The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act or the FAST Act is a funding and authorization bill to govern United States federal surface transportation spending. It was passed by Congress on December 3, 2015, and President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

signed it on the following day. The vote was 359–65 in the House of Representatives and 83–16 in the United States Senate.

History

The bill was introduced to the House by Rodney Davis () as the "Hire More Heroes Act of 2015" on January 6, 2015. The $305 billion, five-year bill is funded without increasing transportation

user fee A user fee is a fee, tax, or impost payment paid to a facility owner or operator by a facility user as a necessary condition for using the facility. People pay user fees for the use of many public services and facilities. At the federal level ...

s. (The federal gas tax was last raised in 1993.) Instead, funds were generated through changes to passport rules,

Federal Reserve Bank A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve A ...

dividends, and privatized tax collection. In Section 6021, Congress asked the

Transportation Research Board The Transportation Research Board (TRB) is a division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. TRB's mission is to mobilize expertise, experience, and knowledge to anticipate and solve complex transportation-related challe ...

(TRB) to conduct a study of the actions needed to upgrade and restore the

Interstate Highway System The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System, or the Eisenhower Interstate System, is a network of controlled-access highways that forms part of the National Hi ...

to fulfill its role as a crucial national asset, serving the needs of people, cities and towns, businesses, and the military while remaining the safest highway network in the country. The subsequent 2019 report, "Renewing the National Commitment to the Interstate Highway System: A Foundation for the Future," recommended actions Congress could take.

Transportation provisions

The Act requires a reanalysis of the costs and benefits of electronically controlled pneumatic brakes. The Act creates the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council to speed up permitting of key infrastructure projects, particularly in transportation.

Unrelated provisions

* This law authorizes the

Export–Import Bank of the United States The Export–Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is the official export credit agency (ECA) of the United States federal government. Operating as a wholly owned federal government corporation, the bank "assists in financing and facilitating ...

through 2019. * New

crop insurance Crop insurance is insurance purchased by agricultural producers and subsidized by a country's government to protect against either the loss of their crops Failed acreage, due to natural disasters, such as hail, drought, and floods ("crop-yield ins ...

funding is approved. * Emigrant Savings Bank would have been exempted from certain provisions of the

Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank, is a United States federal law that was enacted on July 21, 2010. The law overhauled financial regulation in the aftermath of the Great Reces ...

. This was not included in the final bill that was passed into law. * The Act also includes several revisions to federal securities law, including Section 76001 of the Act. This provision creates a new Section 4(a)(7) of the

Securities Act of 1933 The Securities Act of 1933, also known as the 1933 Act, the Securities Act, the Truth in Securities Act, the Federal Securities Act, and the '33 Act, was enacted by the United States Congress on May 27, 1933, during the Great Depression and afte ...

, a new exemption from registration under that act intended to facilitate secondary trading of private company securities among accredited investors. By doing so, Congress and the President hoped to support smaller, nonpublic companies with their capital raising efforts by providing more liquidity for their securities, with reduced regulatory burdens.

FAST-41

Title 41 of the FAST Act (FAST-41) created the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) to streamline the federal review and approval process for federal infrastructure projects. In April 2025, the Second Trump administration granted the FAST-41 Transparency Project status to ten mineral projects, allowing for expedited permitting to support U.S. critical minerals production. The progress of these projects is publicly available. The

Biden administration Joe Biden's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 46th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Joe Biden, his inauguration on January 20, 2021, and ended on January 20, 2025. Biden, a member of the Democr ...

had previously fast-tracked the first mineral project under FAST-41, a zinc-manganese development.

References

External links

Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act
as amended
PDFdetails
in the GPObr>Statute Compilations collection

Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act
as enacted
PDFdetails
in the US Statutes at Large * on

Congress.gov Congress.gov is the online database of United States Congress legislative information. Congress.gov is a joint project of the Library of Congress, the House, the Senate and the Government Publishing Office. Congress.gov was in beta in 2012, and ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act United States federal transportation legislation Acts of the 114th United States Congress 2015 in American law