With the December 2015 passage of the FAST Act, $225 billion was allocated to the highway program over a five-year period, $10.8 billion of which is allocated to freight programs. The increased funding was long overdue.
The first of the programs is the Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects program, a new $4.5 billion grant program for highway projects that improve the movement of freight on either the National Highway Freight Network (NHFN) or the National Highway System (NHS). Another freight program, the $6.3 billion National Highway Freight Program, apportions money to all states to only be spent on the NHFN for projects improving freight movements.
President-elect Donald Trump Donald Trump's $1 trillion infrastructure plan sounds good to New York Democrat Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate minority leader said Tuesday. Schumer has highlighted infrastructure as one issue that Democrats can work with Trump on, casting some of the billionaire’s positions as “surprisingly” progressive and populist. And the New York Democrat has insisted that Congress could pass Trump's infrastructure bill within his first 100 days, as long as it's free of “gimmicks” and tax breaks.
The president-elect has called for a $1 trillion investment into upgrading the nation’s roads, bridges, tunnels and airports.