House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) was joined by his subcommittee chairs and a group of other leading Republican committee members at a briefing July 7 to present the outline for a surface transportation reauthorization proposal. Chairman Mica said the actual bill language will be released soon, pending discussions between his staff and democratic committee staff, and that a hearing may be held on the bill as early as Tuesday, July 12. Beyond that, no timeline was spelled out.
Mica said that he is constrained by the rules of the House to limit authorized funding to levels that can be supported by Highway Trust Fund revenue. He also said that he and other committee members, will be sending a letter to the Ways and Means Committee, which has responsibility for raising the needed revenue, with their ideas about how to address the revenue needs. Mica said the main thrust of his legislation is doing more with less. He intends to reform and consolidate the current program and streamline the project approval process to speed projects moving forward.
While AGC is concerned with the level of funding outlined by Chairman Mica, many of the recommendations we provided to the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee are included in the proposal, including programmatic reform, environmental streamlining, and expedited project delivery. A copy of AGC’s statement on the proposal can be found here.
The outline of the proposal follows:
Funding
- Authorizes $230 billion of funding over six years for the highway, transit and safety programs.
- Annual funding will be set at levels that current Highway Trust Fund revenue will support (30-35 percent below current funding level).
- Capitalization funding for the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) will be increased to $1 billion per year.
- States would be allowed to toll new capacity on interstates (existing lanes would remain toll free).
- States could use up to 15 percent of their federal formula funds to capitalize State Infrastructure Banks (up from the current 10 percent).
- Improvements would be made in the Rail Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) Program to expedite approval of loans and loan guarantees.
- Condenses final environmental impact statement.
- Provides single environmental decision review process.
- Excludes projects in existing right of way from environmental review.
- Allows for earlier right of way acquisition.
- Encourages corridor preservation.
- Allows for detailed project design prior to final environmental approval.
- Consolidates or eliminates 40 programs and funding categories.
- More than 90 percent of Federal-aid Highway funds will be distributed through formula giving States
- More flexibility in determining spending priority decisions.
- More than half of the Federal-aid Highway funding is directed to funding projects that are part of the National Highway System.
- Encourages and rewards public-private partnerships for building new rail transit systems.
- Streamlines the New Starts and Small Starts competitive grant program, cutting project development time in half.
- Creates incentives for higher ridership by incorporating performance factors in funding apportionment formulas.