Congressman Lowenthal Bill Will Create National Freight Program to Rebuild Crumbling Infrastructure

Congressman Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) has introduced legislation aimed at strengthening America's economic competitiveness by providing a dedicated revenue source to invest in our national freight infrastructure.

The Congressman's bill, H.R.5624, Economy in Motion: The National Multimodal and Sustainable Freight Infrastructure Act, would dedicate roughly $8 billion a year to freight-related infrastructure projects throughout the nation, with a focus on intermodal projects and projects that help relieve the bottlenecks in the freight transportation system.

The bill creates two freight specific grant programs. The first is a formula system, in which each state would receive funds each year based on the amount of existing freight infrastructure within the state. To be eligible, states must develop comprehensive State Freight Plans. They must also have, or form, State Freight Advisory Committees, as encouraged under MAP-21, the federal highway authorization enacted in 2012. Under the formula mechanism, states can also create partnerships to receive funding for multi-state plans.

A second funding mechanism is a competitive grant program that would be open to all local, regional, and state governments.

The freight programs would be funded through a national 1 percent waybill fee on the transportation cost of goods.  To ensure that these user fees will be dedicated to building our nation's freight infrastructure, the bill establishes the Freight Transportation Infrastructure Trust Fund which will prevent the funds from being diverted for other purposes.

In addition, the state freight plans will contain environmental goals and strategies developed by state freight advisory committee members;  providing a path for freight projects to address and reduce the environmental and community impacts of goods movement.

"The movement of goods is one of the most important economic engines in our nation. The infrastructure this engine depends on is crumbling and we must fix it, make it stronger, and make it better. My bill would do this while also taking action to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts that are the unintended consequence of goods movement. We can create a cleaner economic engine," Congressman Lowenthal said.

Sustained investment at the $8 billion level is necessary to address a growing backlog of infrastructure needs to support our economy. According to a new report by the National Association of Manufacturers, "the United States is stuck in a decade-long period of decline in overall infrastructure capital spending that will eventually harm job creation, future productivity and global competitiveness."