Advocates are pushing for a simple but potentially seismic change in how America delegates its federal transportation dollars — by giving more funds directly to the regional governments whose taxpayers disproportionately generate them, to meet local transportation priorities that disproportionately get overlooked.
Earlier this month, researchers at Brookings Metro released a provocative proposal to create a new $10-billion "Regional Transportation Block Grant" program, which would create a stable federal formula fund for metropolitan planning organizations across America to accomplish their transportation goals.
For forward-thinking state DOTs, that shift would simply streamline the process of getting transportation money to cities, which currently have to wait for higher agencies to suballocate federal dollars down to the regional level, facing steep costs and bureaucratic burdens along the way.
For others, though, that move would modernize an outdated process that has too often allowed state DOTs to redirect money intended for a range of transportation needs to expanding and maintaining state-owned roads alone, despite the fact that 66 percent of pedestrian deaths continue to occur on them.
There's a fairness argument for a regional block grant program, too. Brookings estimates that the users of local roads — on which Americans travel 34 percent of all their miles, and which represent 76 percent of the total network — pay roughly $10 billion in gas taxes every year, or the amount that the researchers recommend devoting to the new fund. Right now, though, state DOTs allocate an average of just 16 percent of their federal funding to those local roads, with some states like Nevada, Wyoming and West Virginia allocating almost no money at all.
"[This report] finally puts solid research behind something that MPOs and local governments have known and experienced for decades, which is that federal funding the model doesn't reflect how infrastructure is actually planned, delivered or lived," said Katie Economou, legislative director for the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, which has been advocating for more direct federal funding to MPOs for years. "Regional systems — whether it's transit, roads, housing, freight, broadband — don't stop at jurisdictional lines. And that's why regional governments like MPOs are so important in this process."
How we got here
Economou argues that despite not getting their federal due, the universe of MPOs have played a critical yet "under-appreciated role in our transportation system" since they were first created by Congress in 1962, setting mobility priorities for 410 regions across America, or every metro above 50,000 people. Brookings estimates that 85 percent of the American people live in metropolitan regions, and those regions generate more than 90 percent of total GDP.
Unlike state DOT leadership, who is usually appointed by governors, MPO boards are largely made up of municipal elected officials and county commissioners. Economou emphasizes that they "operate at the scale where transportation is actually experienced: across municipal boundaries, but below the state level." (Put another way: most Americans will rarely drive across their entire state, but they'll frequently cross county lines, and might even regularly cross state lines if they live in a metropolitan area that straddles a border.)
Simply setting local mobility priorities, though, doesn't mean that metros always have the money to make those visions real — especially in states where highway agencies hog federal transportation dollars.
The Brookings researchers explain that since they were first established in the mid 1950s to build out the federal highway system, state DOTs have evolved into Congress' "preferred intermediary" for most federal road funds, enjoying a bonanza $79 billion per year under the most recent infrastructure law, or about 87 percent of that bill's total surface transportation money.
On paper, all that cash comes with strings attached, like federal transparency requirements to develop public-facing long-range plans about what they'll build, and to tie those plans to national goals like protecting the environment and non-drivers. In practice, though, the public is left largely in the dark about how state DOTs actually spend their tax dollars, and agencies face little accountability when road deaths or emissions skyrocket as a result of their investments.
And if projects in metropolitan regions get short shrift, that's largely invisible to the public, too — especially since the average person has no idea who's refusing to fix the potholed arterial through the middle of town where pedestrians keep getting killed, or why that train line they were promised in their neighborhood has been delayed for decades.
"No one knows whether a road is a state-owned highway or a local road," added Brittney Kohler, legislative director for transportation and infrastructure at the National League of Cities. "They only expect that the journey from A to B will work. ... And so our advocacy to the federal government has always been [that] we take care of a majority of the maintenance and investment on our road networks, and we need the federal government to continue to support that."
How MPOs get by — and how they can thrive
In the absence of stable federal support, MPOs are often forced to cobble together funding for the projects their communities need most. Sometimes, that means hard-fought local ballot measures that have to run a gauntlet of opposition and misinformation in order to win; sometimes, that means fiercely competitive federal discretionary grants, which are expensive to even apply for and for which smaller communities struggle to compete.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law opened up historic levels of new opportunities for cities and regions to compete directly for discretionary funding, but those programs were overwhelmed with more applications than they could accept – and many have proved vulnerable to freezes, rescissions and other clawbacks since Trump reclaimed the White House.
"Any time you identify a broad local or regional need and then have to go piece together funding from various sources in order to meet that need, that's going to be inherently less efficient," said Erich Zimmerman, executive director at the National Association of Regional Councils, many of which double as MPOs.
Zimmerman argued that establishing a regional transportation block grant program wouldn't minimize the importance of state DOTs, especially since their members often serve on MPO boards themselves. It would, though, allow those state agencies to focus on what they do best — meeting state-level transportation needs, like building highways — and let regional organizations take the helm on regional projects.
"The states are an extremely important partner, and that we don't expect will ever change," he added. "[But] over the years, more of the funding that's going down from the federal government is getting stuck at the state level — despite what we think is congress' intent, that more of it be provided to the local level."
The time is now
With the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law set to expire in 2026, Economou argues that there's no better time than now to restructure how we fund regional transportation priorities — and give metros a chance to realize the big plans that the infrastructure law funded. The Safe Streets and Roads for All program alone, for instance, has empowered over 1,000 communities to develop road safety plans by allowing them to apply directly to funds, but largely placed the burden on states to fund the road improvements those plans recommended.
"I think that the [last surface transportation act] showed us is what's possible when all levels of government are empowered to act," she added. "We've seen local safety strategies get national attention [for] really innovative regional projects and [push] forward a renewed sense of collaboration across the board, But if we expect state DOTs to do all the heavy lifting — which we've been defaulting to for a long time — we will fall behind, [even though] local and regional leaders are ready to step in and help."
If Congress embraces a regional block grant program, Kohler believes that non-autocentric priorities will finally get their due— and that the so-called "Highway Trust Fund" can evolve to fund the complete modern transportation system America deserves.
"We're very significant stakeholders in the ownership of America's infrastructure. And yet there is a hesitation [among] those who have been a part of this system for a long time, to not look at the full spectrum of roads and connections that we need as a country," she added. "That's been one of the critical challenges: changing from a scarcity mindset, where we are only investing what we are putting into Highway Trust Fund into this highway-centric [approach]. We absolutely need highways, but we also need journeys that make sense."
