The House Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) approved last week an appropriations bill for 2020 that would boost funding levels for public transportation and passenger rail to $16.2 billion.
The effort earned the immediate approval of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) for the benefit of both commuters and communities.
“We congratulate House Appropriations THUD Subcommittee Chair David Price and the entire Subcommittee for its work to provide essential funding to bring the nation’s bus and rail systems up to a state of good repair,” APTA President and CEO Paul P. Skoutelas said. “It is also significant that the Subcommittee provided specific guidance to the agencies to reaffirm the importance of moving forward with critical public transportation and intercity rail projects to meet the growing transportation needs of Americans.”
In all, the bill would split funding into $13.5 billion for public transportation and $2.7 billion for passenger rail grants. It is a gain of $150 million over the previous year’s appropriations and further secured such gains by banning a 12 percent cut to public transportation formula grants in 2020. It also provides $827 million in competitive grants for bus purchases and facility construction and $2.3 billion for Capital Investment Grants.
Additionally, the bill does not allow for the Federal Railroad Administration to reappropriate the $2.5 billion in funding that it had already provided to the troubled California High-Speed Rail Project as well as the transferring of nearly $1 billion in California high-speed rail grants that were terminated last week.