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.

The post Five reasons why transportation reauthorization matters in 2026  appeared first on Transportation For America.

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.

The post The interstate system was completed in 1992, but USDOT wants to pour billions of your dollars into “completing” it again appeared first on Transportation For America.

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.

The post FY 26 INFRA awards are another reminder that our federal transportation program centers roadway expansion appeared first on Transportation For America.

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.

The post Everyone hates congestion. So why do we keep making it worse? appeared first on Transportation For America.

Once again, Congress is prioritizing highway funding at the expense of everything else—even though this approach undermines our safety, maintenance, and transit goals.

This failure comes at the expense of communities across the country that rely on these investments for safer streets, reliable transit, and better transportation options. According to APTA, the loss of this funding will result in a 20% cut to public transit investment and an over 80% cut to passenger rail funding.

Road and bridge repair will take a hit, too. Despite an annual maintenance backlog of over $40 billion, the Union of Concerned Scientists says bridge funding will be cut significantly, and nothing has changed to prevent states from prioritizing costly expansions over roadway maintenance.

This funding lapse is negligent. In the lame duck, Congress should restore this funding to support rural transit, passenger rail, safer streets, and road and bridge repairs.

But this is also a symptom of a larger problem: We continue to prioritize highway expansion at the expense of everything else. We should learn from today. The next transportation bill should make repair, safety, transit, and passenger rail priorities, and not an afterthought.

The post Billions for transit, safety, and repair will expire tonight while highway funding continues appeared first on Transportation For America.

The 2024 total of 7,080 people struck and killed while walking was higher than every year from 1982 to2020. Despite recent small year-over-year decreases, the overall trend line since 2009 is a steady upward arrow. As Dangerous by Design 2026 shows, this crisis has unfolded in part because our nation’s streets are dangerous by design, built primarily to move cars quickly at the expense of keeping everyone safe. 

The crisis won’t end until those in power—including members of Congress—upend that paradigm and refuse to accept business as usual. And they are in luck—the federal transportation program that they oversee expires at the end of this year, and the next Congress will be tasked with replacing it with a new five-year law.

The role of Congress

Congress writes the laws that govern every federal dollar that states receive. But its members have repeatedly neglected to require agencies receiving the windfall of taxpayer dollars to measurably improve transportation safety. Congress has decided that states don’t need to be held accountable for producing such terrible safety “results” that lag far behind those of almost the entire developed world. Congress has enshrined our current federal approach to safety in law, an approach largely defined by small, difficult-to-access, and competitive safety programs that can’t possibly fix the problems perpetuated by the billions that are building a network of roadways that are dangerous by design. 

If members of Congress actually want different results than those in the chart above, they should use their legislative authority only to support transportation legislation that rewards good performance and refuse to pass laws that impose no penalties for continued poor safety performance. More on that in a minute.

We’re also dealing with an administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) that has sought to undercut existing safety efforts by removing data-backed solutions from its websites, rescinding previously awarded grants to local communities, revising its roadway safety strategy to focus on nonsense like “reducing congestion,” and weaponizing the incredibly useful Safe Streets for All program to focus on things other than proven safety strategies. If USDOT is going to keep failing to take safety seriously, Congress should step up its active oversight of USDOT’s implementation of the law that Congress passed in 2021. 

Members of Congress also have a powerful bully pulpit and can take influential stands on proposed policy changes or projects to prioritize safety above all else. They can: 

• Go to bat for the local street or transportation department that is improving safety by changing existing street designs—whether temporarily or permanently. 
• Back their local elected leaders when they make changes that prioritize safety for everyone, even when those changes make a small minority of people upset. 
• Help defend the use of proven, data-backed countermeasures in state or local street design to produce slower, safer streets. 
• Show up in local communities by participating in Week Without Driving or World Day of Remembrance events, joining local walk audits, and touring some of the changes worth celebrating. 
• Keep the spotlight on an issue that rarely gets enough attention. And back in D.C., they can create consequences for those who continue to ignore safety and incentives for those who lead. 

Here are five other specific actions Congress can take. Keeping in mind that 25 percent of all pedestrian fatalities occurred in just 50 (11 percent) of congressional districts, those members should be scrambling to lead the way on every single one of these actions.

1. Direct the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to require states and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to have goals that progressively decrease roadway fatalities: Title 23 Section 148(c)(2)(C) requires states to adopt performance goals for safety, and states will set fatality goals for increasing roadway deaths, which is antithetical to the purpose of performance targets.
2. Require grantees to improve roadway safety: Until we solve the pedestrian safety crisis, safety with accountability should be the top priority on all projects built with federal funds. 
3. Conduct research and provide evidence-backed guidance for roadway design: This includes updating guidance to protect pedestrians, like making it easier to set context-sensitive speed limits and requiring that the posted speed and design speed be the same. 
4. Support better Complete Streets policies: Create better Federal policy that gives Complete Streets power and flexibility to localities, not to the United States Department of Transportation.
5. Give professionals the freedom to experiment: Localities know their transportation systems best. The federal government should give communities the flexibility and resources to build safety projects.

What the House’s BUILD America 250 Act did and did not do

The House of Representatives’ key transportation committee did advance a five-year proposal to reauthorize the federal transportation program this summer, though the House is unlikely to take up the BUILD America 250 Act (BUILD Act) before this Congress is officially dismissed in January. But unfortunately, the BUILD Act would do nothing to make improving safety a centerpiece priority across the entire program, and would do very little to reverse the U.S.’s roadway safety crisis. 

To put a finer point on it, see that list of five actions above? The BUILD Act wouldn’t move any of those forward. When the next Congress takes this work back up in 2027, they should throw the BUILD Act in the trash and start fresh. 

Points #1 and #2 above should be the bare minimum for the next reauthorization: Require states and MPOs to actually set goals to improve safety outcomes, and require them to get there with real penalties if they fail. (And provide rewards for those that make progress!)  If Congress managed to do those two things, it would move the needle in a real way. Congress needs to reorient the federal transportation program around safety above all else and prioritize the safety of the most vulnerable people. 

If anything, the BUILD Act would make our safety problems worse by supercharging highway spending and giving states even more flexibility in how they spend funds. This is precisely how we got into this mess in the first place: telling states that they have to prioritize safety but also congestion reduction, vehicle throughput, freight movement, economic development, infrastructure condition, and scores of other “top priorities.” When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

The question before the next (120th) Congress now is whether the BUILD Act is the best possible starting point for a new reauthorization proposal, or whether lawmakers should start from scratch to produce something better.  Tell Congress it’s time to put people’s safety first.

One thing is for certain: If you do what you’ve always done, you’re gonna get what you always get. So if members of Congress are interested in getting something different, they will need to do something different. That means leaving the BUILD Act in the past and rethinking the entire program that has produced so much death and so many injuries by design over the years. 

The post What should Congress do to stop the scourge of pedestrian death? appeared first on Transportation For America.

We’ll kick things off with keynote speaker Andrew Miller, co-author of The End of Driving, who has spent his career working at the intersection of transportation, technology, and cities. He’ll open the day with a conversation about the role automated vehicles could play in the future of how we get around—and where technology alone won’t solve our transportation challenges.

The post TransportationCamp DC 2027 Tickets appeared first on Transportation For America.

A year ago today, huge crowds poured onto the platforms at every stop along Amtrak’s Mardi Gras service to celebrate its inaugural ride. This week, the service is set to hit 150,000 riders—more than double the original projections for its first year.

Along with easier travel and improved access across Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, the line has brought economic benefits on and off the train for individuals and their communities. For Americans facing rising oil prices and a broader cost-of-living crisis, the $35 average fare for the Mardi Gras service can serve as a convenient and affordable alternative.

Fares produced $5.2 million in ticket revenue in the first year of the Mardi Gras service. And thousands of responses from Amtrak’s Customer Satisfaction Survey show that customer satisfaction is 96 percent when trains run on time, and stays above 82 percent even when there are delays outside Amtrak’s control—perhaps helped by a glass of prosecco, one of the train’s best-selling items. 

David Clark, president and CEO of Visit Mobile and Southern Rail Commissioner, said the Mardi Gras has proven that any initial concerns about potentially delayed trains or poor performance that could drive down ridership were wrong. The Mardi Gras momentum seems to only be growing, with the line celebrating serving 100,000 riders in just eight months of service this April. And its high ridership doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

“The naysayers would say when we get another few months down the road, [ridership is] going to cool off, because the only reason [for strong numbers] right now is that it’s new,” Clark said. “Now we’re a year later, and it’s still very busy, every route, every day.”

More visitors mean more business

Off the train, communities between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, are seeing economic returns from the service. In addition to providing an alternative for regular commuters, places along the route have seen more tourists—and with them, more business.

Walt Leger, president and CEO of New Orleans & Company, the city’s tourism marketing agency, credited the line with bringing thousands of new visitors to New Orleans over the past year—Amtrak’s own count reports that 68,000 riders reached the city using the service—many of whom came from Mobile and other communities across the Mississippi Gulf Coast. 

New Orleans’ economy depends on connectivity, Leger said, but the new line is not just a win for his city. 

“The easier that we can make it for people to come into and connect out of our community, especially throughout the Gulf Coast, makes our whole region more competitive and creates economic opportunity for businesses and for people who live in our communities,” Leger said.

Leger said Mobile saw a nearly 18 percent increase in visitors—about 30,000 more people—and that this wasn’t the biggest increase in visitors among stops. Amtrak’s data reports that over the past year, more than 47,000 riders arrived in Mobile; about 12,000 arrived in Biloxi, Mississippi; nearly 8,000 arrived in Gulfport and Bay St. Louis, both in Mississippi; and almost 4,500 people got off the train in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Kay Kell, a longtime member of the Southern Rail Commission, spoke about renewed economic opportunity in Bay St. Louis, especially in its downtown depot district that once saw vacancies but is now full. New restaurants and even art galleries are seeing more business. 

“A lot of people had never heard of Bay St. Louis,” Kell said. “But we were the first stop, so [Mardi Gras passengers] got off in the beginning, and it’s kind of put us on the map.” 

Clark reported similar growth in Mobile, talking about restaurateurs who now see crowded lunch counters after the train comes into town at 11:30 a.m., and a local tour lead told him last month they’re sold out every weekend through October—largely due to business from Amtrak. 

Not just economic benefits

Both Bay St. Louis and Mobile greet each train and help passengers reach hotels and other nearby destinations. This makes it even easier for visitors—from across the region and the world—to experience the unique culture of the Gulf Coast. Ultimately, the value of bringing passenger rail back to the Gulf Coast isn’t just economic, but also cultural.

“It’s just a new way to travel,” Clark said. “There’s been a rebirth of an experience that’s been missing for a long time.”

The Mardi Gras is the latest example underscoring the broad benefits of investing in passenger rail and public transit down to the most local levels. As Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker put it at the time, “We couldn’t have done it without state, local, and federal officials—and ultimately, a realization that this was good for taxpayers and good for the economy.”

As Congress turns to the next surface transportation reauthorization, it should preserve existing national and regional passenger rail networks and improve service by investing in rail infrastructure, ensuring on-time service, and expanding access to operating funds for long-term support.

The post One year in, the Mardi Gras rail line is bringing broader benefits to the Gulf Coast region appeared first on Transportation For America.

Last year, more than 400 attendees joined us for 50 original sessions, with record numbers of TCamp first-timers and session proposals. We can’t wait to build on that momentum and make TransportationCamp DC 2027 even better.

Registration opens next month. Join the T4America email list to be the first to know when registration goes live and secure your spot!

Interested in sponsoring? Check out our sponsorship opportunities here.

About TransportationCamp DC

TransportationCamp DC is where transportation enthusiasts get together to share their ideas and map out new possibilities. As cities across the country work to reconnect communities divided by harmful infrastructure, pedestrian fatalities continue to rise, and new technology presents opportunities and challenges for the future of transportation, TransportationCamp is as important as ever.

An annual “unconference,” TransportationCamp is a time for advocates, practitioners, business leaders, professionals, students, and anyone else who might call themselves a “transportation nerd” to gather, share their ideas and perspectives, and take stock of where we’re going and how we got here.

At TransportationCamp, attendees steer the conversation by submitting, voting on, and facilitating breakout sessions on topics of their choice. Whether you’re interested in methods to reduce transportation emissions, bridge divides, or make our streets safer for all, join TransportationCamp to be part of the conversation!

Frequently asked questions about TransportationCamp DC

1. Why is it called an unconference? At TransportationCamp, every attendee has the opportunity to lead the conversation. Attendees submit topics for 50-minute breakout sessions and get to vote on what they want to discuss in sessions throughout the day, giving participants the power to create the experience they want to have.

2. Who should come to TCamp? Everyone! Advocates, practitioners, Complete Streets Champions, politicians, business leaders, and students are all welcome to join and learn from each other.

3. How do I submit sessions? Attendees will submit their session proposals the morning of Camp and have the opportunity to vote on what they would like to discuss. Come with your idea ready to go.

4. What do I need to know about leading a session? Sessions are fairly informal and often feel more like a conversation, so we recommend a casual, engaging, and inclusive approach. Each breakout room will have a projector and a connection to easily hook up your laptop and share your presentation. You can present on your own, but you can also propose something a little more assembled in advance, such as a panel with 2-3 speakers, potentially developed in partnership with a few other individuals or organizations.

5. What’s the schedule like? Expect a full day from 9-5. The room should open around 8:30 for networking and to propose breakout sessions until about 9:45 a.m. There’s a keynote (see speaker above) around 10 am, and then starting at 11, there are five concurrent 50-minute breakout periods across 9-10 different rooms, with a break for lunch after period 2. There’s typically a closing reception or happy hour (6 p.m. until) somewhere nearby in the District.

The post It’s official: TransportationCamp DC returns on Saturday, January 9th, 2027 appeared first on Transportation For America.

For decades now, Congress has provided funding each year—more than $4.2 billion per year during each year of the IIJA—to cover half or less of the costs of the capital improvements involved in building new transit service or dramatically improving or expanding existing service in communities across the country, with locals picking up the larger share of the tab. If your community is building a new light rail line, bus rapid transit expansion, or commuter rail, they have likely tapped this program. But since taking office, the administration has held the program hostage, failing to sign a grant agreement for a single one of the transit projects currently in the development process. 

Earlier this week, the New York Times took note and spoke to T4America and others about this unprecedented slowdown: (Gift link, we hope)

But since President Trump returned to office, the Federal Transit Administration has not signed a single new agreement under the program, known as Capital Investment Grants. Large projects ready to enter the final phase of the program’s yearslong pipeline have stalled there. The administration also tried halting payments to the New York and Chicago projects, forcing courts to intervene. …“It’s hard to look at the last year and see anything other than a deliberate slowdown of these grants,” said Steve Davis, director of the advocacy group Transportation for America.

While Trump’s USDOT slowed down transit grants during his first term, a new wrinkle this time has been the Office of Management and Budget’s move to firewall the transit capital funds provided by Congress over the last two years and not “apportioning” them to USDOT so they can be spent.  “More than $7 billion hasn’t been obligated to any project,” wrote Emily Badger and Alicia Parlapiano for the Times. More than $5 billion of that total has been earmarked for next fiscal year, though that’s still no guarantee it would get spent—it would still have to be apportioned to USDOT once October 1 gets here.

The long and short of this move is that, even if USDOT wanted to sign a grant agreement for one of these transit projects and get it moving tomorrow, there’s a chance that they wouldn’t be able to because OMB is holding onto the money—USDOT simply doesn’t have the money in hand. Transit expert (and T4America alum) Sarah Kline told the Times just how shocking this new move is: “I have never seen a situation where the F.T.A. says, ‘Oh, we don’t need $5 billion because we’re not going to have projects ready for that.”

What’s the end goal here? 

A statement from FTA had the expected platitudes about these projects just working their way through the federal pipeline before being ready to sign grant agreements. But you don’t have to squint too hard to see the endgame: 

The first Trump administration proposed ending the program, and just last year, USDOT floated a proposal to end all federal funding for transit—which was quickly shot down by the top Republican on transportation in the House, who said “I’m just not interested.” And then just last week, USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to the Senate to put the administration’s transportation priorities to paper for a long-term replacement for the IIJA. Take a wild guess on one of their top priorities:

We propose eliminating the Mass Transit Account and consolidating all Federal fuel tax revenues into the Highway Account. This will re-establish a direct user-pays model and address the Fund’s looming structural deficit.

Considering all these data points, it’s not too hard to believe that they would like for Congress to end this program and shift the $2-4 billion in annual transit capital spending over to the highway side to “advance the president’s vision for a bold transportation future,” whatever that entails.

As we’ve noted before, if your primary goal is shoring up the Highway Trust Fund by eliminating all other spending in the federal program, you will completely erode the broad, bipartisan coalition required to pass a long-term transportation law. They could propose ending everything else other than highway formula programs, and you’d still need billions in deficit spending to cover a highway program that still wouldn’t be paying for itself.  Why support a deal when only the priorities of a small minority are included? And make no mistake, the support for transit is bipartisan. 

Whatever the reason these transit projects are frozen, the unfortunate reality is that it’s the people in local communities who are paying and will continue to pay the price:

And any unspent grant money is something tangible not built — a subway station without elevators for accessibility, a bus line without dedicated lanes for faster travel, a commuter rail that can’t carry enough trains.

H/t to Emily Badger and the New York Times for their work to spotlight this important story.

The post New York Times shines a spotlight on Trump’s transit intransigence appeared first on Transportation For America.