Highways

• Distributes nearly all federal highway funding to state DOTs through formula programs designed to preserve existing highways, build new highway capacity, and address congestion, freight mobility, and highway safety.
• Focuses the federal highway program on the Interstate Highway System and the National Highway System – the highways that facilitate interstate travel and interstate commerce.

Transit

• Removes current barriers that prevent the private sector from offering public transportation services.
• Provides more of a focus on transit programs that benefit suburban and rural areas and will improve transit options for the elderly and disabled.

Highway and Motor Carrier Safety

• Prioritizes safety funding by holding highway and motor carrier safety programs harmless from any spending cuts in the bill.
• Ensures that federal regulators keep unsafe trucks and buses off the road while allowing companies that operate in a safe and responsible manner to continue to do so.

Rail Transportation

• Improves access to the underperforming Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program.
• Expedites project review process and streamlines project delivery.

Maritime Transportation

• Ensures that Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund revenues are invested as intended in maintaining the nation’s harbors, not tied up in a federal budgetary shell game.
• Expedites Corps of Engineers permit processing to reduce project backlog.
• Encourages short-sea shipping by eliminating double taxation on vessels transporting freight between domestic ports.

Hazardous Materials Transportation

• Achieves greater safety through regulatory certainty and uniformity.
• Reduces regulatory burdens that do not enhance safety

For the Transportation Committee Schedule the Week of July 11, 2011, click here.