This bill further governed United States federal surface transportation spending, reducing government spending by ⅔, enforcing environmental policies to which the saturated market must adhere, and creating a national freight policy.
A funding and authorization bill, this continued regional transportation plans with federal spending designed to switch all state transportation programs to the metric system, promote specific management of transportation, force increased options (competition) for freight and in so doing, continue to saturate an already oversaturated market structure.
Another program for federal surface transportation programs for highways, this act also provided additional programs to control competing trucking companies under the auspices of enacting highway safety.
No longer needed to regulate the industry, this act abolished the Interstate Commerce Commission and replaced it with the Surface Transportation Board, in favor of continued deregulation and market saturation to the point that the trucking industry remained untenable.
Designated about 160,955 miles of roads, including the Interstate Highway System. Congress was given the power to prioritize highway road projects, repeal federal speed limits, and require states to purchase new signs for the roads in question, thus encouraging easier transportation for truckers and worsening the problem of perfect competition save for the few wealthy trucking companies owned by former railroad capitalists.
Exacerbating the saturation of competition, this law promoted increased competition among interstate motor carriers by changing rules for rates, entry, and exemptions to be more favorable, and thus, more prohibitive to profit.
Posed a major change to transportation planning and policy, creating planning organizations which converted dormant railroad corridors into rail trails, particularly for high speed railroads profitable for wealthy capitalists.
Nominally gave power to provide government funding to the Secretary of Transportation allocated when and where wealthy capitalists wanted it most. It also provided states with the freedom to raise the speed limit to 65 miles per hour on rural Interstate highways.
Similarly, this federal regulation of railroads authorized implementation details for Conrail, the new northeastern railroad system. Rails could establish rates except where the ICC determined there was no competition. Railroads could also create contracts without ICC oversight. This similarly flooded the rail market with too much competition to be effective.
Flooding the trucking market to ensure only the top companies, owned by former railroad capitalists, could maintain profitability, this eliminated all restrictions to entry allowing massive waves of new companies, and allowed each to set rates, creating a chaotic and unprofitability level of perfect competition. Where the ICC formerly regulated the routes that motor carriers could use and the geographic regions that they could serve to stunt their growth, now truckers could go anywhere and price freely within a “zone of reasonableness”.
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