President Obama’s proposed $129 billion Department of Transportation budget is for the first year of a comprehensive six-year transportation plan that will lay a new foundation for economic growth and competitiveness by rebuilding the nation’s transportation systems, DOT said Monday.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement that the plan will enable innovative solutions to transportation challenges and ensuring the highest level of safety for all Americans.
“Investment in rebuilding our crumbling roadways and runways and modernizing our railways and bus systems” will help “out-compete the rest of the world by moving people, goods, and information more quickly and reliably than ever before,” LaHood following the president’s release of his proposed federal budget to Congress Monday.
The administration’s six-year proposal will also provide $336 billion — a 48% increase over the previous authorization, to rebuild America’s roads and bridges — and $119 billion, a 128% increase over the previous authorization, in funding for affordable, sustainable, and efficient transit options.
“Our transportation systems are already congested and overburdened,” LaHood said, adding that with the U.S. population expected to grow from more than 300 million in 2010 to more than 400 million by 2050, rebuilding and expanding the capacity of our roads, airports and transit systems is necessary for long-term economic growth.
He said the transportation investments proposed in the fiscal year 2012 budget “will put Americans to work repairing the bridges and repaving the roads we have now, while supporting the development of the new electric buses and high-speed rail lines of America’s future.”
Under the proposed budget, more than 55 separate highway programs will be streamlined into five core programs, “eliminating wasteful overlap and making it easier for communities to build the projects they need to spur economic growth,” LaHood said.
