Infra Insight Blog

On September 23, 2024, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky issued an Opinion and Order in Mid-America Milling Co., LLC, et al., v. U.S. Department of Transportation, et. al., No. 3:23-CV-00072-GFVT, 2024 WL 4267183 (E.D. Ky. Sept. 23, 2024), granting a preliminary injunction on the basis that the race- and gender-based rebuttable presumptions used in the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program violates the United States Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. ... 

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (P.L. 117-58; IIJA) expanded the scope of the Buy America preference by requiring that all construction materials, iron and steel, and manufactured products used in federally supported infrastructure projects be produced in the United States. Prior to the IIJA, Buy America requirements did not apply to construction materials.

The federal government began implementing the new requirements earlier this year, beginning with the Office of Management and Budget’s implementation guidance, followed by the U.S. Department of ...

Today, US DOT is formally announcing 26 INFRA grant award winners.  The INFRA program is the Administration’s rebranding of the former FASTLANE grant program, authorized by the 2015 FAST Act.  Both programs were intended to prioritize highway projects, although congestion-reducing rail and port infrastructure projects are eligible.

Among the 26 winners is the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PhilaPort), which received a $25.5M grant for a $110.5M project to improve the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal. The project will add capacity to modernize the Terminal, including ...

At the end of 2015, two modal administrations of the United States Department of Transportation (US DOT) have encountered changes to their Buy America programs.  Both the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have had changes imposed upon their Buy America procedures – the FTA by Congress through provisions in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (or, FAST Act) and the FHWA through a recent opinion in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing ...

Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx chaired a virtual town hall meeting, entitled Moving from Uncertainty to Long-Term Transportation Investment, on August 6, 2014.  The town hall was open to the general public, as well as business leaders, transportation advocates, and state and local government officials.  Secretary Foxx discussed the United States Department of Transportation’s (US DOT) vision for the future of transportation, as well as answered questions from attendees about transportation policy.

In his opening remarks, and throughout the question and answer ...

Victor Mendez, Acting Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation, participated this morning in a Bloomberg Government panel entitled America on the Move: Investing in U.S. Infrastructure. In a wide-ranging discussion, he addressed the issue of long-term funding for U.S. infrastructure.

He commented that there is a need for many funding options and we need the private sector in the mix. The TIFIA program has been successful, financing 40 or so projects so far with the private sector, many of them toll roads.  Some of the projects are very long term, up to 50 years.

Mendez ...

As part of its effort to meet MAP-21’s legislative requirement to develop standard public-private partnership transaction model contracts for the most popular types of public-private partnerships, the Federal Highway Administration held a listening session with representatives from the transportation industry at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Washington D.C. on January 16.  Representatives from state departments of transportation, general contractors, trade associations, legal advisors and others were in attendance, and solicited to provide FHWA with the ...