Trump Administration Releases Surface Transportation Reauthorization Priorities

What happened: Just one year since U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Secretary Sean Duffy kicked off the Trump administration’s push for a new surface transportation bill, Duffy, July 22, sent a letter to congressional committee leadership outlining administration priorities to be considered.

What they’re proposing: DOT spent months collecting and deliberating thousands of proposals, including from ARTBA, for inclusion, ultimately settling on 12 pages of suggestions, including calling on Congress to:

• End funding for advanced appropriations in a surface bill extension. This would equate to a $9.5 billion cut in highway investment; a $4 billion cut for public transit; and a $13 billion cut for rail programs.
• Eliminate dedicated mass transit funding via the Highway Trust Fund. This idea has been proposed and rejected in previous Congresses and was dismissed by House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) earlier this year.
• New discretionary grant program to complete unfinished portions of the Interstate Highway System and expand it to three lanes in each direction.
• New freight bottleneck relief discretionary grant program to tackle congestion in nationally significant bottlenecks.
• Increase the Private Activity Bond cap, a popular tool used in many public-private partnership and TIFIA projects.
• A new competitive grant program to support digital infrastructure.

What’s next: With the House T&I Committee’s passage of the BUILD America 250 Act and work well underway in the Senate, it’s unclear the extent to which these priorities will be considered. ARTBA remains focused on advocating for full-funding of all programs at FY 2026 levels in any extension of programs or appropriations and opposes any effort to eliminate the mass transit account of the HTF.