The proposal puts $150 billion in new funding toward surface transportation and transit, but won’t close the backlog in maintenance and capital costs.
Update: The Senate released the 2,700-page bipartisan infrastructure bill Sunday night. The text of the bill can be found here.
The bipartisan infrastructure package working its way through the Senate will provide nearly $150 billion in new surface transportation and transit funding, part of a broader $1.2 trillion plan the White House has called a “once-in-a-generation investment.”
While the investment would rank among the largest in transportation infrastructure in the nation’s history, experts say it will not uniformly close the gap in funding needed to address structural deficiencies.
Public transit systems, for example, have a $176 billion backlog in funding, according to a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The infrastructure package would provide $39 billion in funding for transit over five years. That’s $10 billion less for public transit than was initially proposed in the initial infrastructure framework.
Route Fifty
By Andrea Noble
JULY 30, 2021