U.S. Senate Passes Two-Year Transportation Funding Bill

On Wednesday, March 14th, the U.S. Senate passed S. 1813, also known as the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). The bill written by U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and James Inhofe (R-OK), and passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 74-22. MAP-21 would spend $109 billion over two years to fund the nation's highway and transit systems. This amount is equal to current transportation funding levels plus inflation. Some other major provisions of the bill include:

- Consolidates the number of federal transportation programs from about 90 down to less than 30, to focus resources on key national goals and reduce duplicative programs
- Eliminates earmarks
- Improves the existing Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program (CMAQ) by including particulate matter as a pollutant and requiring that large metropolitan areas develop a performance plan to ensure that CMAQ funds are being used to improve air quality and congestion in those regions
- Maintains the Transportation Enhancements (TE) program and offers more flexibility to states who use these funds
- Creates the National Freight Network Program, which consolidates existing programs into a focused freight program that provides funds to states by formula for projects to improve regional and national freight movements on highways, including intermodal freight connectors
- Modifies Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Program (TIFIA) by increasing funding for the program to $1 billion per year, increasing the maximum share of project costs from 33% to 49%, and setting aside funding for projects in rural areas on more favorable terms
- Extension of the federal transit benefit parity, which expired at the end of 2011, allowing transit users a tax-free deduction of up to $240 from their paychecks for expenses incurred traveling to work
- Establishes performance measures that will hold states and metropolitan organizations accountable for improving the conditions and performance of their transportation assets

For further information on MAP-21, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has put together an overview the bill's various programs, linked here

AASHTO Executive Director John Horsley hailed the passage of MAP-21, and noted that, "Members of the U.S. Senate are to be commended for their strong, bipartisan passage of a multi-year, $109 billion surface transportation reauthorization bill that sustains highway and transit funding at current levels."

MAP-21 now moves on to the U.S. House of Repesentatives, where recent efforts to pass a 5-year transportation authorization bill have fallen apart.

Posted in: funding,policy,Ryan Jeroski,transit