Yesterday, the House leadership in Congress announced a new “Moving Forward” framework for a $760 billion infrastructure bill. The plan, over the next five years, would rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, transit systems, railways, airports, ports, inland waterways, wastewater and drinking water systems, brownfields, and broadband. The National League of Cities has been calling on
The last federal transportation bill, the Fixing Americas Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2016, will expire in September of 2020. It brought cities year over year increases in federal transportation block grant funding, and now, a brand new transportation bill must be stitched together by Congress. Cities need this new legislation to set the course
The National League of Cities (NLC) is pleased to support the Transportation Alternatives Enhancements Act (S. 1098) introduced by Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Roger Wicker (R-MS). This bipartisan bill supports and improves the highly successful Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP). Run by the U.S. Department of Transportation, TAP is a collaborative federal transportation program that leverages
On Wednesday, March 13th, Mayor Ron Nirenberg of San Antonio, Texas testified before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on behalf of NLC. The following is a selected set of excerpts from the Mayor’s testimony at the infrastructure briefing: “Aligning Federal Surface Transportation Policy to Meet 21st Century Needs”. The briefing took place during
This is a guest post by Veronica Vanterpool, deputy director of The Vision Zero Network. Ask anyone in your community if they know someone killed or seriously injured in a traffic crash and the answer is likely “yes.” In fact, the odds of being killed in a traffic crash are 1 in 103. Despite claiming
This post was co-authored by Nicole DuPuis and Erich Zimmermann. Much of the conversation about self-driving cars used to swirl around the anxious notion that they are coming and that their unprecedented technology promises chaos for unprepared roads. Now we can say definitively that they are here — and this reality is something that cities
The 115th Congress has the opportunity to leverage unprecedented public and bipartisan support to address our nation’s infrastructure challenges, and we will have a pivotal opportunity in the coming year to turn the tide. This is a guest post by Rep. Garret Graves. America’s infrastructure was recently reviewed by the American Society of Civil Engineers,
Local governments need a federal commitment and partner to improve our water, transportation and broadband systems. America cannot continue to be great without world-class infrastructure. This is a guest post by Mayor Sal Panto, Jr. The nation’s local leaders know that our nation’s infrastructure has never been a partisan issue. Today, with ailing infrastructure and
As the federal government shutdown stretches into its fourth day with no resolution in sight, cities are already starting to feel the impacts on transportation infrastructure. If Congress cannot come to an agreement quickly, city residents will be increasingly affected by the loss of federal transportation dollars, and the lack of federal personnel on the
