Obama Revises Road Plan to Six Years, $478 Billion

This story appears in the April 6 print edition of Transport Topics.

The Obama administration released a new version of its highway funding proposal, which extends the length of the plan to six years from four and boosts funding to $478 billion from $302 billion.

The second iteration of the Grow America Act, unveiled by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, calls for supplementing current Highway Trust Fund revenue with a 14% “transition tax” on untaxed foreign earnings that U.S. companies have accumulated overseas.

The proposal also calls for spending $317 billion — a 29% increase over current fiscal year funding levels — to upgrade infrastructure and improve connectivity over six years.

It would add $8 billion to the administration’s initiative to improve the flow of freight, largely through discretionary grants; allow the tolling of any interstates, subject to DOT approval; and retain a provision that would authorize DOT to require carriers to compensate drivers in certain situations for on-duty, nondriving, work periods at no less than the federal minimum wage.

To date, Congress largely has ignored the administration’s proposal, and the updated plan is expected to face stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled Congress, said Darrin Roth, vice president of highway policy for American Trucking Associations.

With Congress out of session last week, there was little reaction.

One of the prominent features of the transportation plan is $18 billion, over six years, targeting investments to improve the movement of freight. The earlier proposal called for $10 billion on the freight effort.

But ATA’s Roth said the freight program and other grant projects would require Congress to reinstate some of the discretionary programs it eliminated in the current highway funding law.

Lisa Mullings, president of Natso, called the plan’s provision that would allow tolling of interstates “disappointing and irresponsible.”

“Tolls jeopardize public safety as traffic moves onto less safe secondary roads,” Mullings said in a statement. “The traveling public detests tolls on existing interstates, rejecting them in every state that has attempted to implement them.”