ITS America Board Unanimously Approves 2026 Surface Transportation Reauthorization Principles for Transportation Modernization and Innovation 

On March 25^th, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America’s (ITS America) Board of Directors unanimously approved policy principles for the surface transportation reauthorization process currently underway before the 119^th Congress. These policies represent a bold, achievable vision for a national surface transportation strategy which prioritizes transportation innovation, system modernization, and infrastructure project delivery. ITS America’s proposal presents three key pillars: integrating digital infrastructure throughout U.S. transportation programs, establishing secure funding for transportation technology investments, and improving the technology procurement process. These principles reflect the realities associated with today’s technology-enabled transportation opportunities and can guide Federal efforts to leverage American industry to holistically integrate digital infrastructure and similar innovative technology solutions across our nation’s transportation network to significantly improve safety, efficiency, and return-on-investment outcomes. ITS America looks forward to fully engaging with our legislative partners to articulate why innovation must represent a central theme of the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization, and we are confident that these principles will serve as a critical blueprint from which that theme can be achieved. 

As part of that engagement, ITS America formally released these principles at last week’s 2025 ITS America Policy Summit, a two-day event which gathered leaders from the public sector, private sector, and academia to discuss pressing policy challenges and opportunities in the transportation sector. We were joined by nearly 150 participants, including representatives from industry, state and local DOTs, Congressional staff, and federal government officials at K&L Gates in Washington DC to discuss critical transportation policy issue areas such as artificial intelligence, consumer privacy in an increasingly connected system, technology procurement, automated vehicles, and other topics anticipated to be discussed throughout the 119^th Congress. Surface transportation reauthorization remained the foremost area of focus at the Summit, where public sector and private sector leaders alike echoed the call of ITS America’s surface transportation reauthorization principles for Congress to be bold on innovation and integrate technology holistically into our surface transportation system, specifically to improve transportation safety and efficiency outcomes.  

The summit’s keynote speaker, Loren Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and the United States Department of Transportation (USDOT), clearly articulated Secretary Duffy’s goal to reinforce safety as the Department’s north star and emphasized USDOT’s commitment to leveraging technology as a critical component of their safety strategy, including through supporting further deployment of transportation automation and connectivity. He specifically highlighted the role of technology in enabling more efficient infrastructure project delivery, arguing that, at its core, “technology is fundamentally doing more with less.” He encouraged stakeholders to reach out with ideas on how to utilize innovative solutions to solve existing transportation challenges, promising an open-door policy for new ideas and approaches. ITS America looks forward to working closely with the new appointees to further identify ways in which the Department can provide critical leadership in supporting transportation technology deployment as we build a truly modern transportation system. 

The remainder of the first day of the summit featured a broad array of panelists discussing the opportunity provided by the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization to leverage technology and innovation to solve longstanding, urgent transportation challenges, foremost among them improving safety. Specifically, numerous transportation agency executives indicated that we have exhausted what we can accomplish on safety with an approach that relies on physical infrastructure improvements alone, and that technology must be an essential element of a national safety strategy that can meaningfully reduce fatalities and injuries on American roadways. Some speakers pointed to recent USDOT statements about the importance of modernizing the technology that underpins our air traffic control system, drawing a parallel to the need to modernize our surface transportation system with similar investment in technologies such as transportation connectivity, automation, digital infrastructure, and artificial intelligence to significantly reduce fatalities. These speakers highlighted the formula funding proposal element of ITS America’s surface transportation reauthorization principles, which they indicated would provide states certainty to invest in innovative transportation projects while similarly affording them the flexibility needed to deploy technologies that solve the safety challenges that are most pressing to their specific communities.  

Similarly, many speakers discussed challenges associated with the current methods of technology procurement for transportation projects and indicated their support for the procurement proposals included within ITS America’s surface transportation reauthorization principles. Industry and agency representatives alike spoke to the difficulties associated with procuring technology and software in procurement systems designed for asphalt and steel. They broadly indicated that the federal government could share successful innovative technology procurement models or provide additional guidance to state transportation agencies and procurement officers as to federal expectations about the private sector’s role in infrastructure project delivery, thereby helping to ease a significant project hurdle at the state and local level. Finally, speakers encouraged federal grant opportunities to prioritize outcomes-based procurement, which would provide recipients much-needed flexibility to determine which solutions will be best-positioned to help improve specific indicators, like safety outcomes or supply chain improvement. This underscored a reoccurring theme that was repeated throughout the summit: innovative transportation technologies provide transportation agencies with more options to solve longstanding transportation challenges, and federal programs need to reflect the availability of those options in today’s transportation system. The 119^th Congress has a unique opportunity to update our nation’s transportation code and procurement guidance to do just that. 

 In the midst of that conversation, ITS America celebrated the additional release of new industry privacy principles (focused on protecting personal information, building trust, improving responsible data usage and governance, meeting consumers where they are, and evolving organization policies to adapt to new technologies) and an AI Implementation Guide (developed in partnership with Cambridge Consultants). With all of these new resources coming out, it is clear that the cherry blossoms aren’t the only thing blooming in Washington. And that was only Day One of the summit! An additional update on committee meetings on Day Two can be found below. It was energizing to see so many of our members gathered to discuss these critical policy issues and this unique moment of opportunity to center innovation in the next surface reauthorization. More was said on the topic of reauthorization than can be covered in one Momentum article – however, the overall message for attendees was clear: we must be bold on innovation in the next surface reauthorization to deliver a truly modern transportation system that is safe, smart, and connected. 

– 

ITS America Committees gathered for in-person meetings on Day Two of the Summit to discuss 2025 objectives, priorities, and deliverables. Leaders gave updates and schedule structure, and opened the floor with survey questions to ensure all voices were heard. 

The V2X Committee is prioritizing the continued deployment-focused deliverables, as well as providing subject matter expert feedback to the ITS America and ITS JPO contract on V2X outreach. This year, they plan to produce deliverables that look to reduce barriers and perceived risks of V2X technologies as well as a V2X and Consumer Privacy document. The Beyond 5.9 V2X and Future of V2X Working Groups have plans for multiple deliverables throughout the year, focused on demystifying V2X and further developing best practices involving V2X technologies Lots of reading to look forward to with this Committee! 

The conversations at the Emerging Technology Committee meeting focused on procurement. Multiple representatives mentioned their organization’s efforts on the topic and how procurement barriers may impact their ability to use technology effectively. The discussions highlighted that emerging technology should help public agencies unlock the hidden value of their data, since agencies are currently not at a loss for data, and but are often just unable to efficiently leverage it. The Committee’s priorities for the year include creating an advanced integration plan for emerging technology factoring in multimodal frameworks as well as educating members on emerging technologies in a webinar series. During this meeting at the Summit, the Working Groups of this Committee planned their upcoming work on webinars, document creation, use case submission, and collaboration opportunities. It’s an exciting time for emerging technology! 

The Digital Infrastructure Committee’s priorities include collaborating with Cambridge Consultants on Digital Infrastructure Action Plan white papers, developing privacy documents related to digital technologies, and assisting ITS America on their National TDI Strategy Contract. The group noted the importance of federal involvement in digital infrastructure in relations to standardizing data exchange across states and regions. They discussed applications of AI, as they are looking to leverage the AI Implementation Guide in upcoming deliverables. Finally, ITS America announced that the AI Working Group is becoming an official Committee.  Stay tuned to see how the AI and Digital Transformation Committee will hit the ground running!  

ITS America is proud to offer a seat at the table at the forefront of policy and business exchange in the transportation technology industry. If you are interested in getting involved in a Committee, Working Group, or Community of Practice, please contact Morgan Fincher mfincher@itsa.org or Eryn Banton ebanton@itsa.org. 

We want to thank our premier sponsors, HNTB and Bentley Systems, for making this event such a success, as well as all who helped coordinate, including our hosts, Finch Fulton and K&L Gates. 

We look forward to seeing everyone at the ITS World Congress in Atlanta this August!