The BUILD America 250 Act extends a failing status quo

After the May 17 release of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s five-year transportation reauthorization proposal—the BUILD America 250 Act—ahead of a potential committee markup, Steve Davis, Director of Transportation for America, offered this statement:

While others may focus on the marginal improvements or negative changes in this transportation reauthorization proposal, it is still best understood as an extension of the status quo, which is failing to deliver on our core priorities of safety, state of repair, and making substantial investments beyond new highways. As with the IIJA before it, the BUILD America 250 Act fails to orient this broken program toward the measurable outcomes that are promised over and over to the American taxpayer. If Congress continues to pursue the same approach, why would we expect different results?

Considering the current administration’s ongoing efforts to undermine and ignore the last bipartisan infrastructure law, why should these negotiators (or the public) have any confidence that this bipartisan deal won’t meet the same fate? Consider the dissonance of celebrating any positive changes in the program for building or expanding transit service at the same time that the Trump administration has failed to advance a single new transit project since taking office. The House T&I Committee has failed to recognize that this administration is not implementing the current law as intended and seems poised to ignore whatever they pass.

We thank the committee for their work, but before any planned markup, we challenge them to dream bigger than re-upping an approach that has failed to move the needle on what matters to Americans: giving them freedom from high gas prices by investing in transit and more efficient, affordable vehicles, taking decisive action to end the preventable crisis of traffic fatalities, and responding to the overwhelming popular support for prioritizing repair and maintenance ahead of costly road expansions.

As written, this proposal fails to deliver on its promise of a transportation system that safely, affordably, and reliably connects Americans to where they need to go—and for that reason, we cannot support it.