Will cities’ transportation gravy train be derailed?
By D. Dowd Muska | March 14, 2025
Sept. 30, 2026, may seem far off to you and me. But for many politicians, contractor and activists, the date is just around the corner. Their livelihoods depend on favorable provisions in the mammoth, multi-year appropriation packages Washington enacts to subsidize highways, bridges, transit systems and other surface-transportation assets.
The infrastructure lobby doesn’t consider it premature to, er, ramp up advocacy for the next reauthorization bill, which must be approved before the end of the federal government’s 2026 fiscal year. But there’s an undeniable challenge: Unlike last time, D.C.’s profligacy is not a given.
In November 2021, Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Praised by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association as “the most significant measure in more than 50 years to meaningfully address the condition and performance of the U.S. transportation network,” the National Taxpayers Union warned that the bill would “increase spending, impose additional tax burdens on American taxpayers and lead to more government intrusion in multiple sectors of the economy.” Citizens Against Government Waste observed that “dozens of new programs” created by the measure fail to qualify as actual infrastructure.
Washington being Washington, the spending steamroller won the day – and why wouldn’t it? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce boasted that the “fiscally responsible bill” had “the support of business, labor, Republicans, Democrats and according to the Harvard Center for American Political Studies … 78% of Americans.”
The years passed, and metro areas gorged on IIJA largesse. A “critical road-railway grade separation project” at the Port of Los Angeles received $20 million. Las Vegas’ Stewart Avenue secured $24 million for “a two-way cycle track, more lighting and sidewalk widening.” A “six-legged highway/arterial intersection” in Phoenix got $146 million. Amtrak’s King Street Coach Yard Maintenance Facility in Seattle, received $300 million. Portland’s multi-billion-dollar replacement project for the bridge over the Columbia River was awarded $600 million.
For cities, counties and regional transportation authorities, IIJA’s harvest has been rich. But as the reauthorization rumble intensifies, a reality check is overdue. IIJA’s successor is likely to be much more modest.
In the final months of 2021, the infrastructure lobby wielded a key justification it does not possess today: jobs. A year and a half after the initial imposition of lockdowns, the nation’s economy still had not regained the employment level it enjoyed in February 2020. True, the jobless rate was no longer in the double digits. But overall, 3.1-million fewer Americans were working. Today, the bad old days of stay-at-home orders are all but forgotten, with employment surging past the early-2020 peak by almost 7 million.
Radically changed fiscal and political dynamics present reauthorization obstacle No. 2. The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency has spawned much hatred from the “public” sector, yet there’s no question that the effort’s exposure of dubious (if not illicit) government spending has millions of taxpayers fuming. So far, DOGE hasn’t scrutinized much surface-transportation spending, but IIJA offers a target-rich environment for criticism. As the Cato Institute noted in June, the bill “has yet to yield many of its expected deliverables,” with “complex requirements for grantees, Buy America requirements, and preferences for unionized employees and those who have been involved with the justice system” among the impediments.
The Trump administration is foursquare against climate catastrophism, and that’s unwelcome news for “green” cities seeking fresh loot from reauthorization. Climate Mayors – a group that includes the chief executives of San Diego, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Boise, Salt Lake City and Albuquerque – can’t be pleased with the bad PR generated by one of IIJA’s signature initiatives. In May, Autoweek reported that the “$7.5 billion effort to jump-start the electric-vehicle charging landscape is moving very, very slowly,” with “only eight chargers … put in place.” The legislation’s aim to “accelerate research, development, demonstration and deployment of hydrogen from clean energy sources” is looking more and more like a loser, too.
With reauthorization’s fate more than a little uncertain, here’s a radical proposal, for state and local governments plagued by infrastructure challenges: Instead of an increasingly unsustainable focus on greater deliveries of federal cash, why not shift to a strategy of winning common-sense relief from federal regulations? The National Environmental Policy Act is an excellent place to start. As American Enterprise Institute scholars recently explained, compliance with the Nixon-era legislation can be hideously expensive:
If a project is likely to have significant environmental impacts, the relevant agency must produce a full environmental impact statement (EIS). … Agencies must solicit public input, coordinate with other stakeholders, and often extensively revise documents based on feedback. Although modest in the 1970s, a typical NEPA review now takes over four-and-a-half years and is over 600 pages long. The overall process for an infrastructure project can now regularly take over a decade to complete.
NEPA litigation, like the lawfare frequently fostered by the Endangered Species Act, is another multiplier of delays and cost overruns. But Washington is not solely to blame for judicially empowered chicanery. A 2015 analysis by Holland & Knight of the California Environmental Quality Act noted that the mere threat of litigation over an “improvement project to construct a carpool lane and related improvements along a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405 over the Sepulveda Pass” in Los Angeles resulted in “a modified bridge design that not only caused taxpayers millions of additional dollars, but also required two weekend closures of … one of the busiest highways in California.”
Misguided economic nationalism is another problem. For example, in 2023 Oregon’s lawmakers and governor mandated “that the iron and steel used in state-funded infrastructure projects will be Made in America,” according to the Alliance for American Manufacturing.
Washington has funded state and local transportation projects for over a century. It’s a safe bet that before the end of next summer, reauthorization will happen. But 2021 is in the rearview mirror and the future isn’t likely to resemble the past.
Dowd Muska is a researcher and writer who studies public policy from the limited-government perspective. A veteran of several think tanks, he writes a column and publishes other content at No Dowd About It.
