The United States Department of Transport recently updated its policy of the finance and innovation of finance and innovation of the transport infrastructure to finance up to 49% of the costs of the project, up to 33% in most cases. This is a change that has been sought by construction and transport groups that ensure that the update will increase more projects and Dot officials say they want to eliminate a “blockade” for those who build important infrastructure.
The Tifia Program provides financial assistance for regional or national transport projects in the form of low interest loans, guarantees of loans and credit lines.
“It is common sense to allow all eligible projects the same access to our financing opportunities of low interest,” said Secretary of Transport, Sean Duffy, in a statement. “We are building easier, faster and cheaper infrastructure.”
Congress originally created the Tifia program in 1998 and in 2012 modified it to allow Dot support 49% of the eligible costs of the project. However, Dot officials kept 33% of CAP in most cases in politics, only to 49% of projects that achieved certain goals around rural or traffic development or in cases with “convincing justification” since 2018.
But with the lower cap, the program has sometimes had trouble using all the dollars provided from the road trust fund, says Joug Lee, Deputy Director and Policies Head of the American State Road Association and Transportation Officers (AASHTO). The Act of Water Resource Development of 2024, which the then President Joe Biden signed the law in January, redistributed $ 1.8 billion to non -obliged Tifia funds in the surface transport block program.
“The tool has been there,” says Lee. “Congress has given this authority, so that artificially restricting Tifia’s usability to only one third did not make sense for us.”
The set of motorway projects that can lead to revenue or making available payments-a financial agreement used in some public-private collaborations-is limited, but LEE claims that the highest threshold could make Tifia funding an attractive option for more projects than in the past. Morteza Farajian, executive director of Dot’s Build America Bureau, said in a statement that “the updating of the policy would guarantee that the program be available at all capacity to support our private and local partners”.
Since its inception, the Tifia program has supported investment in infrastructure valued at $ 150 million with $ 52 million in loans, according to Farajian.
Duffy cited “comments of our partners” as one of the factors that led Dot to update politics.
Lee hopes that changes in the Tifia program will be only the first of the changes desired by the groups in the transport sector. With a new surface re -authorization project scheduled before the current expires in late September 2026, groups such as Aashhto and the American Road & Transport Builders Association have begun defending the provisions that they expect for legislators to include.
“Hopefully it is an impulse of the impulse in terms of what we would like to see on the next surface of surface transport,” says Lee.
