The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee early Friday morning advanced a $580 billion bill to reauthorize a slate of road, bridge and transportation infrastructure programs for five years after approving amendments targeting rail safety and truck weights.
The Build America 250 Act was approved with a 66-2 vote after a 14-hour committee markup that began Thursday morning. In a statement Friday, Committee Chair Sam Graves, R-Mo., said he looks forward to moving the bill on the House floor “in the near future."
“I believe that this is the most important surface transportation bill since President Eisenhower built the interstate system,” Graves said during the hearing. "That’s because we have a duty to not just preserve and hand down President Eisenhower’s infrastructure legacy, but to build the next generation of world-class infrastructure for our children and grandchildren.”
The bill authorizes more than $50 billion for America’s bridges over five years, which House Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves said represents “the largest single bridge investment in America’s history”. It also includes a framework for autonomous commercial motor vehicles and allows fees to be imposed on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to support the Highway Trust Fund.
Committee members approved an amendment adding a slate of rail safety reforms to the bill. The amendment — the Rail Safety Act — would limit train speeds for trains carrying certain chemicals, require railroads to maintain real-time hazmat information, and require DOT to review the safety of growing train lengths.
The amendment also prevents railroads from limiting the time needed by employees to conduct safety inspections, and requires most Class I freight trains to have at least one conductor and one locomotive engineer. President Donald Trump backed the provision in a Truth Social post Thursday.
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Ian Jefferies, the president and CEO of the Association for American Railroads, criticized some of the rail safety measures in a statement Friday, warning that they “will only increase costs throughout the freight network and broader supply chain with no proven safety benefit — ultimately harming rail customers, manufacturers, energy producers, farmers and American consumers already facing significant affordability pressures.”
"The Railway Safety Act, as written, violates the President’s pledge to lower costs, and is an unfortunate example that politics and special-interest pressure can sometimes usurp sound, data-driven policymaking during today’s proceedings,” he wrote.
The committee also approved an amendment filed by Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., to create a pilot program enabling states to allow six-axle vehicles to haul up to 91,000 pounds on federal interstates. States could voluntarily opt into the program.
During the committee debate, Johnson said Congress has not updated gross vehicle weight limits in 44 years. He also pointed to a study that suggests upping truck weight limits could save cheese, butter and ice cream manufacturers 105,000 truck trips annually. He added that it would enable livestock haulers to move the same number of cattle with four trucks instead of five.
“This pilot program allows willing states to be able to better utilize their federal infrastructure and to have an effective and safe way to relieve their very real constraints and the very real strains within our supply chain,” he said.
Opponents who spoke out against Johnson’s amendment warned that raising truck weight limits could accelerate deterioration of roads and bridges.
“Increasing truck weights only accelerates wear and tear, raises maintenance costs, and shifts the burden onto taxpayers in local communities,” warned Salud Carbajal, D-Calif.
