CityThink: Transportation, Mobility & Infrastructure

Make the Safe System Approach—the core engineering philosophy behind Vision Zero—the binding national policy for all public roads, rather than treating street safety as an optional side grant. Best practice requires designing streets under the premise that human beings will inevitably make mistakes, and road geometry must ensure those mistakes do not result in death or serious injury. To move cities and states from safety rhetoric to rapid deployment, the federal government should pay 100% of the cost for proven safety countermeasures (eliminating local matching requirements) and enforce real financial accountability: if a state fails to make measurable progress reducing traffic fatalities for three consecutive years, 1% of its general formula funding should be forfeited and redirected directly to local governments within that state to fix high-injury corridors.

Eliminate the traditional 20% local matching requirement for proven safety countermeasures and fund them at a 100% federal share. Across the country, cash-strapped municipalities delay life-saving street redesigns—such as protected bike lanes, raised crosswalks, pedestrian refuge islands, leading pedestrian intervals, and road diets—because they lack the local capital budget to cover a 20% match. Meanwhile, standard highway projects enjoy steady formula subsidies. By paying 100% of the cost for physical safety retrofits and separating safety procurement from multi-year highway reconstruction packages, cities and states can immediately deploy systemic, low-cost traffic calming across their entire high-injury networks without waiting on local tax initiatives.

Replace voluntary, unreviewable safety targets with federally verified fatality-reduction targets backed by an automatic 1% funding forfeiture. Historically, state transportation departments have been allowed to set rising fatality targets—predicting more deaths than the year before—without federal review or financial consequence. Best practice requires the federal government to review and approve state safety targets based on empirical crash data. If a state misses its safety targets for three consecutive years, 1% of its core formula funds should be automatically withheld and converted into competitive safety grants awarded directly to cities, counties, and regional agencies inside that same state to redesign dangerous corridors.

Consolidate fragmented local safety, bus, and street discretionary grants into a single, direct-to-local competitive grant front door with no state DOT pass-through and a predictable statutory calendar. Rather than forcing city staff to write separate applications for planning grants, safety grants, and multimodal grants across different federal agencies, cities should apply through one unified Community Mobility competition. Existing local Vision Zero Action Plans should automatically satisfy planning prerequisites, and project awards should be scored strictly on projected reductions in deaths and serious injuries per dollar spent, with decisions guaranteed within seven months of the application deadline.

Empower Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and cities with project concurrence veto power alongside recaptured safety penalty funds. State-owned urban arterials—wide, high-speed multi-lane roads cutting through city commercial strips and residential neighborhoods—account for a disproportionate share of pedestrian deaths. Best practice gives the regional MPO formal sign-off authority before a state DOT can spend flexible formula block grant dollars inside a metropolitan boundary. If a state refuses to calm traffic on a deadly urban arterial, local leaders can withhold concurrence on highway spending and apply directly for the state’s forfeited 1% safety penalty funds to redesign the corridor themselves.

Embed school zone traffic calming and youth transit access directly into core local mobility formula funding rather than treating Safe Routes to School as a tiny, isolated boutique program. Cities and school districts should co-program formula mobility dollars to build physical speed-reduction infrastructure within a half-mile of every school—including raised speed tables, curb extensions, pedestrian hybrid beacons, and protected bikeways—while simultaneously funding universal, fare-free youth transit passes. Combining safe physical crossings with free student bus and rail access eliminates morning drop-off traffic congestion and builds lifelong transit ridership habits.

Make Safe System street redesigns eligible for federal funding on any public road, regardless of functional classification. Legacy federal highway rules often restricted formula investments to "federal-aid highways," starving locally owned residential streets, neighborhood collectors, and municipal intersections where children, seniors, and cyclists travel daily. Best practice removes artificial roadway classification barriers so municipal traffic engineers can deploy traffic circles, speed humps, daylighted intersections, and sidewalk networks wherever crash risks and vulnerable road users exist.

Score and rank safety grant applications using quantitative crash-reduction modeling rather than narrative storytelling. Grant evaluators and city engineers should prioritize projects based on the projected number of fatalities and serious injuries prevented per dollar invested, paired with measurable improvements in access to jobs, schools, and essential services for disadvantaged neighborhoods. By targeting investments to the top 5% to 10% of streets that make up a city’s High-Injury Network, agencies achieve dramatic crash reductions quickly and transparently.

Treat connected vehicle technology (Vehicle-to-Everything, or V2X) as a supplement to—never a replacement for—physical Vision Zero street geometry. Cities should first narrow wide lanes, tighten corner turning radii, and build physical curb protection so drivers are physically unable to speed. Layered on top of safe geometry, agencies can use 100%-federally-funded digital infrastructure dollars to install roadside communication units at high-conflict urban intersections, broadcasting signal phase timing and pedestrian crosswalk occupancy directly to approaching vehicles to prevent blind-turn and red-light crashes.

Deploy systemic, corridor-wide roadway departure countermeasures funded at a 100% federal cost-share. Rural two-lane roads experience high fatality rates due to high speeds, unforgiving roadsides, and head-on collisions. Rather than waiting to reconstruct an entire rural highway, state and county engineers should bundle low-cost systemic treatments—such as center and edge-line rumble strips, high-friction surface treatments on curves, cable median barriers, wider paved shoulders, and high-visibility retroreflective striping—into statewide maintenance contracts that simultaneously help human drivers and automated lane-keeping systems stay on the road.

Establish a strict statutory boundary between true safety/maintenance work and roadway capacity expansion. State transportation agencies frequently package highway lane additions as "safety improvements" or "pavement rehabilitation" to avoid scrutiny and capture higher federal subsidies. Best practice requires stripping the maintenance/safety exemption from any project that adds general-purpose through-lanes for half a mile (0.5 miles) or more. Any such project should automatically drop to a 50% federal funding share and be required to publish a full public accounting of its induced vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and lifecycle carbon emissions.

Make neighborhood reconnection a permanent, core eligible purpose of both formula mobility block grants and competitive community grants, rather than a tiny, underfunded discretionary pilot. Cities should use guaranteed local formula dollars and direct competitive grants to cap inner-city expressways with parks, replace crumbling elevated viaducts with at-grade multimodal boulevards, and build safe pedestrian and transit bridges across rail and highway trenches—restoring the street grid and reconnecting residents to jobs, schools, and healthcare.

Transition ADA paratransit from a rigid, day-ahead reservation mandate into a modern, on-demand mobility service governed by strict rider-approved performance contracts. Under legacy federal rules, transit agencies are locked into an expensive, inflexible delivery model requiring 24-hour advance booking and yielding long, unpredictable pickup windows. Best practice grants regulatory waivers to agencies that sign binding contracts—endorsed by their local disability rider committees—guaranteeing quantifiably superior outcomes: same-day on-demand booking via smartphone or phone, shorter maximum wait times, fewer refused trips, expanded service territories, and ADA-capped fares using dynamic routing and mixed fleets.

Yes—best federal policy eliminates the artificial wall between "capital" and "operating" funds and makes day-to-day public transit operations fully eligible under unified local mobility formula grants. For decades, federal rules eagerly subsidized buying new buses for large cities while prohibiting agencies from using those same formula dollars to pay drivers to run the buses more frequently. Because riders experience transit through frequency, reliability, and hours of service—not the age of the bus barn—cities and transit authorities should have full flexibility to spend federal formula dollars on running 10-minute all-day bus networks.

Merge separate highway and transit maintenance silos into a single State of Good Repair & Resiliency Block Grant funded at a 90% federal cost-share, conditioned on a unified, risk-based asset management plan. Currently, aging subway signals, rail bridges, bus maintenance depots, and highway overpasses compete in disconnected funding buckets. By offering a 90% federal match for rehabilitating existing transit and road assets—compared to just 50% for adding new highway lanes—states and transit agencies are financially incentivized to clear their transit repair backlogs before system failures halt service.

Require independent benefit-cost appraisals, verified engineering readiness before grant award, and public grading of all megaproject applications in a single mode-neutral competition. U.S. transit projects suffer from severe cost escalation because projects are politically committed before engineering and environmental reviews are complete, and bespoke station designs are layered onto weak procurement structures. Best practice caps total federal participation at 80% (with a maximum 50% megaproject grant share), locks scope and budget into binding grant agreements, and pairs grants with a federal Center of Excellence offering standardized contract templates and Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC) delivery incentives.

Use flexible Community Access & Mobility formula funds and direct Community Mobility competitive grants to deploy agency-integrated on-demand microtransit in suburban and rural zones where fixed-route buses run empty. Rather than running 40-foot buses on 60-minute headways through cul-de-sac subdivisions, transit agencies should deploy dynamically dispatched vans and small shuttles that connect riders directly to high-frequency regional rail stations, bus rapid transit spines, grocery stores, and medical clinics, integrated under a single regional fare system.

Establish a 5% Pay-for-Performance Bonus Pool that financially rewards states and metropolitan regions for exceeding verified transit ridership, safety, and congestion-reduction targets. Under current federal law, transit and highway formulas distribute money based on historical legacy shares and lane-miles, regardless of whether anyone rides the system. Best practice sets aside 5% of total block grant funding to reward states that measurably grow transit ridership and system reliability—turning transit mode shift into a lucrative financial win for state budget directors.

Consolidate Bus & Bus Facilities grants, RAISE grants, and local street safety grants into a single annual Community Mobility competitive grant with direct local eligibility. Small and mid-sized transit agencies rarely have the grant-writing consultants needed to track multiple federal notices of funding opportunity across different agencies. A single competitive door allows a city or transit authority to submit one cohesive application covering zero-emission or clean replacement buses, depot charging/maintenance upgrades, and bus-priority street redesigns—with a 90% federal share for state-of-good-repair facility upgrades.

Make formal endorsement by the local Committee of Riders with Disabilities a mandatory statutory prerequisite before any agency can enter a paratransit modernization pilot, and establish a hard legal floor for service quality. Best practice guarantees that ADA fare caps remain strictly enforced, the underlying legal entitlement to service is never diluted, and performance is audited annually against the agency’s own prior-year baseline. If an agency fails to reduce average wait times, fails to lower trip denials, or fails to expand service hours/territory, the federal government revokes the waiver and restores standard rules immediately.

Pair 100%-federally-funded traffic signal technology (transit signal priority and automated bus-lane enforcement cameras) with 90%-funded street rehabilitation to build dedicated Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and bus-only lanes during routine repaving. Because software and digital systems should be legally treated as capital infrastructure on par with concrete, municipal DOTs and transit agencies can co-fund red-painted bus lanes, boarding islands, and real-time signal priority without enduring multi-year megaproject red tape.

Mandate by statute that 100% of net peak-hour congestion surcharge revenues return directly to the metropolitan transportation authority where the fees were collected to fund transit service, microtransit, and active transportation alternatives. Road pricing only wins public support when commuters see a fast, visible improvement in their daily travel options. Returning peak-period variable mileage surcharges directly to regional transit operations creates a self-sustaining local revenue loop for bus and train frequencies.

Require every state’s annual Infrastructure Health Report Card to publicly disclose all federal and non-federal spending on public transit operations alongside highway capital spending. In many states, governors and legislatures claim to "fully fund transportation" while starving local bus and rail operating budgets, forcing cities to rely on regressive local sales taxes. Publishing state and local transit operating contributions on a standardized national portal exposes funding disparities and holds state leaders accountable for multimodal access.

Capitalize and operate modern paratransit dispatch software and on-demand fleets using flexible Community Access & Mobility formula funds and 100%-matched digital infrastructure provisions. Because best policy makes both public transit operations and software/dispatch platforms eligible uses of core formula funds, transit CFOs do not need a separate boutique earmark to modernize paratransit—they can immediately deploy formula dollars to upgrade routing software and cut their $60-per-trip operating losses.

Change the federal price signals so that fixing existing roads, bridges, and transit pays a 90% federal cost-share, while adding new general-purpose highway lanes pays only a 50% federal share. For 70 years, the federal government paid an identical 80% share whether a state repaired a crumbling bridge or built a brand-new suburban highway bypass. That flat match subsidized expansion while maintenance was deferred. By creating a 40-percentage-point price spread between repair (90%) and expansion (50%), maintaining existing assets becomes the smartest, cheapest fiscal decision a state budget director or mayor can make.

Require every state to maintain a risk-based, lifecycle asset management queue as a mandatory condition of receiving State of Good Repair formula funds. In current practice, states often let "fair" bridges deteriorate until they become structurally deficient emergencies, then spend 12 times more reconstructing them. Best practice requires programming highway and transit bridge preservation in one unified plan ordered by risk and deterioration curves—sealing decks, repairing joints, and retrofitting piers while bridges are still in fair condition.

Embed resilience retrofits directly into the core State of Good Repair & Resiliency Block Grant at a 90% federal share, rather than treating climate resilience as a separate grant competition. When a bridge, coastal road, tunnel, or rail line is already open for routine rehabilitation, engineers should simultaneously upgrade drainage capacity, elevate flood-prone electrical equipment, stabilize slopes, and reinforce seismic joints. Buying weather protection during scheduled maintenance costs a fraction of rebuilding after a catastrophic flood or earthquake.

Price new general-purpose highway lane additions (of one mile or more) at a 50% federal match to account for induced demand and long-term maintenance liabilities. Decades of empirical traffic engineering prove that adding general-purpose highway lanes generates induced travel—new drivers and longer trips rapidly refill the added lanes, leaving congestion worse than before while saddling state taxpayers with perpetual resurfacing costs. Requiring states to put up 50% of their own money forces rigorous fiscal discipline before pouring new concrete.

Lock State of Good Repair & Resiliency block grant dollars to projects that appear inside a verified, public State Asset Management Plan. Under best practice, projects that are not in the risk-based asset inventory simply do not qualify for the grant. Furthermore, every state must publish an annual Infrastructure Health Report Card showing the exact percentage of its pavement, bridges, and transit assets in good, fair, and poor condition—preventing governors from hiding deferred maintenance behind new highway groundbreakings.

Require a standardized Carbon and VMT Scorecard for every state and for any major project adding roadway capacity. System-wide, states should report annual per-capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and total surface transportation $\text{CO}_2$ emissions on their annual report card. Project-by-project, any project adding general-purpose through-lanes (for 0.5 miles or more) must calculate and publish its projected induced VMT and full lifecycle carbon emissions using a single, uniform federal methodology developed with environmental regulators prior to approval.

Program highway, bridge, tunnel, rail, and bus asset rehabilitation under one unified grant and one multimodal asset plan. When a state or metro region rehabilitates a major commuter corridor, fixing the highway deck, upgrading the dedicated busway, and modernizing the parallel rail bridge are all keeping the same commuter shed moving. Breaking down the statutory firewall between Title 23 (highways) and Title 49 (transit) for state-of-good-repair funding lets regions allocate preservation dollars to whichever asset faces the highest failure risk.

Intervene early on "fair" pavements with preventive surface treatments (micro-surfacing, thin overlays, crack sealing) funded at a 90% federal share, rather than waiting for sub-base failure. Asset management systems should prioritize preservation treatments at the top of the deterioration curve. When federal funding rewards early preservation with a 90/10 match, state and municipal public works departments can stretch their paving budgets five times further.

Give cities two reliable paths for local street and bridge repair: first, a guaranteed direct sub-allocation of formula mobility funds; and second, direct access to the Community Mobility competitive grant program where locally owned road and bridge rehabilitation qualifies for a 90% federal cost-share. Because local governments own half the nation's bridges and three-quarters of its roads, they should never be forced to pay 100% of local resurfacing costs out of municipal property taxes while state highways get federal subsidies.

Channel mega-bridge and tunnel replacements into a single, mode-neutral Strategic Infrastructure Investment Program (SIIP) where they compete on empirical merit, readiness, and benefit-cost ratios. When a multi-billion-dollar interstate river crossing or harbor tunnel reaches the end of its structural life, no single state's annual formula apportionment can absorb the cost. A consolidated megaproject competition provides up to 50% direct grant funding (80% total federal cap) once preliminary engineering, environmental review, and non-federal matching commitments are fully locked in.

Upgrade pavement markings, signage, and safety geometry during routine repaving cycles at marginal cost. Every time a city or state repaves a corridor using 90%-matched State of Good Repair funds, engineers should narrow overly wide lanes, install high-visibility crosswalks, add protected bike lanes, and lay uniform, high-contrast machine-readable lane striping (per voluntary AV-ready standards). Never repave a dangerous, outdated street back to its exact old layout.

Attack project delivery delays at their three real bottlenecks: make State-led environmental review assignment permanent, put a 30-to-120-day shot clock on Buy America waivers, and pay a +5% federal funding bonus (up to 95% total share) for projects using modern contracting methods like Design-Build or Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC). Delays rarely happen because environmental standards are too strict; they happen because sequential federal-state paperwork queues, unbounded procurement waivers, and outdated design-bid-build contracting create years of administrative dead time.

Make the State Environmental Review Assignment program permanent and program-wide, backed by 100%-federally-funded Capacity-Building Grants so states can hire environmental attorneys, biologists, and GIS specialists. Under legacy rules, state DOTs prepare the environmental analysis and then wait years in a queue for understaffed federal reviewers to check the same record under identical standards. Letting qualified states assume federal NEPA review authority under a 10-year contract—audited publicly every two years, with zero reduction in substantive environmental protection—eliminates duplicate review queues.

Keep strict domestic-content manufacturing standards intact, but put every Buy America waiver on a single public website and enforce a strict statutory decision clock: 30 days for repeat non-availability waivers and 120 days for new requests. Furthermore, if federal officials deny a waiver claiming an American manufacturer exists, the denial must publicly name the domestic supplier in a national directory. Transparency and binding deadlines stop projects from sitting frozen while contractors hunt for specialty electronics, transformers, or steel components that aren't made domestically.

Shift complex projects away from traditional Design-Bid-Build toward Design-Build, Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC), or Public-Private Partnerships (P3), incentivized by a +5% federal cost-share bonus (up to 95% total federal share). In traditional contracting, engineers design a project in isolation, put it out to the lowest bidder, and then get hit with massive change orders when the contractor discovers underground utilities or soil issues. Bringing the builder into the room during design (CM/GC) or uniting design and construction under one contract resolves constructability risks before prices are locked.

Establish a federal Center of Excellence for Project Delivery that provides standardized contract templates, risk-allocation guides, case studies, and hands-on technical advisors for first-time agency users. The highest risk in Design-Build or CM/GC occurs the very first time a city or state agency writes the contract. Providing free federal legal templates and embedded procurement experts eliminates the learning-curve barrier so mid-sized cities can deliver projects just as fast as major state DOTs.

Create an outcome-based 10% Workforce Performance Bonus for states that measurably grow their skilled transportation labor force, rather than creating a top-down federal training bureaucracy. States should be judged on three verified, public metrics: (1) year-over-year growth in graduates from certified trade programs, (2) growth in active registered apprenticeships, and (3) a reduction in median time-to-hire for critical agency and craft positions. States that beat their workforce targets earn a 10% bonus on their core transportation apportionment, which they can spend flexibly on any eligible infrastructure project.

Address the annual "August Redistribution" churn by fixing the three root causes of slow obligation: agency staffing shortages, environmental review queues, and Buy America procurement holds. When states return $7.6 billion in unused obligation authority at the end of the fiscal year, it proves the bottleneck is delivery capacity, not just funding. Funding state NEPA staff at 100% federal share, rewarding state trade/engineering hiring with a 10% bonus, and capping BABA waiver reviews at 30/120 days keeps capital moving on schedule.

Enforce a strict two-stage readiness and merit gate before any federal megaproject grant is awarded, and publish the grades of every applicant—including rejected projects. First, evaluate whether the project is worth doing via an independent benefit-cost analysis covering productivity, safety, and supply chains. Second, verify readiness: preliminary engineering and NEPA review must be complete, sensitivity analysis performed, and non-federal financing committed before a dollar is awarded. Making "Not Recommended" ratings public stops poorly scoped projects from advancing via backroom lobbying.

Yes—any state assuming permanent federal environmental review authority must enter a binding 10-year contract that includes a mandatory duty to publicly analyze induced VMT and carbon emissions for any project adding general-purpose highway lanes. Streamlining the review queue should cut bureaucratic wait times, not hide environmental impacts. Combining state-led review speed with mandatory climate and induced-demand disclosure delivers fast, honest decision-making.

Use the centralized Public Buy America Waiver Registry to publish an annual Domestic Manufacturing Gap Report for Congress and private industry. Right now, waiver requests are scattered across agency dockets, so domestic manufacturers have no idea which transportation components are repeatedly waived due to domestic non-availability. Aggregating every waiver request onto one machine-readable portal creates an instant market map showing private investors exactly which sensors, rail parts, and electrical components America needs to manufacture at home.

Cap the combined innovative contracting bonus at a maximum 95% federal cost-share (outside of 100% safety/digital projects) so state and local sponsors always retain "skin in the game" on major construction contracts. While a +5% federal match bonus provides a powerful incentive for agencies to adopt Design-Build or CM/GC on an 80% or 90% state-of-good-repair project, maintaining at least a 5% local/state capital stake ensures the project sponsor vigilantly manages contractor costs and schedule performance.

Subject every state participating in permanent NEPA assignment to mandatory federal audits at least once every two years, with all audit findings published on a public portal, backed by federal authority to revoke or remediate non-compliance. Furthermore, states must waive sovereign immunity to the extent needed so citizens retain the exact same right to challenge an environmental record in federal court as if USDOT had signed the Record of Decision itself.

Lock competitive grant programs into a fixed statutory calendar and require engineering and environmental readiness prior to award for major capital investments. When USDOT awards discretionary grants to conceptual projects that haven't cleared preliminary design, Buy America scoping, or local match votes, grant agreements languish unsigned for years while inflation eats the budget. Requiring readiness up front and standardizing grant agreement templates gets shovels in the ground within months of award.

Require a biennial empirical report to Congress and the public auditing every project that received the +5% innovative contracting bonus against its baseline cost and schedule estimates. Rather than taking alternative delivery claims on faith, tracking real-world change orders, completion dates, and lifecycle performance across Design-Build, CM/GC, and P3 projects builds a verified national evidence base on which contracting method works best for each project type.

Prepare the road, not just the car. Commercial driverless vehicles are already operating at scale on public streets, yet our roads are still striped, signed, and maintained strictly for human eyeballs. Best federal practice is to establish a voluntary National AV-Ready Infrastructure Standard covering uniform machine-readable pavement markings, digitally readable traffic control devices, and digital twins of the highway network—and make bringing roads up to that standard eligible for 90% State of Good Repair formula funds and 100% digital innovation cost-share. That way, cities and states upgrade their roads for automated driving during routine resurfacing and signal replacement at marginal cost.

Yes—modern transportation policy must legally define software, data systems, traffic management platforms, and digital twins as capital "infrastructure" eligible across all formula and competitive grant programs, and qualify certified digital infrastructure for a 100% federal cost-share. In a 21st-century mobility network, bits are as essential as bricks. Allowing agencies to capitalize cloud traffic-signal optimization, curb-management APIs, and real-time digital twins stops agencies from pouring concrete when a software upgrade can move more people safely at a tenth of the cost.

Turn USDOT’s non-binding V2X roadmap into a funded National V2X Deployment Strategy where installing roadside communication units (RSUs) and integrating signal data into traffic management centers explicitly qualifies for 100% federal funding under both freight and community mobility block grants. Instead of scattered, incompatible local pilot projects, a unified national strategy ensures that when a vehicle approaches an intersection anywhere in America, it can digitally communicate with the traffic signal and detect pedestrians around blind corners using a single interoperable standard.

Fold machine-readable pavement striping and digital traffic signage directly into routine State of Good Repair resurfacing and maintenance schedules. Roads are restriped every few years and resurfaced every decade; traffic signals are replaced on predictable lifecycle schedules. By establishing a uniform national specification for lane-line width, contrast, and retroreflectivity and making it eligible under core maintenance block grants, agencies never have to pay for a standalone "AV retrofit program"—they simply lay machine-readable markings the next time the striping truck goes out.

Maintain a clean institutional division of labor: leave vehicle operational licensing and commercial AV rules to state and federal vehicle regulators, while using federal infrastructure standards and grant incentives to standardize the physical and digital roadway. Where states preempt municipal AV operational rules, cities still control physical street geometry, curb management, traffic signal timing, and digital twin data. Standardizing machine-readable roads federally ensures AV fleets don't face 50 different striping and digital signage languages across state lines.

Build a shared, machine-readable Digital Twin—a live virtual replica of roadway geometry, lane widths, speed limits, work zones, bridge clearances, and traffic control devices—co-funded at a 100% federal innovation share. A digital twin allows city and state engineers to simulate crash risks, test signal timing changes, broadcast live work-zone lane closures directly to connected and autonomous vehicles, and track asset deterioration in real time rather than relying on outdated paper maps or manual field inspections.

Deploy freight-corridor V2X, smart truck parking sensors, and automated port-gate appointment systems using National Commerce & Freight block grants at a 100% federal cost-share for qualifying digital technology. Connecting commercial trucks digitally to highway traffic signals, weigh-in-motion stations, and real-time rest-area parking availability reduces idle time at port gates, smooths corridor speeds, and allows long-haul drivers to locate safe night parking before their legal driving hours expire.

Adopt the AV-Ready uniform pavement marking standard (high-contrast, wider 6-inch retroreflective edge and lane lines) across all state and local resurfacing projects because it is a dual-benefit safety investment. High-contrast, durable lane markings allow computer-vision cameras and lidar on automated and driver-assist vehicles to lock onto lanes reliably in rain and fog, while simultaneously giving human drivers—especially older drivers at night—dramatically clearer visual guidance to prevent fatal lane departures.

Require all federally funded digital infrastructure, V2X roadside units, and data platforms to comply with the open, machine-readable National Transportation Data Standard and open API architectures. When agencies buy closed, proprietary software, they cannot share data with neighboring jurisdictions or switch hardware vendors without ripping out the entire system. Conditioning federal grant receipt on open, standardized, machine-readable data interfaces guarantees vendor interoperability across all 50 states.

No—make AV-ready road standards and V2X deployment voluntary and incentive-driven, backed by 90% to 100% federal funding eligibility rather than an unfunded mandate. Dense urban centers and major interstate freight corridors where autonomous fleets and heavy commercial traffic are already operating can deploy digital twins and V2X roadside units immediately, while rural counties can adopt high-visibility machine-readable lane striping organically as their roads come up for routine repaving.

Digitally map municipal curb zones into a machine-readable digital curb inventory (part of the network Digital Twin) funded under the 100% digital infrastructure share. When pickup/drop-off zones, commercial loading bays, bus stops, and bike lanes are published in a standardized digital format, cities can dynamically price commercial curb access, direct autonomous vehicles to safe drop-off spots away from crosswalks, and prevent double-parking from blocking bus lanes and bikeways.

Require contractors on federally funded road projects to broadcast real-time, machine-readable digital work-zone data feeds into the state’s Digital Twin and National Data Portal. Automated vehicles and navigation apps rely on accurate lane-closure data; when a construction crew shifts lanes with orange cones, broadcasting those exact coordinates digitally warns approaching vehicles in advance and protects highway construction workers from work-zone intrusions.

Replace decades of General Fund bailouts with a three-part fiscal bridge to a permanent user-fee system: (1) immediately dedicate existing imported steel and iron tariff revenues directly into the Highway Trust Fund; (2) establish a fair, per-mile transitional fee on Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) capped at what an average gas car pays; and (3) launch a 5-year, voluntary nationwide Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) Choice Pilot that ends in a legislative blueprint to replace the federal fuel tax altogether.

Acknowledge that the 18.4-cent federal gasoline tax is structurally expiring due to inflation and fleet electrification, and begin building its per-mile replacement immediately. Unchanged since 1993 and unindexed to inflation, the gas tax has lost nearly 40% of its purchasing power while construction costs have soared. Simultaneously, rising vehicle fuel economy and rapid adoption of electric vehicles mean every mile driven generates less tax revenue for the roads those vehicles use.

Charge Battery Electric Vehicles a actual per-mile road usage fee—not a punitive flat annual registration fee—subject to a strict statutory Equity Cap guaranteeing that no EV owner ever pays more in a year than the average gasoline vehicle pays in federal fuel tax. Flat annual EV fees (often $200+ in some states) unfairly penalize low-mileage urban and senior EV drivers. Pricing EV road use by the mile via an annual odometer reading on the owner's federal tax return ensures light drivers pay little, heavy drivers pay proportionally, and nobody pays a penny more than a comparable gas car.

Give every participant in a national VMT pilot two clear choices, with privacy-first odometer reporting as the default:

1. Simple Odometer System (Default): Counts total annual miles driven at a flat rate with zero GPS or location tracking of any kind.
2. Smart VMT System (Opt-In Only): Uses location technology to offer lower rates on rural roads and peak-hour congestion pricing in major metros.

Mandate by statute that all pilot data be encrypted, minimized, anonymized, and strictly barred from law enforcement or surveillance use without a court-ordered warrant.

Make participation completely risk-free by holding volunteers financially harmless (refunding or crediting 100% of the federal gas taxes or EV fees they pay during the pilot) and paying every participant a $100 to $400 annual financial incentive for contributing data. Recruit a demographically and geographically representative national sample—spanning urban, suburban, and rural drivers across all income brackets and vehicle types (gas, hybrid, EV)—so the 5-year trial produces ironclad evidence ready for national conversion.

Automatically deposit 100% of existing tariff revenues collected on imported steel and iron directly into the Highway Trust Fund rather than letting them disappear into the general Treasury. Steel and iron are the foundational physical inputs of bridges, guardrails, transit tracks, and reinforced roadways. Dedicating duties already collected at the border creates an immediate, non-bureaucratic revenue stream for infrastructure repair without imposing a single new form or tax on American drivers—acting as the first span of the fiscal bridge while EV and VMT user fees scale up.

Write an explicit statutory double-payment exemption into the law: any Battery Electric Vehicle owner who volunteers for the 5-year American VMT Choice Pilot is automatically exempt from the transitional EV mileage fee for every year they participate in the pilot. Similarly, gasoline and diesel drivers in the pilot receive a full tax credit for fuel taxes paid at the pump. Seamless integration between the transitional EV bridge and the long-term VMT pilot guarantees no driver is ever taxed twice for the same mile.

Test variable geographic and time-of-day pricing inside the voluntary Smart VMT opt-in tier: charge a discounted per-mile rate on designated rural roads where drivers have no transit alternatives and roads are uncongested, and apply a peak-hour congestion surcharge in heavily congested metropolitan corridors. Crucially, return 100% of that urban congestion surcharge back to the local metropolitan transit and transportation agency where it was generated so commuters get faster buses and trains in exchange.

Collect the transitional EV per-mile fee once a year on the vehicle owner’s existing federal income tax return via a certified odometer reading, cross-checked against existing state DMV inspection, registration, and title-transfer records. Include simple pro-rata adjustments when a car is bought, sold, totaled, or driven outside the country during the year. Using the existing IRS filing pipeline avoids creating 50 separate state collection bureaucracies or installing mandatory hardware in private cars.

Mandate by law that the pilot conclude with an actionable Legislative Conversion Blueprint delivered to Congress, containing a recommended long-term per-mile rate schedule designed to keep the Highway Trust Fund permanently solvent and a phased schedule for repealing the federal gasoline and diesel taxes. A pilot without a statutory destination is just an academic study; designing the pilot as the operational dress rehearsal for repealing the 1993 gas tax ensures Congress has the data needed to act.

Restore the Highway Trust Fund to a self-sustaining, predictable user-fee and dedicated-revenue foundation so states and transit agencies can plan 10-year capital programs with confidence. When the Trust Fund lurches from one emergency General Fund bailout to the next, long-term bridge replacements, rail extensions, and pavement schedules face recurring threats of obligation slowdowns and funding freezes.

Design the steel tariff dedication as one span of a three-part revenue architecture, not a standalone cure-all. Because tariff collections naturally fluctuate with global trade and trade policy, best practice pairs immediate tariff deposits with the scaling transitional EV per-mile fee (which grows every year as the fleet electrifies) and the 5-year transition to a universal VMT fee—ensuring long-term stability regardless of trade policy shifts.

Give freight its own dedicated National Commerce & Freight formula block grant and a consolidated National Commerce Corridors competitive grant program that funds freight the way goods actually move: across an entire multimodal corridor—port, rail, bridge, and highway together—rather than split by mode. Require states to maintain a current Freight Plan developed in mandatory consultation with port authorities, freight railroads, MPOs, and private logistics operators, and block any project that isn't in that plan.

Make constructing and upgrading safe, legal commercial truck parking facilities and real-time parking availability technology an express priority of the dedicated National Commerce & Freight formula grant. Under federal hours-of-service safety laws, truck drivers must stop and rest after their legal driving window expires; when rest areas are full, drivers are forced onto dangerous highway ramps or industrial city streets. Funding dedicated truck parking expansions and smart space-availability signs along major freight corridors improves both supply-chain productivity and highway safety.

Consolidate separate federal freight-highway grants (INFRA), bridge grants, and port development grants into one unified National Commerce Corridors competitive program. In the real economy, a marine port terminal, the local connector road outside its gate, the load-posted bridge three miles inland, and the interstate freight rail crossing are one single supply-chain asset. Evaluating and funding them together in one competition—scored strictly on projected reductions in freight travel time and shipping costs—ensures fixing one bottleneck doesn't just move the queue half a mile down the road.

Prioritize at-grade railway-roadway crossing separations (overpasses, underpasses, and trenching) under both formula freight block grants and competitive corridor grants. Where busy freight rail lines cross urban arterials and port access roads at ground level, long freight trains halt emergency vehicles, buses, and commercial trucks for hours each day, while creating severe collision hazards. Separating rail from road removes the conflict permanently for both modes.

Judge freight corridor applications on metered economic units: projected reductions in freight travel time and shipping cost per dollar invested, alongside state-of-good-repair improvements and corridor resiliency. Lock those projections into binding grant agreements with post-completion performance reporting so auditors can verify whether the port gate modernization or bottleneck project actually reduced truck turn times and shipping costs as promised.

Mandate by statute that State DOTs develop their State Freight Plans and select freight projects in formal consultation with Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), public port authorities, freight rail operators, and private supply-chain businesses. Government highway engineers rarely have real-time visibility into private warehouse dwell times, intermodal rail switching bottlenecks, or port drayage queues. Putting the operators who actually move goods into the room where formula money is programmed ensures funds hit real-world choke points.

Apply the 50% federal cost-share penalty to general-purpose highway lane additions, while funding Freight State of Good Repair at 90%, freight digital logistics technology at 100%, and dedicated truck-only lanes, port connectors, and rail grade separations at 80%–90%. When a state adds a general-purpose highway lane in the name of "helping trucks," passenger commuter cars immediately fill the lane via induced demand, leaving trucks stuck in the same traffic. Dedicated truck climbing lanes, port-gate connectors, and intermodal rail transfers protect freight velocity permanently.

Use 100%-federally-matched innovation funds under the National Commerce & Freight block grant and Commerce Corridors program to deploy digital port-gate appointment systems, automated drayage staging, weigh-in-motion sensors, and V2X freight signal priority. Coordinating container ship arrivals, rail schedules, and truck gate appointments digitally can double terminal throughput and slash neighborhood diesel truck idling without pouring an acre of new pavement.

Yes—open the National Commerce Corridors competitive grant program directly to public port authorities, local governments, groups of local governments, MPOs, Tribal governments, and states on an equal footing, with a predictable annual calendar (funding notice within 4 months of appropriation and at least 3 months to apply). Ports and port cities shouldn't have to wait for a state highway department’s permission to modernize marine terminals or fix the last-mile city streets connecting port gates to the interstate.

Repeal the tangled web of over 100 legacy modal programs and replace them with three flexible formula block grants (*State of Good Repair & Resiliency*, *National Commerce & Freight*, and *Community Access & Mobility*) and three consolidated competitive grant programs (*Strategic Infrastructure Investments*, *Community Mobility*, and *National Commerce Corridors*). Fragmented programs force city and state staff to spend thousands of hours chasing narrow silos instead of solving problems. Consolidation trades bureaucratic compliance for flexible funding governed by strict, auditable performance targets.

Lock two ironclad local protections into federal law: first, a statutory direct sub-allocation and hold-harmless guarantee in the Community Access & Mobility Block Grant ensuring metropolitan and local governments receive their share directly at no less than current levels; and second, MPO Concurrence Veto Power requiring a State DOT to obtain the formal agreement of the Metropolitan Planning Organization before placing *any* flexible block-grant project located inside a metro area into the statewide program.

Require every Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) to demonstrate in writing how its selected list of projects will move the needle on approved safety, condition, congestion, and climate targets. Right now, agencies write performance targets in one binder and pick capital projects in another, with zero connection between the two. Requiring project lists to prove their expected impact turns capital programming into an evidence-based discipline.

Direct the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to establish a uniform, machine-readable National Transportation Data Standard covering five core domains—pavement/bridge condition, safety (deaths and serious injuries), congestion/reliability, freight movement, and carbon/VMT—and make compliance a mandatory condition of receiving federal funds. You cannot run a national Pay-for-Performance system, award 5% bonuses, or enforce 1% safety forfeitures when "fair pavement" or "serious injury" is defined and formatted differently in every state.

Require every state to publish a simple, standardized annual State Infrastructure & Transit Report Card on its website and feed it into a single National Infrastructure Data Portal. The report card must show: (1) progress against approved safety, repair, reliability, and workforce targets; (2) the exact condition of roads, bridges, and transit assets; (3) total federal and non-federal investments (including transit operating funds); (4) system-wide per-capita VMT and $\text{CO}_2$ emissions; and (5) a searchable list of every major project funded that year, including induced-demand disclosures for any lane additions.

Publish every state report card, project budget, Buy America waiver, and performance metric on the National Infrastructure Data Portal in open, machine-readable formats with a documented public API. Open-by-default data empowers civic technologists, university researchers, journalists, municipal planners, and private software developers to audit spending, build commuter tools, and compare state performance without filing Freedom of Information Act requests.

Give states broad flexibility by consolidating rigid program silos into three block grants, in exchange for federally approved, data-defensible targets backed by a 5% Bonus Pool for outperformance and a 1% local reinvestment forfeiture for persistent safety failure. Washington does not dictate which specific intersection or bridge a state must fix, nor does it set a state’s targets—but states must defend their targets with empirical data and publish their results on common yardsticks.

Align every dollar of federal surface transportation funding around six plain-language national goals:

1. Safety: A significant reduction in traffic fatalities and serious injuries on all public roads toward zero;
2. State of Good Repair: Maintaining existing roads, bridges, tunnels, and transit in good condition;
3. Congestion Reduction: Measurable reductions in delay on the national network;
4. System Reliability: Efficient, dependable travel times for all users and modes;
5. Freight Vitality: A resilient supply-chain network supporting economic competitiveness;
6. Environmental Sustainability: Enhancing mobility while reducing carbon emissions and protecting the natural environment.

Write a fixed annual grant calendar into statute for competitive programs: USDOT must publish the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) within 4 months of funds becoming available, give applicants at least 3 months to prepare and submit applications, and announce final award decisions—notifying every successful and unsuccessful applicant—within 7 months of the deadline. Predictable calendars let small cities plan capital budgets around reliable annual cycles rather than erratic political announcements.

Require USDOT to assign every Strategic Infrastructure Investment Program (SIIP) megaproject application one of three transparent grades—Highly Recommended, Recommended, or Not Recommended—based on its Benefit-Cost Analysis and engineering readiness, and publish the grades for every project considered, funded or not. Publicly grading rejected applications eliminates backroom political spin, shows taxpayers why a project wasn't ready, and gives local sponsors clear feedback on how to fix their scope or financing for the next cycle.

Use the 90% repair / 100% safety & digital / 50% new lanes federal match structure to stretch municipal capital bond dollars up to five times further. When presenting a capital budget to the Mayor and City Council, a city DOT director can show that $10 million in local bond funds unlocks $90 million in federal street/bridge repair (at 90/10), and $0 in local match unlocks 100% federal funding for Vision Zero intersection redesigns and smart traffic signals—whereas widening a highway requires a 50% local/state cash match.

Apply technical assistance and public Corrective Action Plans when a state falls short on condition, congestion, or freight targets, while reserving the 1% formula funding forfeiture strictly for persistent safety failure (three consecutive years of missed safety targets), paired with the 5% Bonus Pool for states that beat their targets. This balanced design keeps the focus on constructive problem-solving while drawing a hard moral and fiscal line where human lives are at stake.

Protect rural and Tribal mobility through two dedicated channels: first, fold rural transit formula funding into the consolidated Community Access & Mobility Block Grant with protected sub-allocations that newly allow flexible spending on both rural transit operations and on-demand microtransit; and second, make Tribal governments, rural counties, and small towns direct eligible applicants for the consolidated Community Mobility competitive grant (with a 90% repair match and 100% safety match).

Enforce a bright-line statutory threshold: any project that adds general-purpose through-lanes for 0.5 miles or more automatically loses the maintenance exemption on the Carbon and VMT Scorecard, and any project adding a new general-purpose lane of 1.0 mile or more on the National Highway System drops to a 50% federal cost-share. Clear, objective mileage thresholds prevent creative relabeling of highway widenings.

Rewrite the statutory mission of the Bureau of Transportation Statistics to make it the lead federal agency for transportation data standardization, collection, analysis, and public dissemination, armed with the legal authority to require standardized data from any grant recipient and a dedicated modernization budget. An independent professional statistics bureau—rather than modal grant-making offices grading their own homework—ensures national transportation metrics are objective, comparable, and trustworthy.

Stack two major performance incentives: states that significantly exceed their approved safety, repair, transit ridership, and congestion targets draw from a 5% Pay-for-Performance Bonus Pool (Sec. 105), and states that beat their construction trade graduation, apprenticeship, and hiring-speed targets earn a 10% Workforce Bonus (Sec. 405). Both bonuses can be spent flexibly on any eligible surface transportation priority—turning good governance into hundreds of millions of dollars in extra infrastructure funding.

Immediately audit your current 5-year capital program (TIP/STIP) against the 90 / 100 / 50 rule and the Safe System Approach:

1. Inventory all existing pavement, bridge, and transit assets by risk;
2. Unbundle Vision Zero safety countermeasures and digital signal/curb projects into standalone packages ready for 100% federal funding;
3. Shift local formula dollars into high-frequency bus operations and on-demand paratransit/microtransit; and
4. Subject any proposed highway lane widening to a rigorous induced-VMT, lifecycle carbon, and 50%-match fiscal test.

Stop managing decline and start engineering progress. Replace the mid-20th-century settlement—which blindly subsidized highway expansion through an unindexed gas tax—with four foundational management principles:

1. Fix It First & Design for Survival: Prioritize state of good repair (90% share) and Vision Zero Safe System engineering (100% share) over new lanes (50% share).
2. Empower Local Communities & Transit Operations: Guarantee direct local funding and legalize federal formula spending on daily bus and train operations.
3. Pay for Performance in Public: Tie funding to verified targets, workforce growth, and open machine-readable data.
4. Pay for the System Honestly: Bridge the Trust Fund from tariffs and capped EV mileage parity to a privacy-protected, user-based per-mile future.