As Congress continues to work on the subsequent floor transportation reauthorization, it’s essential to grasp what’s at stake, why it issues, and the way immediately’s choices will form our transportation system for years to return. On high of that, the administration’s choices to override or ignore Congress on transportation funding, rising prices, and rising applied sciences current new challenges that underscore why reauthorization is a chance to construct one thing higher—if lawmakers are keen to rethink the established order.
Each 5 years, Congress is meant to resume the roughly $77 billion federal floor transportation program, which units the insurance policies, priorities, and funding for the nation’s freeway, transit, security, and rail packages. As we anticipated, lawmakers missed the end-of-September deadline to cross a brand new reauthorization and as a substitute prolonged the present program, leaving out billions in funding for transit, rail, security, and different priorities. (Extensions are nothing new: Congress has relied on extensions a couple of third of the time since 1997.)
New to reauthorization? Learn our information to grasp what it’s and the way it works.
Quite than merely hitting pause to give attention to the midterm elections, Congress ought to deal with this extension as a chance to rethink the federal transportation program, guarantee it is going to be faithfully applied by any administration, and set up stronger accountability measures so the subsequent one can truly ship its said objectives. Whereas each reauthorization presents one other alternative to make long-overdue adjustments, a number of points make the present course of particularly pressing: This system’s failure to ship on previous objectives, an administration refusing to implement the congressionally permitted program, rising prices, and rising applied sciences that require new guidelines.
Listed below are 5 explanation why this reauthorization issues greater than ever:
1. Monitoring progress on previous objectives
The lead-up to a brand new reauthorization is a perfect time to guage whether or not this system has made progress on its said objectives of bettering security and infrastructure circumstances, decreasing congestion, and defending the atmosphere and public well being. Over the previous 30-plus years, the U.S. has spent $1.5 trillion in taxpayer {dollars} with out making any significant progress towards its objectives. And regardless of a historic enhance in funding, the 2021 Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act (IIJA) doubled down on the identical failing establishment—even earlier than the Trump administration started withholding and delaying funds Congress had already permitted for this system.
Take security, which needs to be the primary precedence in our transportation system. The U.S. faces a security disaster in contrast to that of some other peer nation, marked by a 72 p.c enhance in folks struck and killed whereas strolling on our roads between 2009 and 2024. If the U.S. had taken the identical steps as each different peer nation, 63,441 lives might have been saved over the past decade alone.
2. Defending our priorities
The federal transportation program doesn’t have sufficient funding to cowl each precedence. Its funding mannequin has been damaged for years, with person charges failing to cowl prices since 2008, requiring repeated infusions of extra taxpayer {dollars}. With funding ranges below nearer scrutiny and the Trump administration already withholding funding for public transit initiatives, transit investments face a really actual threat of cuts in the course of the subsequent reauthorization.
The administration slowed transit funding throughout its first time period, however made historical past throughout its second by not approving or advancing a single transit capital venture—together with metros, mild rail, and bus fast transit strains—throughout its preliminary yr and a half in workplace. And stalling, canceling, rescinding, or pressuring adjustments to permitted initiatives doesn’t appear more likely to cease anytime quickly. Final yr, USDOT floated ending all federal transit funding, and this summer season, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed eliminating the complete Mass Transit Account.
Transit isn’t the one precedence in danger. USDOT just lately eliminated confirmed security options similar to velocity cameras, bike lanes, and street diets from its official on-line checklist of Confirmed Security Countermeasures, making it more durable for communities to safe funding and make these enhancements. Except we intently watch the reauthorization course of, any remaining help for these interventions might disappear.
Congress can use reauthorization to make security the highest precedence by strengthening accountability and by encouraging extra clear knowledge, roadway security analysis, and evidence-backed steering for roadway design. To make transit a precedence, lawmakers ought to begin by restoring current cuts to the IIJA’s Division J advance appropriations, which slashed earlier investments in public transit and passenger rail. And whereas drafting the subsequent program, Congress may give transit the identical funding ranges and streamlined venture processes as highways.
3. Gaining leverage with the present administration
This reauthorization presents Congress a chance to make companies extra accountable to taxpayers, particularly as the present administration continues to withhold or delay funding for packages Congress has already permitted.
As outlined above, the Trump administration has refused to advance initiatives by way of packages like Capital Funding Grants. If the administration is already undermining current packages, why ought to Congress assume {that a} new invoice—even one with significant coverage enhancements—could be applied any otherwise? And why is there a rush to place collectively a brand new invoice when the final one hasn’t even been seen by way of?
Congress shouldn’t be desperate to advance the subsequent reauthorization whereas the administration retains refusing to implement the present program. That’s why we’ve really helpful extending it for a minimum of one yr. Congress ought to use that point to incorporate hermetic language within the subsequent invoice that may guarantee penalties for any administration that refuses to hold out the legislation.
4. Bettering affordability for on a regular basis Individuals
Individuals throughout the nation face an affordability disaster throughout many features of each day life. Research from 2023 present that almost half of all folks stay in economically insecure households, and one-third of middle-class Individuals can not afford fundamental requirements. Transportation is already the second-highest expense for many households, and given the rising prices of proudly owning and working a automobile, reauthorization is a vital alternative to offer much-needed aid.
In a current letter to the bipartisan leaders of 4 committees, Senate Democrats acknowledged transportation’s function in addressing this disaster: “Households deserve inexpensive choices for each day journey, together with transit, passenger rail, strolling, and biking. By creating different methods to get round, households can get monetary savings on gasoline, scale back car upkeep prices, scale back insurance coverage prices, and even keep away from buying extra automobiles altogether.”
Via reauthorization, Congress has the chance to put money into extra rail, transit, and energetic transportation choices that give folks throughout the nation cheaper methods to succeed in jobs, faculty, and different important companies. These investments might save the common American family an estimated $750 yearly in gasoline and car upkeep and $1,300 in car depreciation.
5. Charting a course for rising applied sciences
As we velocity towards one other main technological transformation with the emergence of autonomous automobiles (AVs), the federal authorities has not established significant guardrails, leaving the personal sector free to function with little oversight. Though they current a chance, particularly for non-drivers, AVs might additionally threaten security, public well being, the atmosphere, and the general functioning of our transportation system.
We’ve already outlined how the federal authorities can guarantee AVs meet their potential: require clear knowledge reporting on basic operations, any incidents, and different anomalies; audit new car fashions; enable localities to find out how AVs function on their very own streets; and penalize empty AVs that congest our roads. With out significant requirements, empty AVs have already began crowding streets and even neighborhoods throughout the nation.
To study extra about reauthorization, see our current sources on the method, together with our platform outlining the coverage proposals we’d prefer to see and explainers on the method and easy methods to interact.
