Keep Framework of TEA 21, Strengthen Local Components
The Brookings Institution calls on Congress to retain the framework of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in its reauthorization of TEA 21, while also seeking the transfer of additional control to local areas.

“Enactment of the first major federal transportation bill of the twenty-first century should become the seminal moment when Washington truly gets transportation policy right for metropolitan America,” authors Bruce Katz, Robert Puentes, and Scott Bernstein state in TEA-21 Reauthorization: Getting Transportation Right for Metropolitan America, a report recently released by the Brookings Institution’s Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy.

“ISTEA and TEA 21 for the first time embedded in law the principle that America’s metropolitan reality required and integrated, balanced, and regionally designed transportation system. As a framework the laws are sound,” the report says. “Unfortunately, implementation of the new federal statutes has been seriously flawed.…Most notably, most states have failed to utilize the tools and discretion afforded them…to meaningfully address the worsening transportation problems bogging down their metropolitan regions.”