates is unnecessary and redundant. Every possible interstate or highway expansion project is already eligible for nearly every single federal highway funding program. 

Does the North Carolina DOT want to “expedite” construction of its long-gestating Interstate 87 project to connect Raleigh’s Interstate 540 bypass east all the way to Interstate 95? Just put it on your five-year project list and start giving it some of the $1.3 billion in federal highway funding you received in FY27. States don’t even have to compete for those funds—they’re already in their wallet! 

If these projects haven’t been built yet, maybe they’re not that important to the states making these decisions? If states don’t deem them important enough to use their highly flexible federal dollars on them, why should USDOT create some new program for the same purpose? And why should any of us (or our grandkids) pay for it?

Creating a new grant program for this purpose is like your kid, who has a weekly allowance they can spend on anything they want, asking for a special new allotment to buy candy at the corner store. “Just open your wallet and use the money I gave you, if that’s what’s important to you. And before you ask, no, there is no more extra money.” 

Because…

5) The federal transportation program is bankrupt

The current program is bankrupt, and has been for nearly two decades. 

As noted above, Congress has spent more each year than the gas tax brings in, creating a long-term insolvency problem and forcing all taxpayers to bail out a program that was supposed to be fully covered by a user-pays trust fund. Drive your car and buy gas, pay into a system of roads built with those taxes. But that fundamental tenet of the program hasn’t been true since at least 2008. 

Where is the money coming from for a new competitive grant program to advance insanely expensive interstate projects that have been on the books but unbuilt for 20 to 30 years? Of course, USDOT isn’t proposing any particular funding source for this new program—that’s Congress’ problem. Which means it’s really your problem, because you (and all taxpayers) have helped foot the bill for the $275 billion in deficit spending on the current program so far. So dig deep once again, folks, as Congress passes the hat.

—

Back in 1991, the average price of gas was about $1.15 per gallon. General Motors hadn’t yet built and then killed the first production electric car. The median price of a home was $120,000. Since then, the ratio of home prices to median incomes has increased 25 percent.

We need new homes, not new highways. We can’t afford to keep chasing the marginal, diminishing economic returns of a new lane here or there on existing highways, and we certainly can’t afford the repair bill on a dramatically expanded system. As Chuck so eloquently said in Mission Accomplished, “It is time to declare the original mission accomplished, acknowledge the program’s drift, and rebuild the federal transportation role around the needs of the 21st century rather than the habits of the 20th.”

After prioritizing repair, it’s time to “invest in the rest” and build a complete transportation network that focuses on moving people and goods—not just vehicles—and building productive, resilient places full of opportunity.

And we don’t need a new grant program to do any of that. Spend what’s in your wallet, son.

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Despite overwhelming evidence that roadway expansion does not solve traffic congestion, federal grant programs continue to prioritize roadway expansion over maintaining existing infrastructure. Time and time again, the Trump-Duffy Department of Transportation has exacerbated this issue. Their recent announcement of $426 million in Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grants is just the latest example.

To start the federal fiscal year, Department of Transportation officials recently announced that they’re investing more than $426 million to “eliminate [transportation] bottlenecks and congested highways” through the Fiscal Year 2026 INFRA program. Although these funds are supposedly for large projects that generate economic, mobility, or safety benefits, a closer inspection suggests the current administration is using these terms as code words to cover “roadway expansion projects” that won’t meet any of its stated goals.

Finally: Another program for roadway expansion 

The 2015 FAST Act established the Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects program to provide the billions of dollars in financial assistance needed to support highway, bridge, freight, and highway rail-grade crossing projects. But even though the FY 26 INFRA Notice of Funding Opportunity proposes selecting projects that invest in high-quality infrastructure, modernize aging assets, expand system capacity, and strengthen economic competitiveness, an awarded project cannot—in classic Trump administration fashion—limit existing roadway capacity or reduce the level of service.

Unsurprisingly, given this project criteria, FY 26 INFRA grants prioritize roadway expansion projects more than any other year since the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

A program that says it prioritizes safety, state of repair, and mobility outcomes seems like it should be a slam dunk for Transportation for America. However, INFRA highlights the silent truth: It’s easier to get money from the federal transportation program to lay more asphalt or add a lane than to invest in long-term maintenance or real safety outcomes. It also highlights how easy it is for everyone working in state departments of transportation to freight railroad companies to claim they care about outcomes. But in reality, there is no accountability for those outcomes because there is no plan to measure or evaluate them.

A system stacked against road repairs

Meet the I-4 North Capacity Improvements, an awarded FY 26 INFRA project that would add one general travel lane along twenty miles of I-4 in Florida to relieve bottleneck congestion. Expansion is a tried-and-tested approach that’s continued to fail in Florida. For example, when the state expanded I-75 from four to six lanes between Naples and Fort Myers, traffic doubled. And when traffic doubled, officials wanted to expand it again. Money meets a multi-million-dollar rabbit hole.

In our analysis of awarded FY 26 INFRA projects, we found that more than half of the total awarded funding went to roadway expansion projects, largely to “address congestion” and bottlenecks. We also found that state of repair was the smallest awarded category, which is a bad look for a program that claims to modernize existing assets. Previous rounds of INFRA projects allocated significantly more funding to projects that provided multimodal accommodations, expanded truck parking, and improved state of repair.

We’ve spent years calling attention to our concerns about roadway expansion as a way to address congestion: it doesn’t work. In Congestion Con, we found that although the U.S. added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 urbanized areas between 1993 and 2017, delay increased in those urbanized areas by a staggering 144 percent. This happens because of induced demand.

The problem is not that traffic engineers don’t believe in induced demand (or, at least we’d hope). The problem is that it’s hard to get funding for a large construction project that doesn’t involve adding an extra lane. Do you need to resurface your road? Implement structural repairs? It’ll probably be easier to fund those improvements alongside adding an extra lane than it is to find any federal funding set aside to repair your roadway.

You get a roadway expansion project! (If you voted for us)

We also found that awarded projects in FY 26 are sharply skewed toward states that voted for the Trump administration. Our analysis shows this pattern more clearly now than in any previous year. 

Meet the State Route 71 Gap Closure project, one of the three projects awarded to a state that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. This project will expand the current four-lane expressway between Interstate 10 and Mission Boulevard in California to an eight-lane freeway, adding one high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane and one mixed-flow lane to the existing two mixed-flow lanes in each direction for approximately two miles. Los Angeles County officials argue the project will deliver direct safety benefits by converting the congested four-lane expressway into a freeway. We’ll see how those benefits pencil out.

This is our concern with claiming a program delivers safety outcomes that it doesn’t measure while building a system that supports the opposite outcome. If we wanted a federal transportation program that truly prioritized the state of repair and safety, we would measure the impact of such projects on repair and safety. Instead, USDOT funded another roadway expansion project, seemingly implying that reducing congestion is a safety improvement. 

FY 26 INFRA awards are a small issue representative of a big problem

The issues with INFRA are notable, but not unique to this grant program or to the Trump administration. The current USDOT has only exacerbated a problem that has existed since the creation of our federal transportation program. Instead of focusing on outcomes, we focus on how much we spend and on what. We get worse roads because we prioritize bad projects that are “cost-effective” to build, and we’ve built them so often that we could do it with our eyes closed.

If we truly want a program that improves the state of repair, safety, or even freight bottlenecks, Congress needs to rethink the very structure and purpose of our transportation program. Getting a better transportation system requires a better surface transportation reauthorization bill that bucks the status quo, which has failed to deliver what Congress has promised for decades.

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Congestion is easy to hate and easy to support 

Traffic congestion is a phenomenon that all roadway users have inescapably experienced. While sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, idle cars still burn fuel, with most drivers burning  0.16 gallons an hour just idling. Traffic congestion can also have negative economic impacts. A 2025 report found that the average U.S. driver lost 49 hours to traffic congestion that year. That’s 49 hours that could have been spent with family and friends, recuperating from a long workday, or enjoying hobbies. Traffic congestion can even harm public health and increase mortality rates from vehicle emissions that hit communities near major roadways hardest. 

It’s easy to argue that congestion is a blight on society, harming communities, economies, and individuals. But how should congestion be addressed? 

For decades, the default solution has been to build more roadway capacity. The numbers show how well that has worked. From 1993 to 2017, the U.S. increased freeway lane miles by 42 percent, significantly outpacing the 32 percent population growth. But over that same period, congestion increased by 144 percent. That’s largely because these projects encourage people to drive more, demonstrated by the 57 percent increase in vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) during that same timeframe. 

That’s the paradox of induced demand, the phenomenon in which expanding roadways to improve traffic flow actually increases congestion because they encourage people to drive more than they otherwise would. That means that over time, adding one more lane encourages more driving, eventually eating away at the congestion relief it was supposed to provide. Given the way state DOTs act, you would think the opposite is true.

Sprawling development is another factor in worsening congestion. Greater distances between home, work, and other places lead to more car trips and longer trips, increasing congestion. If your home, grocery store, and children’s school are all three miles apart with poor transit options, you have no choice but to make multiple short trips by car.

Our fixation on congestion can even make it harder to build housing in the places where people could drive less. New housing in already-developed communities is often evaluated based on how much traffic it could add to nearby roads, creating another barrier to building homes in walkable and transit-served places.

Members of Congress regularly talk about the need to reduce congestion. For example, Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) has acknowledged that congestion leads to less productivity and wastes time, while Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) has advocated that the next surface transportation reauthorization reduce urban congestion. But our leaders keep voting for the same tired “solution”: increasing roadway capacity. More capacity for cars on the road will surely lead to fewer cars on the road. Right? 

Alongside the overwhelming majority of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, both of these members voted for the BUILD America 250 Act,  which would increase highway funding by $28 billion (8 percent) and decrease transit and rail funding by $43 billion (20 percent). 

Everyone hates traffic congestion, but what will it take to actually address it by creating a transportation system that improves access to work, education, healthcare, groceries, and other daily needs? Transportation policy should not focus on moving a mass of cars as fast as possible, but instead on moving people efficiently, safely, and accessibly. 

Transportation policy should focus on access

Addressing congestion means acknowledging that widening roads and adding lanes has not and will not work.  It is also an expensive strategy. The U.S. spends roughly three times as much per mile on highway construction as other upper- and middle-income countries, even as highway expansion does little to reduce congestion. 

Houston’s Katy Freeway is one cautionary tale. The highway expansion project to reduce congestion cost $2.8 billion for 23 total lanes by the time it finished in 2008. Only five years later, peak-hour travel times were longer than before the expansion. From 2011 to 2014, the morning commute increased by 25 minutes (30 percent) and the afternoon commute increased by 23 minutes (55 percent). 

The real solution to traffic congestion starts with refocusing on what a successful transportation program should look like. Some congestion is inevitable in strong economic hubs, since it reflects that people want to live in areas with active economic activity, vibrant businesses, and desirable communities. Instead of focusing on complete elimination of congestion, leaders should aim to provide safer, more accessible transportation options to reach goods, services, education, and other necessities. Unfortunately, our transportation program makes it far easier to fund another highway lane than to give people meaningful alternatives to driving.

Providing other options means building accessible communities so families can walk to school rather than dropping students off during 8 a.m. traffic. It means building protected bike lanes so people can cycle to work rather than sitting in traffic and wasting gas. It can look like investing in frequent bus service, where you can finish reading a book on your way to a doctor’s appointment, instead of focusing on not hitting the car in front of you in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Adding one more lane won’t solve congestion, but giving people more ways to get where they need to go means they don’t always have to sit in it.

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