Eno Is Right About IIJA

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

This week, the Eno Center for Transportation released a new report examining what comes next for intercity passenger rail as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) approaches expiration in September. Eno’s work matters because it reflects how transportation policy is being discussed in the mainstream among the analysts, budgeteers, and decision-makers who help us to shape Federal surface transportation policy.

For passenger rail supporters, the report’s central conclusion will sound familiar, and I’m glad they’ve reached the same place as we have.

Eno argues that allowing Federal passenger rail funding to lapse back into the old cycle of annual uncertainty would squander the progress made under IIJA, not just by slowing projects, but by actively undoing the capacity that has finally been built to deliver them. In other words, IIJA didn’t just fund rail projects. It changed behavior.

That mirrors what we’ve been saying since IIJA passed — and what the evidence now makes hard to ignore. Basically, IIJA worked because certainty works. Eno’s report makes a critical distinction that often gets lost in the political debate. The most important feature of IIJA wasn’t simply the dollar amount, but the five-year advance appropriations structure that gave Amtrak, states, and the Federal Railroad Administration something they almost never have: predictability.

That certainty allowed agencies to hire staff, plan complex projects, negotiate multi-year procurements, and sequence construction in ways that reduce disruption and cost. As Eno documents, major Northeast Corridor megaprojects that had lingered unfunded for decades are now fully funded for the first time. Fleet replacement programs are underway. ADA station compliance is finally accelerating nationwide. Corridor planning has moved from aspiration to pipeline...a slow, sluggish pipeline, to be sure, but a pipeline, nonetheless.

This is exactly why we warned early on that IIJA could not be treated as a one-time surge. Rail infrastructure doesn’t work on annual appropriations whiplash. You can’t staff up, plan responsibly, and then slam on the brakes without consequences. In fact, slamming those brakes could cost U.S. industry a collective one trillion dollars, and our national gross domestic product some $600 billion (Read our first caution on that note by clicking here.)

Now we face what some people call a “hidden risk,” but one that I think is really obvious and out in the open, and that’s losing the capacity we just built. Eno’s report makes the very important point that a real danger in 2026 isn’t merely a pause in new projects. It’s the dismantling of institutional capacity.

Under IIJA, Amtrak and its partners hired thousands of employees, rebuilt capital-delivery teams, and developed project pipelines that simply did not exist before. Eno is blunt: reverting to uncertain annual funding at this moment would waste not only money already spent, but the workforce and planning capacity painstakingly assembled to spend it well.

One of the predictable elements of the boom-and-bust cycle we’ve suffered in passenger rail is that we wind up having to create ad hoc “bespoke” supply chains every time we want to buy new trains or rebuild bridges or finally get around to refurbishing 100-plus year-old tunnels. That takes lots more time and lots more money. It means delayed bridges, stalled fleet deliveries, shelved corridor plans, and higher costs down the road when Congress inevitably tries to restart what it allowed to atrophy. Infrastructure I build today is always going to be cheaper than infrastructure I build tomorrow.

That’s a message we shared last year as the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee began piecing together what will become the surface bill replacing the IIJA, the reauthorization. (You can read what we told T&I by clicking here.)

Eno also advances an interesting policy framework for what full rail funding actually looks like. The report recognizes that not all rail investments are alike, and that different categories might require different funding mechanisms. Routine capital renewal benefits from short-term advance appropriations that allow agencies to plan efficiently. Major modernization and backlog projects require multi-year commitments or phased funding agreements that fully fund projects before construction begins. This is a lot like what the military does with major weapons-system acquisitions. And system expansion depends on a planning pipeline like Corridor ID, paired with predictable downstream capital so planning doesn’t become a dead end.

I think this is an important evolution in the conversation. It moves the debate away from slogans and toward implementation and follow-through, which is, candidly, where rail policy too often breaks down.

We agree with the framing that the coming reauthorization debate is a choice. But it’s worth being clear about what that choice really is. The question before Congress is no longer whether IIJA “worked.” Whether measured in ridership, revenue, project readiness, backlog reduction, demand for more service from jurisdictions traditionally non-committal on rail, or any other meaningful metric, IIJA certainly worked. The real question is whether lawmakers are prepared to treat passenger rail as permanent national infrastructure, or as a temporary experiment that they’re willing to unwind just as it begins to deliver results.

Forty-six successive Congresses have consistently funded rail, albeit to a greater or lesser degree. Passenger rail, as Eno notes, is “here to stay.”

“Much of the Congressional debate about whether the U.S. needs an intercity passenger rail system in the 21st Century appears to have resolved into a consensus that intercity passenger rail service is an important part of the nation’s transportation system,” Eno writes. But at the same time, Congress hasn’t really been able to budget in ways that match its commitment to passenger rail as a mode.

“To this day, there is no source of dedicated federal revenue to support Amtrak or the intercity passenger rail programs, unlike funding for highways, transit, and aviation, leaving Amtrak as one of the largest federal discretionary transportation programs that must be funded each year,” Eno says.

A year ago, alongside other stakeholders invited to appear before the House committee staff, we delivered a clear message: the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act must not be treated as a one-time infusion. It took a four-decade Federal commitment to build the Interstate Highway System. Likewise, the U.S. interstate passenger rail network can’t succeed without a strong Federal partner willing to invest across multiple authorization cycles. A one-off would be just another policy failure. The primary goal for passenger rail in the reauthorization should be building on the foundation of the rail programs introduced across the last four reauthorization cycles.

Allowing rail funding to lapse back into instability wouldn’t be fiscal prudence. It would be policy amnesia. Eno’s report is a welcome contribution precisely because it confirms what years of experience, and now evidence, have shown: predictable funding isn’t a luxury for passenger rail. It’s the minimum condition for success. We don’t need yet another “new vision.” We just need to finish the job we started in 2021. Let’s get after it!