Hurry up and wait – again

Funny thing about time. No matter what else we are doing, time continues on. Things we put on the back burner for a while to do other things eventually must be moved to the front and dealt with. That is exactly where Congress is…yet again. You may recall that several months ago – before they took a summer recess – there was furious action to pass a six-year transportation bill. In fact, the senate did pass a version of a long-term bill. The house decided to work on their own version of the bill, rather than address the senate bill directly. There was talk that over the recess, work would be done and, hopefully, concerns addressed and the requisite dollars would be found.

Well, so far no word on when the house bill will be introduced – some say this week – and where the dollars are coming from. The lack of action on this long-term bill has implications on other work as well. As a result of the lack of a long-term bill, Congress passed legislation at the very end of the session to extend the current transportation bill – MAP-21 – until October 29. In all likelihood, the current bill will have to be extended yet again until Congress can agree and fund a new long-term bill.

Oh – and one more thing. According to the latest estimates by USDOT, the Highway Trust Fund is now expected to have adequate funding resources until June of 2016, six months later than they had previously estimated. Congress transferred dollars to the trust fund in its most recent extension, hoping to keep the fund solvent until December. But this new information takes the pressure off to get a long-term bill done this year. So, I am not at all confident that anything significant will happen yet this year, either programmatically and certainly no increases in badly needed funding.

By the way, this is the same approach the state legislature took related to increases in transportation funding. Lots of activity in the days leading up to summer break, but no action. Now, the talk is maybe having something in place by the end of the year – right before the holiday break!

Hurry up and wait continues to be the mantra of both Congress and our state legislature. Meanwhile, the clock continues to tick, problems continue to worsen, and no one seems to care much, because they sure aren’t doing anything about it.