G.G. I.I.J.A., Tarped Turnstiles, Dolly Departure

Well, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is over.

As of midnight last night, the five-year transportation bill that President Biden signed back in 2021, which spends your federal gas tax money you pay at the pump, it ended September 30th at the stroke of midnight.

Congress was supposed to have a new five-year transportation pa- bill passed by now, and, well, like normal, they don't.

So they bought themselves some time, as usual, uh, 10 more weeks.

Lawmakers sent President Trump the stop ba- uh, stopgap bill to his desk, which he signed.

It'll continue to pay money out to the states through December 11th under the old formula.

Keeps money flowing to DOTs and to for, uh, improvements to the national highway system so they can keep working on pavement and bridges.

But transit formula funds and, uh, rail pra- uh, passenger rail grants, those are taking a hit.

And so if you're listening right now on the Patreon exclusive Fast Track version of this podcast, uh, thank you for being a supporter.

I'll go into the weird parts of the law here in just a minute of why transit in particular is getting hit so hard.

Funny enough, it has to do with the gas tax itself.

But in the meantime, Amtrak is gonna lose 80% of its federal grant support to build some things, and transit agencies are losing out on 20%.

So we'll have to see how everything shakes out as Congress finalizes the final details on the five-year, there's a lot of alliteration there, five-year, uh, transportation bill, hopefully before the deadline hits again in mid-December.