While Congress has been focused on responding to COVID-19, the constant debate about funding priorities related to the pandemic has resulted in little to no action on the nation’s transportation funding. The FAST Act, the 2015 legislation that was the first federal law in over a decade to provide long-term funding for surface transportation infrastructure planning and investment, with $305 billion in federal spending authorization, is set to expire on September 30. Unless Congress authorizes (and the President approves) a continuing resolution (CR) to extend funding beyond the end of September, federal funding for highway and other transportation projects will grind to a halt, and federal workers who support transportation would stop their activities.
This is certainly not the first time Congress has worked up to a deadline to get something done, but the current state of gridlock in Washington gives many advocates cause for concern that this is a deadline that may be missed.
While the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee did introduce, mark-up (Congress-speak for make changes) and vote out of Committee a new infrastructure bill last summer (S.2302, America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019 - ATIA), that bill has not seen any additional action in more than a year.
Earlier this summer, the House of Representatives passed their own infrastructure bill, H.R. 2, Moving Forward Act. That bill, passed largely along party lines, would provide $1.5 trillion in infrastructure spending, and not just for transportation projects. While it would sharply increase spending on highway and transit projects, the bill directs billions of dollars into water projects, affordable housing, broadband infrastructure, as well as upgrades to schools, hospitals and capital projects for the U.S. Postal Service.
While champions of the bill say that it will go further than any legislation in a generation to address the nation’s aging infrastructure in a sustainable way, opponents of the bill object to the bills emphasis on environmental issues such as reducing carbon pollution. And while the White House indicated that they support some of the bill’s investments in transportation and broadband, the Senate leaders slammed the bill as “political theater” and pointless nonsense, increasing the likelihood that no deal can be reached by the end of September.
Failure to reach a deal on federal infrastructure funding will place a greater burden on state transportation funding for everything from highway and bridge funding to public transportation, at a time when both the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) and local public transit agencies are still reeling from the coronavirus impacts on the state economy.
While final numbers have not been published, ODOT has warned that expected increases in revenue resulting from the increase in the Motor Fuel Tax (MFT) last year will not happen due to the many work-from-home orders issues earlier in the year and most Ohioans still not traveling nearly as much as they have been for the past five months.
Transit agencies meanwhile, are still adapting to the COVID-imposed reality, with some services continuing to operate without fares, and all systems having to operate systems at reduced capacity in order to promote social distancing.
It is still possible that a compromise CR could be passed by the end of September, but with lawmakers poised to break for recess, the window of opportunity to get to a deal is closing rapidly.