Senate Hearing Focuses on 2021 Infrastructure Law Implementation

What happened: Gary Johnson, vice president of California-based Granite Construction Inc., testified before the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee today about what is and isn’t working with current federal transportation policy.

Why it matters: “The 2021 federal infrastructure funding law was a much-needed course correction after years of status quo investment, but delivering the surface transportation network that our nation deserves is not just a five-year endeavor,” Johnson told the committee on behalf of the ARTBA co-chaired Transportation Construction Coalition (TCC).  Johnson highlighted three areas for potential policy improvements in the next reauthorization bill:

• Preserve and grow current highway and public transportation investment levels with user fee revenues that reflect all vehicles on the road.
• Ensure Buy America provisions, which the TCC fully supports, do not impede project delivery by preserving the exemption for aggregates and paving materials, and by requiring federal agencies to create a public database of commercially available, compliant materials.
• Protect the men and women who make our mobility possible by incentivizing states to implement stricter work zone safety measures such as automated speed enforcement.

What’s next: Current highway and transit spending authority is up for renewal by Oct. 1, 2026, and both the House and Senate have been holding hearings on the matter.  ARTBA’s 27-member Reauthorization Task Force is also working to identify consensus industry policy recommendations for the next bill—a report is due this spring.