Sponsors (6)
Introduced February 9, 2026 by Troy E. Nehls · Last progress February 9, 2026
The bill channels targeted federal money to improve and protect bridges—boosting safety and reducing long-term costs—but does so by reallocating highway funds away from other programs (including climate and resilience efforts) and fixing allocations to a 2024 snapshot, creating trade-offs in equity and future responsiveness.
State and local governments — and the drivers and communities that rely on them — receive dedicated federal funding to replace, rehabilitate, preserve, protect, and build bridges, improving travel safety, reducing detours and closures, and lowering long-term repair costs and economic disruption.
States with larger bridge deck area and those with more poor-condition deck area receive larger shares of funding, directing more money to areas with worse bridge conditions.
Local and state governments can use the funds flexibly to repair non-Federal-aid bridges, allowing communities to address critical local bridge needs more directly and quickly.
State and local transportation programs and taxpayers face reduced funding for other highway programs because a fixed share of highway apportionments is redirected to bridges, potentially delaying or cancelling projects previously funded under those programs.
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve resilience are weakened because the bill eliminates carbon reduction and PROTECT subsection funding, lowering federal support for emissions-reducing transportation projects and resilience investments.
Communities with small bridge inventories or generally better-rated bridges may receive less funding even when they have other pressing infrastructure needs, shifting resources away from some rural or other communities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Creates a national bridge program and redirects ~5.4766% of certain Federal‑aid highway funds to States, allocated by bridge deck area and poor‑condition share.
Creates a new national bridge program within federal highway law and redirects a fixed share of certain Federal-aid highway funds to it. The program will pay for replacing, rehabilitating, preserving, protecting, and building bridges on Federal-aid highways (and, at a State’s choice, for non‑Federal-aid bridges), with State shares set mostly by bridge deck area and partly by the share of deck area in poor condition using the National Bridge Inventory as of December 31, 2024. The bill also removes a prior Carbon Reduction program section and a PROTECT subsection and updates apportionment language in Title 23.