The draft legislation includes new grant funding for areas like electric vehicle infrastructure and rural projects. It comes as the White House struggles to win over Republican support for a much broader infrastructure package.
Lawmakers on a Senate committee that deals with infrastructure on Saturday released a bipartisan, $303.5 billion draft proposal to reauthorize the main federal program that provides funding for highways, roads and bridges.
In addition to supplying bedrock federal dollars for roads, the legislation would provide new grant funding in a number of areas—including for electric vehicle infrastructure, efforts to make the nation’s infrastructure more “resilient” to extreme weather, climate change and natural disasters, and for projects in rural regions.
“Not only will this comprehensive, bipartisan legislation help us rebuild and repair America’s surface transportation system, but it will also help us build new transportation infrastructure,” said U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, of West Virginia, who is the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Route Fifty
by Bill Lucia
MAY 22, 2021