When it comes to its impact on people and businesses, highway construction is getting short shrift from the Biden administration. While the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) increased formula highway funding, the Federal Highway Administration has tried to discourage state transportation departments from using their increased funding to add highway capacity, even where this would mean replacing a four-lane bottleneck bridge on a six-lane highway with a six-lane bridge. FHWA’s 2021 “guidance” memo on this was protested by many state transportation departments, as well as by governors and members of Congress.
The infrastructure bill also created a new discretionary
