Four members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, announced on April 10 that they have reached a bipartisan agreement on the broad principles for legislation and cited their top priority will be to maintain current spending levels. The current transportation law, MAP-21, is set to expire September 30.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), chairman of EPW’s Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said that the four senators agreeing on the broad principles for the bill “will help enable and encourage our colleagues in the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, to actually be willing to do the tough heavy lifting to figure out how to pay for what we all know we need to do.”
The bipartisan group agreed to focus on: Expanding opportunities for rural areas; maintaining the formulas for existing core programs; continuing efforts to leverage local resources to accelerate the construction of transportation projects and requiring what they said was better information-sharing regarding federal grants.
A Senate staffer said the senators want to build on freight provisions contained in MAP-21, such as a national freight network.
