We’re about to find out if the federal government has the need… for more efficient traffic planning. A new bill dubbed the Need for Speed Act was recently introduced by U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) with a more mundane purpose hiding behind that headline-worthy name.
The bill calls for the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration “to develop a national infrastructure intelligence tool to identify bottlenecks, ease traffic congestion, and improve emergency response times on highways,” according to a press release from Cornyn’s office.
More specifically, that means a unified dataset and a software tool to manage it, allowing for interstate coordination of traffic flow. This would be used to identify sources of traffic congestion and enhance coordination between the USDOT and state and local governments on infrastructure investments, as well as emergency responses. Such coordination could have, for example, allowed traffic to be rerouted across state lines after the 2024 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
“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,” Cornyn said in a statement. “This legislation would empower the Department of Transportation to develop a national intelligence tool that will boost interstate coordination, ease congestion, and improve road safety.”
Said tool will use “highway performance monitoring systems, commodity data, truck parking demand, urban congestion reporting, and other relevant data sets,” according to the release. If that sounds vague, it’s also typical of much legislation, which often “empowers” federal agencies to figure out how to implement threadbare ideas.
The term “national intelligence tool” is also a bit worrying, as it sounds more like surveillance than emergency response. And one wonders whether funds allocated to this project might be better used for infrastructure repair and maintenance instead. But hey, at least the bill has a cool name.
