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Action Alert: Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program (ATIIP)

Our partners at Rails To Trails Conservancy are warning us that Congress has reached a tentative deal to fund the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) for Fiscal Year 2024, and it does not include the Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program (ATIIP).

This means that if the bill passes as expected later this week, there will be no additional federal funding for this critically important new program in FY 2024.

This omission is a disappointment because ATIIP is the only discretionary federal program dedicated solely to funding trail and active transportation systems. This program will provide planning and construction grants to connect trails and active transportation infrastructure, which is key to creating safe and connected walking and biking routes spanning urban, suburban, and rural communities.

Here’s how you can help right now to protect and grow future ATIIP funding. As Congress shifts its focus to the FY 2025 federal budget, we need to make sure that the strategic value of focusing on connectivity and demand for ATIIP are well understood so that the program will be prioritized.

Members of Congress have set up “Programmatic Portals” on their websites so that constituents can express support for specific programs and their funding levels in the FY 2025 appropriations bills. We need to make sure that support for ATIIP comes through loud and clear.

Here's what to do:

• Find your members of Congress with this link.
• Find the portal by visiting your member of Congress’ website and look under tabs such as “Services,” “Contact,” or “Help,” or searching the site for “appropriations request,” “FY25,” “FY 2025,” and “programmatic request.”
• When submitting your comments, be specific. Tell Congress why it is important to your community to connect trails and other walking and biking infrastructure into safe, convenient active-transportation routes within and between communities, and ask that they fund ATIIP at the authorized $200 million in the FY 2025 budget.
• The timing of each congressional portal varies. If a portal is not yet open, continue to check back in the coming days and weeks.

If you have any difficulty navigating a portal form, please contact either Marianne Fowler at [email protected], or Joe Reed at [email protected], for help.

It is critical that we demonstrate that ATIIP is a top priority. The opportunity today is to use programmatic requests as your official channel to urge Congress to invest in this program, that they created, at the authorized funding level of $200 million in the FY 2025 budget.