Legislation
The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 provided that certain key routes such as the Interstate Highway System, be included.
The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 (Pub.L. 104-59, 109 Stat. 568) is a United States Act of Congress that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 28, 1995 The legislation designated about 160,955 miles (259,032 km) of roads, including the Interstate Highway System, as the NHS.
Aside from designating the system, the act served several other purposes, including restoring $5.4 billion in funding to state highway departments, giving Congress the power to prioritize highway system projects, repealing all federal speed limit controls, and prohibiting the use of federal-aid highway funds to convert existing signs or purchase new signs with metric units.
The act also created a State Infrastructure Bank pilot program. Ten states were chosen in 1996 for this new method of road financing. These banks would lend money like regular banks, with funding coming from the federal government or the private sector, and they would be repaid through such means as highway tolls or taxes. In 1997, 28 more states asked to be part of the program. Ohio was the first state to use a state infrastructure bank to start building a road. An advantage to this method was completing projects faster; state laws and the lack of appropriate projects were potential problems.
Read more about this topic: National Highway System (United States)
Famous quotes containing the word legislation:
“No legislation can suppress nature; all life rushes to reproduction; our procreative faculties are matured early, while passion is strong, and judgment and self-restraint weak. We cannot alter this, but we can alter what is conventional. We can refuse to brand an act of nature as a crime, and to impute to vice what is due to ignorance.”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“The conservative assumes sickness as a necessity, and his social frame is a hospital, his total legislation is for the present distress, a universe in slippers and flannels, with bib and papspoon, swallowing pills and herb-tea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There were two unpleasant surprises [about Washington]. One was the inertia of Congress, the length of time it takes to get a complicated piece of legislation through ... and the other was the irresponsibility of the press.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)