WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the Need for Speed Act, which would require the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Federal Highway Administration to develop a national infrastructure intelligence tool to identify bottlenecks, ease traffic congestion, and improve emergency response times on highways:

“Incidents like the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge have exposed critical vulnerabilities in our nation’s highway infrastructure, hampering the swift deployment of emergency responders and disrupting millions of dollars in trade and travel,” said Sen. Cornyn. “This legislation would empower the Department of Transportation to develop a national intelligence tool that will boost interstate coordination, ease congestion, and improve roadway safety.” 

Background:

The USDOT lacks a single, unified resource to assess transportation system performance and identify bottlenecks. Current datasets are fragmented and inaccessible to the public sector, impeding data-driven investments and swift, coordinated responses in emergencies. For example, the State of Maryland did not have the data to redirect commodity traffic across state lines after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed, which exposed a broader set of vulnerabilities in our traffic and roadway response efforts nationwide. Lack of interstate coordination and siloed data can lead to delayed decisions, inadequate visibility during crises, slower response times in an emergency, and greater roadway obstacles that can impair highway travel and driver safety.

Sen. Cornyn’s Need for Speed Act would address this issue by mandating the development of a national infrastructure intelligence tool to:

• Identify bottlenecks and determine causes of traffic congestion;
• Integrate data into a single, actionable platform;
• Enable USDOT, states, and locals to coordinate, target investments, and respond rapidly to emergencies;
• And improve infrastructure resiliency, national security, and U.S. competitiveness.

The intelligence tool will use highway performance monitoring systems, commodity data, truck parking demand, urban congestion reporting, and other relevant data sets.