Congress's Transportation Reauthorization Bill Would Drastically Underfund Transit and Rail Projects
Congress is currently considering legislation called the BUILD America 250 Act (PDF), which would reauthorize federal funding for the nation’s transportation systems for the next five years. The bill’s bipartisan sponsors argue that it would be “the most important surface transportation bill in decades.”
Yet if passed, BUILD America 250 would dramatically reduce federal support for new transit and intercity rail lines compared with the previous five-year federal transportation law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
Adjusted for inflation, the bill would reduce potential overall transit funding by 15 percent compared with IIJA, including by making a 45 percent cut to programs designed to fund new transit and rail projects. Instead, the bill would direct a much greater share of funding to highways while eliminating all guaranteed funding for new rail or transit projects.
Already, the House of Representative’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has approved the legislative proposal, which doubles down on automobile infrastructure at a time when households are paying high gas prices. The bill still needs approval from the full House and Senate, as well as the president’s signature. It will also likely require funding through the appropriations process to cover its costs, which could take months or years. For now, the legislative proposal would entail a fundamental shift in federal infrastructure funding—rolling back progress toward improving mobility and potentially deepening historic harms. What’s more, these changes would continue until at least fiscal year 2031.
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/congresss-transportation-reauthorization-bill-would-drastically-underfund-transit-and
Record high gas prices and these assholes want us to drive more.