More than eight months after the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was signed into law, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation continues to progress in distributing its significant portion of the measure's funds and implementing other provisions of the landmark legislation, Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg and congressional Democrats said at a July 19 House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing. But Republicans on the panel criticized the agency's IIJA implementation. They raised questions about DOT's emphasis on reha- bilitating highways in-stead of adding more lanes, its plans to ex-pand use of electric vehicles and its pro-gram to reconnect disadvantaged neighborhoods that have been cut off from economic oppor-tunities by highways and other transportation barriers. Committee Chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said DOT has received $660 billion for highways, bridges, transit, airport and port projects. That is by far the biggest share of the IIJA's total. He noted that so far DOT had apportioned to states and other recipients $75 billion in fiscal 2022 IIJA highway, transit and airport funds distributed by formula.
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