AP: Texas

07/29/2005

Associated Press

A $286.4 billion highway and mass transit bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday promises to give Texas a bigger share of future federal transportation funds.

Currently, the state gets 88 cents for every dollar it sends to the federal government in gasoline taxes.

The new six-year surface transportation bill, approved 412-8, guarantees that by 2008 Texas and other states will get back at least 92 percent of what they contribute through federal gasoline taxes to the Highway Trust Fund.

The bill contains more than $50 billion for transit programs — mainly bus and train projects — and $6 billion for transportation safety.

Texas projects include about $40 million to build new Interstate 30 and Interstate 35 bridges over the Trinity River in downtown Dallas.

More than $12.8 million was earmarked for transportation projects in West Texas, including the proposed La Entrada Al Pacifico trade route from the west coast of Mexico through Presidio and on to Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls and Dallas/Fort Worth.

The House-approved bill, to be followed later in the day by the Senate, would send the president a measure that will generate new federal money for every state working to expand and repair its roadways, bridges and rail systems.

President Bush is expected to sign the highway measure, which covers the 2004-2009 period.

Passage would end an almost two-year impasse during which Congress and the White House battled over the proper spending levels and states were at odds over how best to divide up the billions in federal highway money.

In addition to promising each state at least a 19 percent increase in funds over the 1998-2003 highway act, it includes a record level of "earmarks," thousands of special projects requested by lawmakers for their states and districts and a frequent target of criticism by watchdog groups.

The nation has been without a new transportation act since September 2003, when the 1998-2003 law, funded at $218 billion, expired. Since then, Congress has had to pass 11 temporary extensions to keep money flowing to the states for construction projects.