State DOT Leaders Share Perspectives on Reauthorization at TRB

The following image and information was provided by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).

January 16, 2026

A roundtable session at the 2026 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., highlighted the key focal points for state departments of transportation as work continues in earnest on the next surface transportation funding reauthorization bill: namely, to:

• Prioritize formula funding
• Improve safety outcomes
• Speed up project delivery

That session also explored how state DOTs successfully delivered infrastructure projects to communities across the country via funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA of 2021; a package that includes current reauthorization legislation set to expire in September.

State DOT Leadership Perspectives

“We’ve been working very hard to get surface transportation funding implemented [from the IIJA] and delivering everything from big to small projects that help communities across the nation improve safety, keep our economy moving, and also to enhance quality of life,” said Russell McMurry, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Transportation and the 2025-2026 president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).

While he stressed that state DOTs “made exceptional progress in doing these things,” he said there is still more work to do.

Cost Pressures and Federal Buying Power

“We know [federal investment] is critical to fund solutions that save lives and improve mobility,” McMurry noted. “But we also know the reality: That the buying power of each federal dollar has been eroded due to increased cost and volume and often over-burdensome regulations that slow down project delivery. Clearly, that’s increased over the last four to five years.”

He pointed out that the national Construction Cost Index from 2020 to 2024 increased by about 70 percent, while in his home state of Georgia, those costs increased by more than 100 percent to 150 percent for some transportation infrastructure projects.

Streamlining Project Delivery

“This means that we have to find more ways to streamline federal project delivery timelines. That’s really where we’re focused,” McMurry said. “By eliminating some of the bureaucratic processes and duplication of efforts, we can get projects completed faster. Just think about the [impact of that] on inflationary costs. If we could deliver projects faster, they would not have cost as much.”

“We’d love to see project delivery streamlined – that’s been something that’s been near and dear to my heart,” noted Joel Jundt, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Transportation.

“When it takes you 18 months from when project [funding] has been awarded to physically get it under contract and move it along, that creates issues – especially from the financial side, as inflation continues to expand [project] cost,” he added. “So, streamlining project delivery and then reducing red tape or regulations … are the main themes we’ve been continuing to stress amongst our congressional folks in regard to speeding up project delivery.”

Garrett Eucalitto, commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Transportation and immediate past president of AASHTO, noted that eliminating duplicative rules – especially where environmental regulations are concerned – would help tremendously in terms of improve project timelines.

“We often have to produce environmental documents for separate agencies instead of being able to do it once,” he said. “We encounter significant hurdles where we have duplicative processes and environmental reviews, such as between the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and others. So, we’ve been really pushing to try and make it easier; at least by making [environmental rules] interchangeable between different regulatory bodies.”

Read the full article from AASHTO.