Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Minor

Remove or reform FHWA rules that hamper state governments

Partially done

629 19. Department of Transportation

“Remove or reform rules and regulations that hamper state governments.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    FHWA finalized the last of the 2025 proposals still outstanding, rescinding the required contract provisions for federal-aid construction contracts other than Appalachian contracts. Earlier finals in the same series: advance construction procedures (2025-08-21), the Fish and Wildlife Service refuge roads management systems (2025-09-19), the Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs and National Park Service management systems and the Forest Highway Program requirements (2025-11-17), and bridges on federal dams and the Appalachian contract requirements (2025-12-03). The ask is open-ended — "remove or reform rules and regulations that hamper state governments" — so it stays `partial`: a documented program is running and no allowlisted statement says it is finished.

  2. Partially done

    FHWA published a package of rescissions and thirteen further deregulatory proposals on one day. The rules finalized that day removed the transportation management and monitoring systems regulations (23 CFR part 500), the first-performance-period target requirements, the requirement that State highway agencies submit annual Equal Employment Opportunity program plans for FHWA approval, the projects of national and regional significance evaluation and rating regulations, and the preliminary-engineering ten-year repayment provision. The proposals published alongside them — advance construction procedures, required contract provisions, geodetic markers, bridges on federal dams, the Appalachian contract requirements, and the management systems for four federal land management agencies — were finalized in stages between 2025-08-21 and 2026-05-11.

  3. Partially done

    FHWA repealed the greenhouse gas performance measure, removing the requirement that State DOTs and MPOs establish declining CO2 targets, calculate progress, report to FHWA and produce an action plan on failure. The preamble frames it as alleviating "a burden on State DOTs and MPOs". Effective 2025-05-19.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The instrument was found by filtering the Corpus for Federal Register rules and proposed rules whose agency list includes the Transportation Department but not an operating administration other than FHWA — the whole deregulatory package appears as two dense days, 2025-05-30 and 2025-06-03, with the finals trailing through 2026-05-11.
  • partial, not done: §3’s open-ended “all X” rule. DOT’s own 2026 regulatory agenda summary (federalregister.gov/documents/2026/08/14/2026-16607/department-regulatory-and-deregulatory-agenda-summary) shows the section 610 review program still running, so the sweep is by construction unfinished.
  • The upstream instrument is DOT’s request for information of 2025-04-03, “Ensuring Lawful Regulation; Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs” (federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/03/2025-05557/ensuring-lawful-regulation-reducing-regulation-and-controlling-regulatory-costs), which solicited the burdens to remove and is cited by name in DOT’s later deregulatory finals.
  • Checked 2026-09-03 against the FY2026–2030 DOT Strategic Plan, read in full. Objective 3.1 (“Reduce Regulatory Burden”) commits to “Streamlining and clarifying regulations” and “Removing outdated or ineffective requirements” — in this ask’s subject area, but naming neither FHWA nor state governments. Under §3b’s strategic-plan rule that is a note, not a rung, and it does not support raising this item. The rescission program already cited is what carries it.
  • Read with #1722 and #1724 on p. 629.
Action
rescind
Object
FHWA rules and regulations burdening states
ID
1723