...payments. "We’re not talking about philosophy here," says Boehlert. "We’re talking about trench warfare."

What opened the door to a deal was adding $9 billion in highway authority to the pot. Although the $9 billion is not guaranteed obligations, it counts in rate-of-return calculations. In the end, it was enough to give donors 91.5% in 2007 and their 92% goal in 2008 and 2009. At the same time, donees won assurance of at least a 19% hike in annual average highway funds over their TEA-21 totals (see map).

"The bill probably wouldn’t have been passed had we held their toes to the fire about getting our rate up to 95%," says Marsh Johnson, director of Florida DOT’s office of financial development. When the donor-donee issue was settled, "that’s when the bill really started to move," says ARTBA’s Bauer.

Sealing the deal were hundreds of earmarked projects requested by hundreds of legislators. SAFETEA-LU’s highway title has 25 Projects of National and Regional Significance, 33 National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement Projects, 465 Transportation Improvements and 5,130 High Priority Projects. Keith Ashdown, vice president with advocacy group Taxpayers for Common Sense, says funding for all projects and other earmarks exceeds $23 billion. "This bill is a bipartisan porkfest with both sides feeding equally from the taxpayer trough," Ashdown says.

Alaska did particularly well. Ashdown counts 119 earmarks, totaling $941 million, trailing California, Illinois and New York. Alaska’s biggest items are $181 million for the Knik Arm Bridge near Anchorage and $175 million for a planned bridge linking Ketchikan with sparsely populated Gravina Island. Criticism hardly registered in Congress: The Senate passed the bill 91-4 and the House 412-8.

Although the bill’s focus was money, industry officials say there are important policy changes. Some focus on "streamlining" of projects’ environmental reviews, to speed construction. For example, it says legal challenges to federal highway and transit approvals must be filed within 180 days, instead of six years now. California’s DOT will be included in a pilot program to expedite permitting. "Anything we can add to the quiver of tools for local control can only help," says Ken De Crecenzo, Caltrans federal relations representative.

Tina Shaw, Texas DOT’s federal affairs manager, points to provisions dealing with project delivery, including greater discretion in authority to charge tolls on Interstates, and more flexibility in using design-build contracting.

A provision authorizing $15 billion in tax-exempt, private transportation bonds will spark more private investment in highway and intermodal projects, says Karen Hedlund, a partner in Arlington, Va., with the law firm Nossaman Guthner Knox Elliott LLP. Hedlund says it "essentially levels the playing field between private and public investments in infrastructure." To qualify, the projects also must be receiving federal funding and be subject to Buy America, prevailing-wage and other requirements.

Looking ahead, some road and transit warriors who survived this bill say its successor will be radically different. The legislation "definitely sets the stage for the next reauthorization where hopefully we can increase the revenue going into the trust fund one way or another," says Jeffrey D. Shoaf, Associated General Contractors’ senior executive director for governmental and public affairs.

The new law establishes a National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission to look at system needs, short-term trust fund revenue sources and long-range alternatives to the fuel tax. Says HNTB’s Riley: "I honestly think this will be the last fully gas-tax-funded highway bill. By the time we get to the next one, it will be based on user fees and alternative financing."