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Sierra Club Transportation Reform Policy Guide
In 2003, Congress will reauthorize the federal transportation spending bill. This bill, authorized every six years, determines how federal transportation money can be spent. In 1991, Congress passed the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and renewed it in 1998 through the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). TEA-3, as the new bill is being called, should build on the progress made in the past two.
Despite the revolutionary steps forward in ISTEA and TEA-21, the current authorization bill (TEA-21), which totals $217 billion dollars, spends almost five times more on highways than public transportation choices like rail and clean buses. By most estimates, the 2003 reauthorization (TEA-3) will be well over $250 billion. How this large amount of money is spent will be instrumental in determining whether our nation focuses on smart growth, or whether we will continue to sprawl, pollute our air and water and degrade the natural environment.
Read more in our TEA-3 Policy Guide. (64kb PDF file)
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