House Committee Passes Six-Year Highway Bill

Click here to write a Letter to the Editor.

House panel approved a six-year, $284 billion highway bill late Wednesday, clearing the way for the measure to move to the House floor next week.

“The American people deserve solutions to the problems of congestion, crumbling roads and delayed shipments of freight,” said Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

In addition to passing the measure, the panel also approved two changes related to truck driver hours-of-service rules.

The first exempted agricultural drivers from HOS rules during planting and harvest seasons as long as they were traveling within a 100-mile radius.

The second, proposed by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), would place drivers working for television or movie production under HOS rules in place prior to the current rules, which were enacted in January 2004.

The committee did not address the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's plan to enact the HOS 2004 regulations into law.

A federal court struck down the new HOS rules last summer after they were successfully challenged by Public Citizen and other safety advocacy groups.

The rules will remain in effect until Sept. 30, after Congress intervened and included them in the most recent extension of the highway bill.

Current HOS rules allow 11 hours of driving in a 14 consecutive-hour period, while the previous ones allowed 10 hours of driving in a 15-hour work period, though drivers could log "off-duty" time not counted against the 15 hours.

Young said it was “essential that both houses of congress complete work before the current [highway-bill] extension expires” May 31.

Federal highway spending has been funded by extensions since a $218 billion plan expired in September 2003.