• BUILD grants were announced by USDOT this week. Secretary Duffy revealed that $1.73 billion from the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development grant program will be invested into 127 projects across 52 states and territories. 

  Virginia Railway Express was one of the awardees, receiving $25 million to address a critical bottleneck at the system’s busiest stop: L’Enfant Station in Washington, DC.  Find the full list of 2026 project selections here.

• A new CRS report lays out the growing fiscal problem facing the Highway Trust Fund and explains why Congress is increasingly focused on EV fees as part of surface transportation reauthorization. Per Blank Rome, the report notes that the HTF has run persistent deficits, the federal gas tax has lost roughly 74% of its purchasing power since 1993, and EVs and hybrids are contributing to the erosion of fuel-tax revenue because they use little or no gasoline. The report walks through the main policy options—taxing EV charging, imposing a one-time manufacturer tax, creating an annual EV registration fee, or eventually moving to a vehicle-miles-traveled tax—and makes clear that none of them, on their own, would solve the HTF’s long-term funding gap. The report also highlights the House T&I proposal in H.R. 8870 to create annual federal registration fees of $130 for EVs and $35 for plug-in hybrids, while underscoring that EV-related fees would likely raise only a small fraction of the roughly $36 billion annual HTF shortfall projected over the next decade.      

• The Federal Transit Administration has opened applications for the FY26 round of Innovative Coordinated Access and Mobility Pilot (ICAM) program funds.

  ICAM seeks to improve access to public transportation by building partnerships among health, transportation and other service providers. This program provides competitive funding to support innovative projects for transportation disadvantaged populations that will improve the coordination of transportation services and non-emergency medical transportation services.

  Eligible applicants for ICAM funds are 5310 recipients (seniors/disabled formula) and subrecipients. Eligible activities include Capital projects, as defined in 49 U.S.C. 5302(4), to improve the coordination of transportation and non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) services for older adults, people with disabilities, or people of low income. This includes: Mobility management projects; the deployment of coordination technology; projects that create or increase access to one-call/one-click centers; and vehicles for shared or coordinated transportation service.

  The application deadline is September 9. Read more about the program here.

IT’S OFFICIAL: SUMMIT REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

WHAT WE’RE READING

• Millennial Data Whiz Dodges Trump to Weigh Rail Deal by Book (Bloomberg Government)

• Utah Transit Authority Adopts New Governance Model (METRO)

• Brightline Florida rail company faces bankruptcy (Smart Cities Dive)

• With city unsure, community sees potential rail stop as ‘catalyst for transformation’ (The Charlotte Observer)

• Electric commuter rail line extension aims to bring economic benefits to northern Indiana (Smart Cities Dive)

• Metra completes rail-car rehabilitation project (Progressive Railroading)

• Rehab program that saves taxpayers millions of dollars hits latest milestone (Metra)

• Rail, transit again receive limited funding from federal BUILD grants (Trains Pro)

• Unions ask STB to force UP-NS to make public detailed information on merger’s impact on jobs (Trains Pro)

• Make Unsubsidized Passenger Rail a Condition of the Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern Merger (Townhall)