Foxx bus tour to highlight need for infrastructure investment

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx today will launch a four-day bus tour, beginning in Tallahassee, Fla., on Feb. 17, which will visit five states and the District of Columbia, to highlight the importance of investing in America’s infrastructure and to encourage Congress to act on a long-term transportation bill.

With the Highway Trust Fund once again nearing insolvency and federal funding for transportation projects set to expire at the end of May unless Congress acts — just at the start of the construction season — funding for projects across the country will be put at risk while other major initiatives will be delayed because of a lack of federal funding certainty.

The GROW AMERICA Express will visit communities that have created jobs and new opportunities by investing in transportation, as well as communities with transportation projects that are waiting on much needed funding. As he travels through five states — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia — and ending at Union Station in Washington, D.C., Foxx will make the case for the Administration’s plan, the GROW AMERICA Act, a six-year transportation proposal that would put more Americans to work repairing and modernizing our roads, bridges, railways, ports and transit systems.

RELATED: Time Running Out for Funding A New Transportation Bill

“Congress continues to pass short-term measures with flat funding that falls short of meeting our country’s needs,” said Foxx. “I am once again taking my message directly to the American people because they know that Band-Aid funding measures don’t build bridges; they don’t create jobs; and they don’t help us compete in the 21st Century. We need to put our country back to work with a long-term funding plan.”

Foxx’s bus tour will include visits to universities, manufacturers, bridges, freight facilities and highway projects in an effort to raise awareness of America’s infrastructure deficit. Foxx will visit with students, business leaders, transportation stakeholders and community residents to discuss the projects that work, projects that are needed and to ask them to commit to standing up for a future with an American transportation system that is second-to-none.

To follow the trip’s progress, click here.