AASHTO Journal, 02 December 2016
Top Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are urging leaders of the Appropriations Committee to allow highway and transit programs to now tap into their scheduled fiscal 2017 funding increases that Congress paid for in last year’s Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act.
The request comes as House leadership with the support of President-elect Trump plans to extend the current stopgap government funding bill, known as a continuing resolution, well past its current Dec. 9 expiration through next March 31.
“The time to provide FAST Act funding levels is now, not at the end of March 2017, when the spring construction season will already be underway across the country,” T&I ranking member Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and two other committee leaders said in a Nov. 28 letter to appropriators.
DeFazio addresses AASHTO’s 2016 Washington Briefing.They said the FAST Act allowed for a nearly $2.4 billion increase as of Oct. 1 in highway, highway safety and transit investments. They also noted that the increase was “fully paid for” but that the current stopgap simply holds transportation spending to 2016 levels, which delays state and local agencies from using the funds.
In addition, some Senate members reportedly want to extend the next CR even further, perhaps into May, because the new Senate starting in January will have much of its time taken up with hearings and votes to confirm officials who will run departments in the Trump administration.
Were such a longer delay to occur, state departments of transportation and transit agencies would be even farther into their 2017 capital project schedules before they could count on their higher federal funding levels.
DeFazio was joined in the letter by Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., who is ranking member for the highways and transit subcommittee, and by Michael Capuano, D-Mass., ranking member on the rail subcommittee. Their letter went to both the majority and minority leaders of the Appropriations Committee and its transportation panel.
In it, the T&I members said the FAST Act’s scheduled increases for this budget year included $1.85 billion more for federal highway programs in the Highway Trust Fund, $432 million for public transit and $85 million for highway safety. But they indicated the funding delays could also hamper efforts to improve rail safety by deploying crash-avoidance technology.
Besides the FAST Act’s scheduled hikes in highway and transit funds, they wrote, “the increased public transit investment includes $199 million from the Highway Trust Fund for grants to help public transit agencies and commuter railroads install positive train control (PTC) systems, which will significantly improve transportation safety.”
They also underscored the negative economic impact that would come if lawmakers don’t act to change how the stopgap measure treats Highway Trust Fund programs. “Failure to provide FAST Act funding levels under the CR will unnecessarily withhold $2.4 billion from states, local governments and public transit agencies and prevent them from making timely surface transportation investments, letting contracts and creating good-paying jobs,” the T&I members said.