Submitted by Ken Watts
Perhaps you heard on the news this past week that the Biden Administration wants to block funding for new highways. Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, who manages the Federal Highway Administration, says that highways are smog and climate-change generators. In a memo, FHWA urged staffers not to fund projects that “add new general purpose travel lanes”. Making US 20 Ashton to SH 87 a four lane freeway, would be adding travel lanes. Maybe Secretary Buttigieg is an ally in the Island Park communities’ opposition to the freeway. Ken’s Korner checked the news sources and found an article from the Wall Street Journal that substantiated the reports. A portion of the WSJ article follows: “The Biden Administration is trying to block new infrastructure spending from funding new highways. Thanks to a Senate intervention, major upgrades could be coming to a highway near you—but only if enough lawmakers follow through. The Administration’s plan to restrict new highways began after President Biden signed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill in 2021. Nineteen GOP Senators backed that spending blowout in hope of bringing home billions of dollars for state projects, specifically roads and bridges. But a month later the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) sent a memo to staffers urging them to deny competitive grants to projects that “add new general purpose travel lanes”—aka new roads. The guidance mimics restrictions that were offered by then-Rep. Peter DeFazio and expressly rejected by a House with a Democratic majority. Senate Republicans challenged the FHWA memo, and last month the Government Accountability Office (GAO) agreed that the guidance was an executive-branch overreach. “We conclude the Memo is a rule,” the GAO said in a report, finding that the policy exceeded the FHWA’s mandate. Reclassifying the guidance as a formal rule means Congress will get a chance to revoke it under the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The stakes are high because the FHWA will award billions of dollars in competitive grants over five years. State officials know that adding highway lanes is often the best way to reduce congestion and boost safety, but they’ll turn their attention elsewhere if the Biden Administration’s rule is left in place. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who oversees the FHWA, thinks highways are smog and climate-change generators, and he defended the restrictions in a Senate hearing last March.” If the FHWA rule is not revoked, it may not even be possible to add passing lanes to US 20 Ashton to SH 87. We would be left with the no build option only.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Making Sense of It All
This blog will help you make sense out of all the information on the website, how it affects IP, our history, and how efforts continue to put IP into various forms of conservation status. Archives
May 2023
Categories |