$580 billion highway bill hits speed bumps

Amid the slog of budgeting bills lumbering through Congress is an act to reauthorize the federal program in charge of funding U.S. roads, rails, and trails. Bipartisan drafters of the bill championed it in a joint statement last month.

“You can’t have a big-league economy with little-league infrastructure,” said committee Ranking Member Rick Larsen, D-Wash.

The transportation committee chairman, Sam Graves, R-Mo., added, “I’m extremely proud of the historic level of investment in America’s bridges—at more than $50 billion, it’s the largest such investment in our history.”

The Building Unrivaled Infrastructure and Long-term Development for America’s 250th Act, or the BUILD America 250 Act, drafts a five-year, $580 billion blueprint for investing in the country’s roads and transportation programs. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the bill 62-2 on May 22, but the act still needs to pass both chambers before the current transit program lapses on Sept. 30.

Clocking in at just over 1,000 pages, the BUILD America 250 Act has received both adamant support and resolute dissent. The bill’s main sticking points include an electric vehicle fee, a rail safety provision that Vice President J.D. Vance once promoted, and an amendment that would allow states to increase a federal vehicle weight standard that has remained unchanged since 1982.

Supporters have also touted the bill’s electric vehicle fee, introduced to help raise $30 billion over a decade for the Highway Trust Fund. The fee has received pushback because it relies on EVs, which make up only about 2% of vehicles on the road, to cover the funding gap. Critics say the root cause of the deficit is simpler: The federal gas tax hasn’t increased since 1993.

“For context, the No. 1 hit song in 1993 was Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You,’ the first Jurassic Park movie was released, and the World Wide Web went public,” said Lindsey Perkins, director of communications and marketing at Plug In America. “Inflation and construction costs have grown over the last 33 years, but the gas tax rate has stayed flat, creating a huge deficit. If the true intent of Congress was to make the Highway Trust Fund solvent, the way to do that would be to increase the gas tax and create a fair tax for EV drivers.”

The federal gas tax has been frozen at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, and gas automobile drivers contribute only around $73 to $89 per year into the federal highway fund, while EVs face a ​​$130 federal fee in the new legislation. Plug In America and the Electrification Coalition believe EV drivers should help pay for infrastructure, but they argue that what EV drivers pay should be proportionally equal to what gas vehicle drivers pay.

Others see the fee as something more deliberate. “I think the consequences of an EV fee are intentional, which are to make it harder for electric vehicles to succeed in the U.S.,” said John Helveston, an associate professor in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at George Washington University. “This is not a logical goal, as the entire world is quickly transitioning to EVs and competition with Chinese EVs is going to intensify heavily in the coming years.”

Aside from the EV fee dispute, a recent commentary from Brookings, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., said the bill represents a shift in lawmakers’ attitudes toward transportation funding. Brookings analysts found that the BUILD legislation gives states greater ownership over their transportation systems than past transit bills that emphasized federal initiatives like national freight and environmental programs.

One example is the bill’s controversial proposal to raise the current federal truck weight cap. A voluntary pilot program would grant participating states the option to increase the maximum allowable truck weight to 91,000 pounds, up from the current federal interstate limit of 80,000 pounds.

The Coalition Against Bigger Trucks, a nonprofit advocating for highway safety, and the Association of American Railroads, a freight rail policy organization, oppose the increase. They cite concerns about safety, road and bridge deterioration, and increased emissions.

In a letter to the key negotiators of the BUILD America 250 Act, the Coalition Against Bigger Trucks argued that larger truck loads exacerbate crash fatalities and endanger law enforcement officers. The letter referenced data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, which found that 5,375 people died in crashes involving large trucks in 2023, a 37% increase in such fatalities since 2013.

“The more mass, the more dangerous the truck will become when involved in a crash. In our opinion, there is not one argument that can be made that is worth a person’s life,” the coalition wrote.

But Gongkang Fu, a civil and architectural engineering professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, believes raising the U.S. weight limit is inevitable. He doesn’t see 91,000 pounds as too high.

“Mexico and Canada as our neighbors have weight limits higher than 80,000 pounds,” said Fu. “I can predict that if a 91,000 pound new weight limit does not get passed this time, someday, probably within 20 years, this new limit will come.”

Fu and other researchers for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program published a 2003 report on vehicle weight standards that observed the effects of truck weight on bridge costs. For the purposes of the study, Fu said, the research group studied a scenario with a minimum weight of 97,000 pounds—6,000 pounds higher than the current bill's proposed cap. The study results also looked at a scenario of a pilot project where Idaho officials increased truck weight limits on some roads in the state to 129,000 pounds. Fu’s research had concluded that for these routes in Idaho, a weight increase in this range would have a limited effect on bridge infrastructure and longevity. Ten years later, the 2003 pilot project became a permanent program that now extends to the entire state, including interstate roads.

The BUILD America 250 Act leaves the option to increase the truck weight ceiling up to each state, as long as the change is limited to six-axle vehicles that can properly distribute the load.

The measure also incorporates a railway bill proposal that J.D. Vance co-sponsored in 2023 with former Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, following a freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The Railway Safety Act adds a requirement for two-person train crews—an inclusion that the Association of American Railroads considers an example of special-interest pressure.

The association wrote that the rail safety provision would increase costs throughout the freight network and broader supply chain, “ultimately harming rail customers, manufacturers, energy producers, farmers and American consumers already facing significant affordability pressures.”

But several unions have strongly advocated for the safety provisions, particularly the mandate for two-person train crews and increased inspection requirements. Leading endorsers include the SMART Transportation Division, the Transportation Communications Union, and the Teamsters.

Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., who drafted the current iteration of the railway safety amendment, also promoted the inclusion. “I am so proud that my bill the Railway Safety Act passed out of committee with bipartisan support,” he said in a news release. “Let’s get this bill passed and signed into law.”

The White House has yet to release a formal position on the bill. Congress is supposed to pass the transportation bill by the end of September, but itwon’t be unusual if it misses the deadline. Short-term patches are a trend when it comes to the highway bill: Lawmakers followed a 1998 iteration of the bill with 12 extensions, and a 2005 version with 10.