Sponsors (8)
The bill provides targeted federal funding and coordination to create standardized, publicly accessible road geospatial data that can improve navigation, commerce, and emergency response—especially in rural areas—while imposing modest federal costs but creating ongoing local maintenance burdens, equity challenges for under‑resourced counties, and some privacy/security risks.
Rural residents, businesses, and local governments will get federal funds to digitize road records so maps and navigation improve and addresses/routes are easier to find.
State DOTs will host centralized, publicly accessible road datasets, making it faster for first responders and local officials to coordinate emergency response and public safety activities.
Businesses, travelers, and third‑party navigation services will benefit from standardized geospatial data that can boost rural commerce and improve routing and address accuracy.
Smaller or underfunded counties may be disadvantaged by application, matching, or capacity requirements and risk being left behind in the digitization effort.
State and county governments will face ongoing maintenance and staffing burdens to update and host road repositories annually, creating recurring local costs and workload.
Public disclosure of detailed road datasets could expose sensitive locations or patterns and raise privacy or security concerns for some users.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a DOT pilot grant program to help States digitize county roads and create centralized, public road data repositories, authorized at $20M/year for FY2026–FY2031.
Official title: To direct the Secretary of Transportation to establish a grant program relating to the digitization of county roads and creation of publicly accessible road datasets, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 18, 2025 by Blake D. Moore · Last progress September 18, 2025
Creates a DOT pilot grant program to help States digitize county road records and build centralized, publicly accessible road data repositories. The program will fund county-level digitization work, require standardized geospatial data practices and regular updates, prioritize States with big gaps in road data and capacity to run subgrant programs, and requires reporting on progress. It authorizes $20 million per year for FY2026–FY2031 and sunsets the grant authority on September 30, 2031.