Sponsors (4)
The bill expands options to fund and enhance highway noise barriers—potentially improving community noise protection and enabling broadband/renewable uses—while shifting costs and risks to state and local governments and raising equity, diversion-of-funding, safety, and administrative concerns.
Homeowners and communities near highways can get more noise mitigation because States may use Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) funds to plan, design, or build Type II noise barriers, reducing traffic noise and improving livability and public health.
State and local governments (and nearby communities) can add secondary uses—broadband conduit/fiber and renewable energy—to existing noise barriers, potentially expanding internet access, producing local clean energy, and creating new revenue or cost savings without buying new land.
Taxpayers and other highway priorities may be better protected because restricting certain federal noise-barrier spending preserves limited federal highway funds for other projects and priorities.
Homeowners and renters near highways may lose federally funded noise protection in some cases, lowering quality of life and increasing noise exposure for nearby residents.
State and local governments, and ultimately taxpayers or homeowners, may face higher upfront and ongoing costs to build, maintain, or operate noise barriers (including costs from aesthetic requirements and from managing secondary-use infrastructure).
Using STBG funds for noise barriers diverts limited highway/block grant dollars away from other road, bridge, or transit safety and capacity projects, creating trade-offs in transportation investment.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Restricts Highway Trust Fund use for most Type II noise barriers, makes them eligible for STBG funds, and allows multipurpose barriers hosting energy or broadband while requiring FHWA-consistent aesthetics.
Official title: To amend the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 to permit the construction of certain noise barriers with funds from the Highway Trust Fund, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 7, 2026 by Nikema Williams · Last progress May 7, 2026
Prohibits most use of Highway Trust Fund money to build Type II highway noise barriers while creating narrow exceptions, makes Type II barriers explicitly eligible for Surface Transportation Block Grant (STBG) funds, and authorizes noise barriers to be multipurpose (hosting solar, transmission, broadband conduit, etc.). It also requires project sponsors to consider aesthetics consistent with FHWA guidance when constructing or preserving noise barriers funded under Title 23. The bill changes federal funding rules and approval authority: it limits one federal funding source, opens another, permits secondary uses of barriers subject to Secretary and State approvals, and imposes an aesthetics consideration standard for project sponsors.