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Highways and Transit: Leveling the Playing Field in Federal Transportation Policy

Federal transportation policy is essentially an unfair competition between highways and transit. Despite a number of reforms in the past decade, federal rules remain stacked against transit, and funding highway projects is far easier. This brief compares how new transit and highway programs are treated differently by federal legislation and policy and how those differences lead to an unlevel playing field, distorting good local planning, management, and decision making.