DOT Budget Request Inches Upward

The Transportation Department would receive a slight funding increase in fiscal 2024, under the administration’s recently unveiled budget proposal. 

The administration’s proposal for fiscal year 2024, which was released March 9, would devote $108.1 billion to Transportation Department spending, a $3.1 billion increase over the budget for the current fiscal year. However, White House proposals are rarely — if ever — enacted as written. 

President Joe Biden’s budget would allocate $27.8 billion in discretionary budget authority to the Transportation Department, as well as $80.3 billion in “contract authority and obligation limitations” and $36.8 billion for emergencies. 

One of the key points in the proposal is making the roads safer, with the document noting 42,915 roadway deaths in 2021. The budget would allocate $1.3 billion to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to fund “critical research to reduce roadway fatalities and injuries for safety research.”  

There’s also money for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to continue studying the causes of heavy-duty truck crashes, and to start a similar study involving medium-duty truck wrecks. 

$76.1 billion is proposed to go towards implementing the president’s bipartisan infrastructure law, including $60.1 billion to repair and upgrade highways and bridges across the country.