As Congress continues to work on the next surface transportation reauthorization, it’s important to understand what’s at stake, why it matters, and how today’s decisions will shape our transportation system for years to come. On top of that, the administration’s decisions to override or ignore Congress on transportation funding, rising costs, and emerging technologies present new challenges that underscore why reauthorization is an opportunity to build something better—if lawmakers are willing to rethink the status quo.
Every five years, Congress is supposed to renew the roughly $77 billion federal surface transportation program, which sets the policies, priorities, and funding for the nation’s highway, transit, safety, and rail programs. As we anticipated, lawmakers missed the end-of-September deadline to pass a new reauthorization and instead extended the current program, leaving out billions in funding for transit, rail, safety, and other priorities. (Extensions are nothing new: Congress has relied on extensions about a third of the time since 1997.)
New to reauthorization? Read our guide to understand what it is and how it works.
Rather than simply hitting pause to focus on the midterm elections, Congress should treat this extension as an opportunity to rethink the federal transportation program, ensure it will be faithfully implemented by any administration, and establish stronger accountability measures so the next one can actually deliver its stated goals. While every reauthorization offers another opportunity to make long-overdue changes, several issues make the current process especially urgent: The program’s failure to deliver on past goals, an administration refusing to implement the congressionally approved program, rising costs, and emerging technologies that require new rules.
Here are five reasons why this reauthorization matters more than ever:
1. Tracking progress on past goals
The lead-up to a new reauthorization is an ideal time to evaluate whether the program has made progress on its stated goals of improving safety and infrastructure conditions, reducing congestion, and protecting the environment and public health. Over the past 30-plus years, the U.S. has spent $1.5 trillion in taxpayer dollars without making any meaningful progress toward its goals. And despite a historic increase in funding, the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) doubled down on the same failing status quo—even before the Trump administration began withholding and delaying funds Congress had already approved for the program.
Take safety, which should be the number one priority in our transportation system. The U.S. faces a safety crisis unlike that of any other peer country, marked by a 72 percent increase in people struck and killed while walking on our roads between 2009 and 2024. If the U.S. had taken the same steps as every other peer country, 63,441 lives could have been saved over the last decade alone.
2. Protecting our priorities
The federal transportation program doesn’t have enough funding to cover every priority. Its funding model has been broken for years, with user fees failing to cover costs since 2008, requiring repeated infusions of additional taxpayer dollars. With funding levels under closer scrutiny and the Trump administration already withholding funding for public transit projects, transit investments face a very real risk of cuts during the next reauthorization.
The administration slowed transit funding during its first term, but made history during its second by not approving or advancing a single transit capital project—including metros, light rail, and bus rapid transit lines—during its initial year and a half in office. And stalling, canceling, rescinding, or pressuring changes to approved projects doesn’t seem likely to stop anytime soon. Last year, USDOT floated ending all federal transit funding, and this summer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy proposed eliminating the entire Mass Transit Account.
Transit isn’t the only priority at risk. USDOT recently removed proven safety solutions such as speed cameras, bike lanes, and road diets from its official online list of Proven Safety Countermeasures, making it harder for communities to secure funding and make these improvements. Unless we closely watch the reauthorization process, any remaining support for these interventions could disappear.
Congress can use reauthorization to make safety the top priority by strengthening accountability and by encouraging more transparent data, roadway safety research, and evidence-backed guidance for roadway design. To make transit a priority, lawmakers should start by restoring recent cuts to the IIJA’s Division J advance appropriations, which slashed previous investments in public transit and passenger rail. And while drafting the next program, Congress can give transit the same funding levels and streamlined project processes as highways.
3. Gaining leverage with the current administration
This reauthorization offers Congress an opportunity to make agencies more accountable to taxpayers, especially as the current administration continues to withhold or delay funding for programs Congress has already approved.
As outlined above, the Trump administration has refused to advance projects through programs like Capital Investment Grants. If the administration is already undermining existing programs, why should Congress assume that a new bill—even one with meaningful policy improvements—would be implemented any differently? And why is there a rush to put together a new bill when the last one hasn’t even been seen through?
Congress shouldn’t be eager to advance the next reauthorization while the administration keeps refusing to implement the current program. That’s why we’ve recommended extending it for at least one year. Congress should use that time to include airtight language in the next bill that would ensure consequences for any administration that refuses to carry out the law.
4. Improving affordability for everyday Americans
Americans across the country face an affordability crisis across many aspects of daily life. Studies from 2023 show that nearly half of all people live in economically insecure families, and one-third of middle-class Americans cannot afford basic necessities. Transportation is already the second-highest expense for most households, and given the rising costs of owning and operating a car, reauthorization is a critical opportunity to provide much-needed relief.
In a recent letter to the bipartisan leaders of four committees, Senate Democrats acknowledged transportation’s role in addressing this crisis: “Families deserve affordable options for daily travel, including transit, passenger rail, walking, and biking. By developing other ways to get around, families can save money on fuel, reduce vehicle maintenance costs, reduce insurance costs, and even avoid purchasing additional vehicles altogether.”
Through reauthorization, Congress has the opportunity to invest in more rail, transit, and active transportation options that give people across the country cheaper ways to reach jobs, school, and other essential services. These investments could save the average American household an estimated $750 annually in gas and vehicle maintenance and $1,300 in vehicle depreciation.
5. Charting a course for emerging technologies
As we speed toward another major technological transformation with the emergence of autonomous vehicles (AVs), the federal government has not established meaningful guardrails, leaving the private sector free to operate with little oversight. Although they present an opportunity, especially for non-drivers, AVs could also threaten safety, public health, the environment, and the overall functioning of our transportation system.
We’ve already outlined how the federal government can ensure AVs meet their potential: require transparent data reporting on general operations, any incidents, and other anomalies; audit new vehicle models; allow localities to determine how AVs operate on their own streets; and penalize empty AVs that congest our roads. Without meaningful standards, empty AVs have already started crowding streets and even neighborhoods across the country.
To learn more about reauthorization, see our existing resources on the process, including our platform outlining the policy proposals we’d like to see and explainers on the process and how to engage.
The post Five reasons why transportation reauthorization matters in 2026 appeared first on Transportation For America.
