INVEST in America: our take on the House bill

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Below, you’ll find the League’s statement on the recently released House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee transportation reauthorization bill, the INVEST in America Act, and our detailed analysis of what’s in the bill for biking and walking. This blog was co-authored alongside the Safe Routes National Partnership. 

The League of American Bicyclists was instrumental in pushing Congress to pave the first roads in America, and as key stakeholders in our infrastructure since 1880, the League is pleased to see the INVEST in America Act make transformative investments in the future of our transportation system. The INVEST in America Act refocuses our infrastructure goals to center the movement of people rather than simply the movement of cars. Further, League applauds the resources devoted to addressing safe streets for everyone in the INVEST in America Act. The decades-long rise in traffic violence has cut short the lives of far too many people biking and walking, and this bill makes strides to ensure everyone can make it home safely.

On Friday, the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee introduced the INVEST in America Act, their version of the surface transportation bill. It looks great for bicycling and walking. Similar to the Senate Environment and Public Works bill released last week, it includes programs and policies that promote bicycling and walking through significantly increased funding for active transportation infrastructure, improves safety and access, and funds safe routes to school coordinators and requires outreach to rural school districts. The House bill also includes some of the larger systemic changes that the League has been calling for, like a fix-it-first policy on highway construction, and new accessibility performance measures which are not in the Senate EPW bill. Please see the chart below for more details.

Register for our webinar on Friday, June 11, to learn how the House and Senate bills differ and what the next steps are for advocates.

While the Senate EPW bill won support from Republicans on the committee, this House bill is not bipartisan. The Democrats have a three vote majority in the House of Representatives, so getting the bill through the House could be as tricky as getting the bipartisan EPW bill through the Senate with 10 Republican votes!   

As a way to increase the House bill’s chances, Chairman DeFazio included Member Designated Projects (earmarks) for both Democratic and Republcan members, and included many of the bipartisan amendments added to the bill of the same name last year with the hope of getting bipartisan support. However, the bill’s emphasis on climate, and the sheer size of the bill ($547 billion over five years) were too much for Republican leadership to support.  That will put the House bill at a disadvantage if the bills get to the conference committee where Democrats and Republicans of both the House and Senate work together to come up with a consensus bill. 

Check out this flowchart for a refresher on how a bill becomes a law

Along with addressing climate change, the bill strives to add a new emphasis on environmental justice and transportation equity. It requires such considerations in both state and metropolitan planning programs, and adds consideration of effects to environmental justice and transportation equity to most grant programs, including things like new highways and freight route changes which cause air and noise pollution, as well as community disconnection disproportionately impacting low income communities. 

In our role as members of the Transportation Equity Caucus, the League has been promoting changes to the 402/405 programs in the bill that fund enforcement programs. While we were unsuccessful in changing those programs, we were successful in getting changes to the 1906 program, which funds states to collect and analyze data on traffic stops and citations of drivers for racial and ethnic disparities. Now, the bill would enable the program to fund utilizing the data and working with the community and law enforcement to change policies and practices. 

Our side-by-side analysis of the INVEST Act