The U.S. Congress inched closer in November toward passing a long-term federal transportation bill, the first since 2005 to emerge successfully from that body.
 
The Senate passed a $350 billion version on a 65-34 vote in July, and the House followed with its own bill on Nov. 5.
 
The House bill, approved on a bipartisan vote of 363-64, would authorize $325 billion in spending: $261 billion on highways, $55 billion on transit, and roughly $9 billion on safety programs through the 2021 federal budget year.
 
Both bills fall far short of the $478 billion transportation plan outlined in Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 budget proposal. The administration says that the government must spend $400 billion over the next six years just to maintain the current transportation system. To improve the system would take an additional $78 billion.
 
House and Senate negotiators are working to reconcile the two versions, saying they hope to quickly work out the differences. Legislators say they will pick up the bill after Thanksgiving.
 
Congress’s inability to agree on funding means that both bills would provide money for only the first three years of the program. Congress will have to “unlock” the final three years of funding by providing a revenue source after the first three years.
 
Funding proposals include a measure to raise the federal gasoline and diesel taxes (18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents, respectively), though there seems to be little appetite for such a move in Congress this year. The fuel taxes, the main source of revenue for the federal Highway Trust Fund, were last raised in 1993.
 
Another proposal would tax profits that U.S. corporations park overseas and use that revenue to pay for transportation programs.
 
These revenue amendments were offered, but did not pass.
 
Congress instead opted for lowering interest rates the Federal Reserve pays out to banks and selling off a portion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
 
Of particular concern to municipal governments in the Northeast is a provision in the House bill that would eliminate the formula used to allocate transit funds to states with high-density urban areas. This would result in an estimated cut of several million dollars per year for the Boston metro area, as well as cuts of nearly $263 million over the course of the program to the seven Northeastern states that account for half of the nation’s transit users.
 
The Massachusetts delegation is working with other Northeast delegations, including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York (likely the next Senate minority leader), to convince the House to accept the Senate’s version of the bill.
 
According to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, Massachusetts receives about $588 million a year from the federal Highway Trust Fund. The money is used to fund major highway projects, like the reconstruction of the Interstate 91 viaduct in Springfield. In total, Massachusetts gets about $1 billion a year in federal highway and transit money, a figure that includes rail and other transit. This total would remain largely unchanged under the bills in Congress.
 
There are several parts of the House bill that would benefit Massachusetts cities and towns. The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation program, which provides loans for qualified projects of regional and national significance, would be considered transit-oriented development. The change would make it easier to finance construction of housing, shopping or office development at mass transit hubs. Federal mass transit spending would also be increased by about 25 percent.
 
The Safe Streets Act has been rolled into the Senate’s transportation bill and appears likely to be in the final bill. The act is essentially a federal version of “complete streets” policies that are becoming more common at the state and local level, including here in Massachusetts. This means that the transportation bill would require that transportation projects receiving federal dollars consider all users, not just drivers. This encourages planners to look at all possible uses for infrastructure, be it biking, walking or transit.
 
The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program — which provides incentives for the most efficient transportation projects — was not made permanent in either the House or Senate transportation bill. This would mean the TIGER program would have to be implemented annually, but it was not eliminated.
 
Several attempts at structural reform did not make it into either bill, including an effort to change the inefficient system through which federal funds go through state transportation departments rather than directly to municipalities.
 
It is likely that the final bill will be closest to the House bill in substance, given current anti-spending sentiment among a significant minority of its members.
 

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