Overthinking Transportation Funding Reform & Policy: Steelmanning Reauthorization I
Niche policy is back, baby. I'm here with a bold, if not totally impossible, pathway to sustainable funding. But first, a tease.
As my loyal readers, literally thousands of you, may have noticed, I’ve been slow to publish anything in the past few months. This is a combination of my actual job getting in the way of the deep thinking expected and required of this newsletter, my total burnout (better now), and a lack of inspiration. So here’s Part 1 of 2 or 3 where I’ll walk us through my thoughts about how we build a better transportation funding paradigm that helps to realign incentives and shift the culture slowly, but still faster than we’re begging for today.
To do this, I’m not going to write an explainer on how Federal Transportation Policy works. We’ve got those and they’re a great stand-in for a lifetime embedded in policy to smarten up. I will, however, do the following:
But first, a disclaimer about me: my political leanings and biases. I’m relatively liberal by nature, but I’m not neoliberal; I believe a strong public sector must wrestle with a demanding private sector, forever, for progress to prevail. Sometimes this means progressive policy (funding transit, somehow), and sometimes this means centrist policy (no, transit should not be blanket-free), but it never means conservative policy (defunding transit). Access to opportunity and dignity in travel guide my positions on transportation and infrastructure; these positions are not necessarily leftist, but how we express them filters through Marxist materialist reality. There will be no magical thinking in these posts.
I also believe that we must work through conditions that currently exist. The current situation (as of early/mid-November) dooms many wish lists for capital reform, but let me counterpoint. That’s all they were—wishlists. And we don’t have time for dream scenarios and solutions to no problem in particular.
Because I am driven by a deep fear of climate death and I’m faced with a conundrum: can we (the transportation-industrial complex) build our way out of certain heat death or must we (Moloch’s willing lemmings) drastically pull back our consumption and excesses? There’s a half-measure here and the right answer, as always, lives somewhere between the musts and must-nots. But infrastructure is different from General Consumption for one single reason: it is definitionally binary. You cannot build half a bridge. Rail only works as a network. Even roads and cars, impermeable, impenetrable as they are, require building vast networks of asphalt. Much of this, despite our best attempts, kills our climate. And in turn will kill us.
So we have to build—but what?
So those are my beliefs, strongly reasoned and loosely held. I’m willing to be wrong. I’m not willing to entertain hyperbole and policy positions based on wavering flair or fancy. This, and the following entries, will not attempt to scale or score a bill and I’m hopeful to keep the reactivity to a minimum as these reforms must outlast eternally shrinking political tenure and need to coincide instead with nonmagical incentive thinking.
I. We must begin to begin.
When Congress next floats a transportation bill we’ll likely have gone 5 years since the last one, a large spending package that included “reauthorization” of Federal spending on transportation and infrastructure. We colloquially refer to this bill—a law passed by both chambers and signed by President Biden—as the IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) or BIL (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). We, and I, call the process of allowing the administrative state to direct tax dollars and project specifications reauthorization because, in 2026 (or so), Congress will allow USDOT to again do this.
The general concept of transportation is not new and rather than writing new law from scratch, transportation law simply realigns and expands or contracts depending on the guts of the Bill. As it stands, when the next surface transportation bill passes, it will be the 45th version of a Federal law that ultimately funds transportation:
Since the first law—The Federal-Aid Road Act of 1916—Congress and the Executive have signed a bill to extend its tenure, on average, every 2.5 years. Since 1978, 62 years after the kick-off bill, Congress expanded the law’s purview to enshrine funding over multiple years, ostensibly to match the time and complexity of projects and extend clarity to the agencies and partners that plan and build our roads, tunnels, bridges, rail, and more.
Over a century, name changes and reshapings, implicitly and explicitly the bills have transformed from roads and highway spending to transportation spending that includes more generally surface transportation, including rail and bikes and pedestrian goals. The “2.5” is peculiar because it’s shorter than a presidential term but longer than an annual re-up—though many early bills were reintroduced every year or two.
As our surface system has gotten more complicated, both by expanding its profile and as technology has careened into a morass of capacity and maintenance tradeoffs, and as our politics/policy discussions have frayed beyond belief (truly), this next bill will lead us off a glass cliff, either way.
II. To begin we must understand administrative process
As we slip off the viscous, fragile edge we have a chance to hit the brakes and spin out.1 But we have to understand how the brakes work and how they connect to the drivetrain, to the wheels, etc. if we’re going to dismantle and remantle our transportation policy. Let’s dive in:
The bill process starts way, way, way before Congress gets involved. If there’s one takeaway from this series of articles it’s this. You have a voice in your system; people who write laws respond to constituents and constituents have power in blocs.2 With a clear approach to problems, defined in an actionable way, sub-national groups can make a serious argument for what should and should not be in a Federal transportation bill.
Beyond organizing, which is ongoing, evergreen, and exhausting, reauthorization will reconcile ideas borne from hundreds, if not thousands, of meetings with eventual recipients of public funds and organizations that fight on their behalf (AMPO, AASHTO, NLC, NACO, NCSL…every acronym under the sun) for reform and retooling of ideas that reflect modern project development and delivery.3
The process continues (in theory) as a typical bill would, through Congressional Committee origination and reconciliation over many months.4 The Senate and the House will run parallel processes outlining each’s concerns and will eventually bring a single reauthorization bill and corresponding appropriations bill to fund it to the President to sign (or not). That’s it, folks. That’s how babies are made.
As a very serious aside, it’s important to understand the origins of the big ideas and who gets to say which about what. Any member of either house is free to weigh in and submit their own ideas to these committees, but eventually, it’s the responsibility of these committees to write the damn bill. Both chambers are organized into committees and subcommittees (beyond transportation, even)5, which oversee different factions of the DOT (for now). The table below clarifies the relationship between Senate/House committee assignments and their oversight provision:
A few things you’ll notice: there is not always a 1-to-1 relationship and many committees (and subcommittees) might share oversight, which means they have to get their house in order (or not) to put forth a clear vision for reauthorization—and more often than not how and why this happens is based on personal relationships AND who occupies what seat—the assigned chair (by House/Senate leadership) of each of these committees is a launch pad and/or a roadblock.6 There are infinite ways that this can go wrong, but only a few that it can go right.
This is why your voice is essential. It (or your collective voices) may not fully override a stupid-off because of something so unbelievably innocuous7, but there’s at least hope that a return to meeting civility might at least reflect the will of an organized bloc of voters, if not the will of the people.
III. The neverending march toward entropy and the heat death of the universe.
This is a lengthy, but non unending process: there are key dates that matter and ensuring that deadlines exist allows people to organize and coalesce around a project.
Two important dates to keep in mind: the IIJA’s authority8 expires September 30, 2026 and the heat death of the universe, when the last atom stops shivering and Congestion Pricing still is on pause, is October 1, 2026.
I would almost guarantee that Congress does not pass (and the President does not sign) the next reauthorization before that deadline; not doing so is not an option because this part of the government would come to screeching halt. So what do we do? Instead, as apathy outweighs entropy, Congress will pass a bandage bill that continues, on deadline, current spending levels until such a time when a bill can be passed, if Congress does that still.9 It’s called a Continuing Resolution and I bet there will be many of them before we move onto the next transportation Federal-Aid bill’s iteration.
Friends, readers: this baseline is essential to our broader understanding of how we can move the needle. If we don’t understand the process we can’t hope to affect to change it with our Big Ideas.10
Next time: a dive into the best and most underwhelming parts of Federal transportation policy since 1987.
This will be my only automobile metaphor.
This is why local BIDs, community, and religious groups, “friends of…” organizations, and on and on exist and why people who run for office and their staffs are obsessed with local organizing. I think we also have a problem where that word (like gentrification) has lost all meaning. What does it mean to organize?
I wish I could DFW footnote-a-footnote but also: I hate the phrase, “Do your own research,” and any iteration of it. Research is a very specific process that requires deep care and a transparent process. What we mean when we say “do research” is “Google it.” But that’s not even enough, right? Adults, many with advanced degrees, cannot distinguish between propaganda and reason, and fact from opinion. College students can’t write a lick; middle schoolers can’t read. We’re so f*cked. Okay, go back to the text.
Or not.
I am greatly simplifying this process. It can take many, many rounds of revisions, amendments, remands back to committee, and much more. This also happens in parallel with other appropriations/authorization legislation. There is continued engagement with stakeholders. This engagement radically refocuses as it appears to careen toward reconciliation.
I know! As if!
A Committee Chair is assigned by the majority party and the ranking member is a shadow chair assigned by the minority party. The Chair sets the legislative agenda and directs hearings to flesh out priorities. They can, in theory and practice, call zero hearings and the bill can simply never leave committee and can never see the floor. Reauthorization could die because one House member from *not your state* hates buses, or more specifically, the people who ride them. Our two-party system is stupid.
Who did what??? to whom, for example. Let’s keep it above board, but remember people are petty and instinctual and aggrieved.
This is why we call it reauthorization, dear readers.
Or if Congress still exists. 😵💫
Shout out to my fav BTPB for the feedback.