A committee out of the U.S. House of Representatives are looking at making some serious cuts to transportation funds.
The House Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development wants to address overspending. If advanced the bill would give $63.5 billion to highways and $21.7 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration. The draft bill would slash railroad funding by, and this could affect passenger rail projects in Montana.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded funds as part of a Corridor ID Program that would kickstart rail infrastructure throughout the U.S. and Montana is receiving this.
That funding could be used to assess existing railroads and restore the route that connects Chicago to Seattle for passenger travel. A line in Montana that was discontinued in 1979.
As it stands, the bill would cut Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor by $139 million compared to Fiscal Year 2024 levels and $163 million cut to the National Network account. It would zero-out funding for the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail, the program that’s allowing Montana to assess existing railroads and create a plan to restore the route in the Greater Northwest Region. The bill will also cut $8 million from railroad safety research.
“There’s this giant hole in the mountain west that basically says ‘you don’t count, you’re not part of the country, you don’t get connected to everything else,’ and that’s wrong,” said Jim Mathews, the Rail Passengers Association President.
The bill is still in its early stages and could see minor changes.
The full committee hearing on the proposed 2025 transportation budget is set for July 10.
