As the Interstate Highway System enters its seventh decade, last year’s five-year, $305-billion Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act will provide only a slight funding increase to address the system’s infrastructure needs.
Since President Eisenhower signed legislation on June 29, 1956, launching the interstate system and the motor-fuels tax to pay for much of its construction, its traffic and congestion have worsened, and funding is short of what’s needed to maintain and upgrade the 47,662-mile network, according to a June 27 report from TRIP, a Washington-based transportation research organization.