We will submit the following comment to the committee on Monday, April 28, 2025:

When Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2022, it provided historic investments in transit systems and transit infrastructure across the country.

As the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee considers the reauthorization of this important law, we encourage the committee to ensure that it addresses safety over speed, invests in road and bridge repairs instead of new construction, and creates a complete transportation network, including travel by foot, bike, bus, or train, not just investments in highways.

Please prioritize the following Transit policy investments:

1.  Transit should have a level playing field with highways. Transit is inadequate in America in part because it has been woefully underfunded for decades. The federal transportation program provides $4 for roads for every $1 it provides to transit. With the 21st-century climate and equity challenges facing us, that 80:20 split is no longer appropriate (if it ever was). Congress needs to increase transit funding so it is on a level playing field with highways. Through reauthorization, Congress should equalize the amount of funding for transit and highways and require federal matching requirements to be equivalent for highway and transit projects.

2.  Great transit service requires federal operating funds. The federal transit program primarily provides funding for capital investments, not for day-to-day operating expenses. Transit agencies can purchase new buses or build new rail lines with federal funds, but often lack funding to pay for fuel or operators. A new bus serves no purpose without the money to operate it. Congress needs to create an ongoing, predictable source of funding for transit operations. Funding with service standards ensures the additional funding is used to improve service, not replace local funding. Given the workforce shortages the bill should include a set-aside for workforce recruitment and retention.

3.  Communities should be transit-ready. Transit in America is hamstrung by roads and land uses not designed to accommodate it. Frequent transit requires roads incorporating transit lanes, traffic signal priority, and safe pedestrian access between transit stops and key destinations, among other features. Communities should prioritize transit-friendly and higher intensity land uses along transit corridors. Any reauthorization needs to update roadway design standards to require transit-supportive elements, fund transit-supportive activities, and update planning and zoning codes.

This means including:

• Recipients of federal transportation funds with authority over roads must incorporate transit-supportive features into design and operational requirements.
• Authorize funds to retrofit existing roads to be transit-ready.
• Authorize funds for transit-supportive infrastructure such as sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus shelters.
• Provide technical support to communities to create transit-friendly planning and zoning codes.

4.  Small and rural communities deserve great transit. Transit providers in small and rural areas often struggle to meet their communities’ needs due to a lack of funding and staff capacity. Rural Americans are isolated from jobs, healthcare, and other essential needs. We need to remove barriers and improve the federal transit program to increase access to quality transit in small towns and rural areas.

This means

• Authorizing additional funding for rural transit programs.
• Raising the federal share of rural transit operating funding from 50% to 80%.
• Incentivizing coordination across jurisdictional boundaries and across multiple funding sources.
• Requiring states to provide multi-year funding estimates to rural transit agencies to enable long-term planning.
• Incentivizing innovative solutions with competitive grant funding.
• Design for safety over speed: Any serious effort to reduce death on our streets and roads requires slower speeds. Federal funding should require approaches and street design that put safety first.

5.  Fix it First: The federal transportation program should prioritize existing maintenance on roads, bridges, and highways ahead of building new things that require decades of additional repair costs.