Illinois Transportation Secretary Randy Blankenhorn posted a YouTube video Wednesday (March 9, 2016) to share the good news about infrastructure investment as FAST as he could.

Randy Blankenhorn on YouTube.

FAST in this case is the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, a five-year, $305 billion surface transportation re-authorization bill. The FAST Act authorizes federal highway, highway safety, transit and rail programs from federal fiscal years 2016 through 2020 and was signed into law on Dec. 4, 2015.

The FAST Act is intended to identify emerging safety needs and encourage states to apply for grant dollars to promote safety for bicyclists, pedestrians, and other non-motorized users. In addition to highway and motor vehicle safety, the FAST Act includes a number of changes to improve truck and bus safety, and also incorporates a number of safety measures related to the transportation of hazardous materials.

Here are a few reasons Blankenhorn is happy, if not giddy, about the FAST Act, according to the YouTube video (embedded above) and a post on the IDOT website:

Highways

The FAST Act modestly increases overall national highway funding. For Illinois, the FAST Act delivers approximately $7.5 billion for highways over five years, an average annual increase of $134 million from MAP-21, the previous federal re-authorization bill. The Illinois share of the federal funding formula stays virtually the same at 3.63 percent, behind California, Texas, Florida, New York and Pennsylvania.

Transit/Rail

On the transit side, the FAST Act will provide about $3 billion for Illinois over five years, an average of $72 million more per year over MAP-21. Illinois’ share of the total federal funding for transit, 6.45 percent, is the highest since 2006. It ranks fourth behind New York, California and New Jersey.

Safety

Multimodal Freight Transportation

The FAST Act provides $10.7 billion over five years for freight improvements nationally. In addition to requiring U.S. DOT to establish a national multimodal freight plan and network, the FAST Act requires states to develop their own freight plans, and encourages each state to establish a freight advisory committee. Illinois established a freight committee in 2014, with the Illinois Department of Transportation presently working to develop a statewide transportation plan that will include a freight component by the end of 2017.

The FAST Act also creates two new freight funding programs – a formula fund and a competitive fund. Under the formula fund, the National Highway Freight Program, Illinois is expected to receive a five-year total of about $225 million, or about $45 million annually. The competitive Nationally Significant Freight and Highways Program is funded at $4.5 billion over five years, with an annual average of about $900 million. This program is designed to support larger, complex projects of national significance that have a minimum total cost of $100 million.

SOURCE: Illinois Department of Transportation