Home overwhelmingly backs 5-year transportation bill

The transportation bill that cleared the House and Senate Thursday will boost highway funding by 9.7 percent and transit funding by 11.7 percent, which should ease upstate-downstate tensions over how state officials distribute federal money.

The 359-65 House vote and 83-16 Senate approval was a bipartisan compromise coming one day before today’s funding cutoff.

“Traffic delays are strangling our economy, taking time away from our families and are a daily reminder that taxpayers aren’t getting a return on investment”.

Gibson, president and CEO of AISI, said, “The steel industry is not only a user of the highway system, but it is also an important supplier to road, bridge and transit builders”.

Delegation members said the bill would increase funding for Arkansas by more than $243 million over its 5-year lifespan, raising it from the current $2.5 billion to roughly $2.75 billion.

-Transfers $53 billion over 5 years from the bank’s capital account to help pay for transportation programs.

The long-term bill will allow the DOT to move forward with most of the 100-plus projects in its Statewide Transportation Improvement Program for 2016, including highway reconstruction, bridge replacements and preventative maintenance, Salwei said.

But Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., a prominent supporter of increasing transportation spending, said the deals cut to win the bill’s passage caused him to reluctantly vote against it. The main source of revenue for transportation is the trust fund, which comes mostly from the 18.4-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax.

The American Road and Transportation Builders Association said Congress and the Obama administration “again sidestepped a golden opportunity to put the federal highway and transit investment program back on solid financial footing for the long term”. That tax has not been raised since 1993 even though transportation spending has increased.

The 1,300-page bill includes provisions that would increase buses and ferries, fill a lot of potholes, and attempt to reduce congestion.

Sen. Michael Bennet, a Denver Democrat, said he was glad to see the end of stop-gap funding that has been the norm for the past 10 years.

-Prohibits rental auto agencies and auto dealers with fleets of more than 35 cars from renting vehicles that have been recalled but not repaired, a long-sought goal of safety advocates. The bill also provides $200 million to help railroads install the safety technology that could have prevented the accident.

Lawmakers have also taken money away from commercial banks, cutting the dividend rate on payments they receive from the Federal Reserve.

For riders concerned about train safety, the measure could force Amtrak to pay $295 million – up from $200 million – in damages as a result of the May train derailment in Philadelphia that killed eight people.