Highways and Highway Safety on Indian Lands

Summary

Cars and trucks are the primary means of transportation on Indian lands, mostly rural areas that cover about 56 million acres. There are about 145,000 miles of roads, owned variously by tribal, federal, state, and local governments, which provide access to and within these areas. Although comprehensive data are not available, roads on Indian lands are typically rudimentary and in poor condition.

A large share of federal funding for highways on Indian lands is provided through the Tribal Transportation Program (TTP), which is jointly administered by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in the Department of the Interior (DOI). The TTP was authorized at an average of $465 million per year from FY2016 through FY2020 as part of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act (P.L. 114-94).

Other programs that provide funding for highways and highway safety on Indian reservations include BIA’s Road Maintenance Program and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) State Highway Safety Program (§402 safety grants). Indian tribes may also receive federal aid for projects from funding apportioned to a state department of transportation. Moreover, tribes have had some success competing for discretionary funding. For example, Indian tribes have received discretionary Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants from DOT.

Tribal advocates, citing the poor and unsafe condition of tribal roads, argue for a much larger tribal transportation program and more funds for highway safety programs. The FAST Act provided modest increases in funding in nominal dollars. The FAST Act also requires two safety-related reports, one on the quality of transportation safety data collected on tribal lands and the other to provide options for improving highway safety on Indian reservations.

DOT and BIA have different requirements for projects that involve similar right-of-way circumstances, and a tribe needs to have approval from BIA on BIA-owned or trust land even if the tribe has an agreement with FHWA. In certain situations, BIA will require a more resource-intensive environmental assessment when DOT will process the request as a less resource-intensive categorical exclusion. A legislative option would be to require BIA to apply DOT regulations when implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Others have suggested improving the documentation of rights-of-way on Indian reservations.