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Dear Chairwoman DeLauro, Ranking Member Granger, Chairman Price, and Ranking Member Diaz-Balart,

On behalf of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which represents an $80 billion industry that directly employs 450,000 people and supports millions of private-sector jobs, I write to urge you to honor the promise of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and provide funding levels at least equal to the IIJA’s public transportation and passenger rail investments for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. These historic investments will enable our communities to provide access to opportunities and create family-wage jobs, advance equity, tackle climate change, and meet growing and evolving mobility demands.

Specifically, in your development of Subcommittee allocations pursuant to section 302(b) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, we urge you to allocate the necessary resources to the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) to provide at least $17.0 billion for public transit and $6.7 billion for passenger and freight rail.

When combined with the IIJA’s FY 2023 advance appropriations, these amounts will fully fund the public transit and passenger rail investments of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We also request that you fully fund RAISE and Mega grants in the bill. These investments will help communities create more resilient, multimodal transportation systems to meet today’s equity, mobility, and climate challenges.

Regarding the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grants (CIG), we urge you to provide at least $3.0 billion for CIG projects. This request is endorsed by 105 of your colleagues, led by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Representative Jackie Walorski (R-IN), in a bipartisan letter to you.¹ Together with the IIJA’s advance appropriations, this funding will help our communities begin to address the backlog of demand for more mobility choices. Today, 78 projects across the nation are seeking more than $39 billion of CIG funds in FY 2023 and subsequent years. See APTA’s Capital Investment Grants Project Pipeline Dashboard.

In addition, we ask that you provide at least $50 million for the Integrated Smart Mobility Pilot program, $50 million for the Zero Emission System Transformation Planning Program, and $100 million for the Climate Resilience and Adaptation Program as requested in the President’s FY 2023 Budget. These programs will enhance the safety of our critical infrastructure, reduce environmental impacts, and improve access to jobs, housing, health care, and education. We also recommend that you appropriate the additional ferry funding that was agreed to in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law but not included because of a technical error during legislative drafting.

Regarding passenger rail grants, we request that you fully fund the IIJA authorizations for the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail and Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant programs. In addition, we urge you to include at least $500 million as authorized by the IIJA for Railroad Crossing Elimination grants, which will help address rail-related fatalities at the nation’s more than 200,000 highway-rail grade crossings.²

Finally, we appreciate that the 2022 THUD Appropriations Act and prior THUD Appropriations Acts have included a provision to prohibit implementation of the Rostenkowski Test, and we strongly encourage the continuation of this provision in the THUD Appropriations bill for FY 2023.

Thank you for your strong support for public transportation and passenger rail and consideration of our FY 2023 priorities. Your leadership is critical to ensure that Congress upholds the promise of the historic investments authorized in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Sincerely,

Paul P. Skoutelas
President and CEO

Encl.

cc: Members of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives

¹ Bipartisan Letter to House Committee on Appropriations Leaders requesting $3.0 billion for the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grants in the FY 2023 THUD Appropriations bill (April 27, 2022).

² Federal Railroad Administration, Report to Congress: National Strategy to Prevent Trespassing on Railroad Property (October 2018). Highway-Rail Grade Crossing and Trespassing Research | FRA (dot.gov).