By SEMA Washington, D.C., Staff
After months of negotiation, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)” in a bipartisan vote. Having already passed the Senate, the IIJA now heads to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The IIJA represents a historic investment in infrastructure after similar efforts have failed in previous years. The law will help address deteriorating roads, bridges, tunnels and ports that have been neglected across the country and have contributed to supply-chain bottlenecks in recent months.
The IIJA includes the text of the surface transportation reauthorization bill, providing $550 billion in new funding over five years for all modes of transportation, water, power and energy, public lands, and broadband. Below is a brief overview of the key provisions:
- $110 billion to repair highways, bridges, and roads.
- $39 billion to expand and modernize public transit systems.
- $7.5 billion for electric-vehicle charging infrastructure.
- $65 billion to update and expand the power grid.
- $66 billion to improve passenger and freight rail service.
- $15.6 billion for the Highway Safety Improvement Program.
- $42 billion in new spending for ports and airports.
- $47 billion in infrastructure upgrades to address climate change and cyberattacks.
- $65 billion for broadband infrastructure and development.
The bill also directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue several rules to promote vehicle safety for new vehicles. These include mandating that all new vehicles have monitoring systems to detect drunk drivers as early as 2026, rear-seat reminders to alert parents if a child is left in the back seat as early as 2025, and automatic emergency braking and lane-departure warnings, although no date was set for this rule. Most automakers joined a voluntary agreement under the Obama administration to install automatic emergency braking equipment on a majority of their models by September of 2022.
For more information, contact Caroline Fletcher at carolinef@sema.org.