Infra Insight Blog

The United States District Court for the Western District of Washington on January 23, 2026, granted a motion for summary judgment to 20 states and the District of Columbia (the “Named Plaintiffs”) related to the United States Department of Transportation’s (U.S. DOT) and Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) (collectively, the “Defendants”) suspension of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program (the “NEVI Program”) funding and revocation of FHWA-approved State Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Deployment Plans (the “State Deployment Plans”), required as a prerequisite for obligation of NEVI Program funds ... 

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program (the “NEVI Program”) was established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Public Law 117-58 and was authorized under paragraph (2) under the Highway Infrastructure Program heading in title VIII of division J of the IIJA. The NEVI Program provides $5 billion of funding to States to deploy electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure and establish an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access, and reliability. Although States are required to prioritize the allocated funding to infrastructure acquired or installed along designated EV Alternative Fuel Corridors (AFCs), any remaining funding may be used for EV charging infrastructure on any public road or in other publicly accessible locations when the State determines and the Secretary certifies that AFCs in a State are fully built out ... 

On January 14, 2025, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced a new final rule to end its longstanding waiver of Buy America requirements for “manufactured products” used in Federal-aid highway projects.

By way of background, FHWA’s Buy America statute was enacted in 1983 and required FHWA to ensure that all federally funded projects use only steel, iron, and manufactured products that are produced in the United States.  However, at the time, FHWA determined that it would be in the public interest to waive the Buy America requirements for manufactured products ... 

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law established the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) formula program in an effort to jumpstart the development of electric vehicle (EV) charging networks. To support that endeavor, the NEVI formula program allocates $5 billion, over five years, to states to deploy publicly accessible electric vehicle charging infrastructure (EVCI) along an interconnected national network. There are three particularly noteworthy elements of the NEVI formula program ... 

Imagine you are sitting in your car at a traffic signal. The signal turns green and you begin to accelerate. Without you doing anything, your car suddenly screeches to a halt as another car runs a red light and whizzes past. Your car, equipped with sensors and an array of wireless connections, was able to communicate with other vehicles and the surrounding infrastructure to avoid collision. If your car had not stopped, you would have been involved in a serious accident. According to a recent plan released by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), this is exactly the type of ...

The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (TRB) has released its second volume of guidance addressing risks in project delivery, including risks associated with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  This second volume of guidance, entitled Guidance for Managing NEPA-Related and Other Risks in Project Delivery, Volume 2: Expediting NEPA Decisions and Other Practitioner Strategies for Addressing High Risk Issues in Project Delivery, (Volume 2) was submitted in March 2014 under the TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) and ...

The U.S. Department of Transportation has initiated changes to its TIGER Application review process effective for the pending TIGER VI round of funding.  The most important change is that once a project receives a technical rating, that rating will not change during the remainder of the review process.

On May 28, 2014 the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report finding that in TIGER V round of funding, DOT did not document key decisions to accept and review late applications, advance projects with lower technical ratings instead of more highly-rated projects,  and ...