Transportation advocates are exhaling after the passage of a five-year, $305 billion highway bill by lawmakers on Thursday.
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The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act was approved 359 to 65 in the House and 83 to 16 in the Senate.
A long-term transportation funding bill has passed the U.S. Senate, and is now on President Obama’s desk awaiting his signature.
The bill calls for spending approximately USD205 billion on highways and USD48 billion on transit projects and includes the reauthorization of the controversial Export-Import Bank’s charter.
Graves helped to complete negotiations on the bill, which included many provisions created to address Louisiana’s traffic problems. “Democrats have long called for an end to Republicans’ obstruction on these issues and have sought to move past the needless cycle of short-sighted fixes to our transportation system”.
Still, it’s praised by industry and public officials as a major accomplishment for ending the last-minute, short-term extensions that have kept the federal Highway Trust Fund on the edge of insolvency for much of the past eight years.
The 1,300-page bill, paid for with gas tax revenue and a package of $70 billion in offsets from other areas of the federal budget, represents the first multiyear highway funding measure to be approved by lawmakers in a decade.
The new act drew accolades from Republicans for providing $280 billion in funding for infrastructure projects from the Highway Trust Fund without increasing the federal gasoline tax. “Over the next five years, the hundreds of billions of dollars in federal highway and transit investment guaranteed in the bill will stimulate more than $13 billion in equipment sales, rental and maintenance activity and support more than 4,000 dealership jobs each year”.
The bill includes various funding sources, including a transfer from the Federal Reserve’s surplus funds and an increase in customs fees.
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The trucking industry was able to persuade lawmakers to order the government to remove trucking company safety scores from a public website despite opposition from safety advocates. It provides $200 million to help passenger railroads install positive train control technology that accident investigators said could have prevented the derailment had it been in operation. The Federal Transit Administration is required to consider whether local transit agencies provide bathroom breaks and access to bathrooms for bus drivers when evaluating the safety of the agencies.
