FRAME for Mobility | Institute for Civic Service

An ICS project Active

What if the people who build the system wrote the law?

FRAME for Mobility is a from-scratch rewrite of the federal surface transportation law, drafted in the open with the practitioners who build and use the system. This page is the short version. The draft Act, the evidence and the argument live on the project's own site.

Visit frameformobility.org Read the Introduction (PDF)

The case

The system is working harder and delivering less.

$269B

The yearly cost of congestion in wasted time and fuel, up 142% in real terms since 1990.

2025 TTI Urban Mobility Report, via FRAME for Mobility: Introduction

+57%

The rise in pedestrian deaths since 2000, from 4,763 to 7,500 a year, while total roadway deaths stayed flat.

NHTSA and GHSA data, via FRAME for Mobility: Introduction

−24%

Transit ridership since 2000, even as transit service hours rose 18% over the same period.

FRAME for Mobility: Introduction

$275B

General Fund transfers since 2008 to keep the Highway Trust Fund solvent: the gas tax settlement no longer pays for the system.

Congressional Budget Office, via FRAME for Mobility: Introduction

The answer

A clean foundation, in three moves.

Move one

Consolidate

The tangle of overlapping federal programs, each with its own rules and formulas, is consolidated into one clean foundation, so money follows need instead of habit.
Move two

Pay for performance

Fix it first: preservation of the roads and bridges we already have comes before new capacity, and federal investment follows ridership growth and operational reliability.
Move three

Change how it is paid for

The fading fuel-tax settlement is replaced with a durable way to pay for the system Americans actually use, so the money and the mission line up again.