23 U.S.C. § 151 — National electric vehicle charging and hydrogen, propane, and natural gas fueling corridors

(a) In General. The Secretary of Transportation must periodically designate national corridors for electric vehicle charging and for hydrogen, propane, and natural gas fueling. These corridors identify where charging and fueling infrastructure is needed, now and in the future, at strategic spots along major national highways, in order to support a shift toward vehicles that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve mobility for passenger and commercial vehicles using these fuel types. (b) Designation of Corridors. In designating corridors, the Secretary must: (1) ask state and local officials to nominate facilities for inclusion; (2) fold in electric vehicle charging or fueling corridors already designated by the Federal Highway Administration or by a state or group of states; and (3) consider existing demand for, and location of, charging or fueling stations. (c) Stakeholders. In designating corridors, the Secretary must involve, on a voluntary basis, stakeholders that include: the heads of other federal agencies; state and local officials; representatives of energy utilities, the electric/fuel-cell/propane/natural-gas vehicle industries, the freight and shipping industry, clean technology firms, the hospitality and restaurant industries, highway rest-stop vendors, and industrial gas and hydrogen manufacturers; and any other stakeholders the Secretary determines necessary. (d) Redesignation. Within 180 days of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act of 2021 becoming law, the Secretary had to update and redesignate the corridors. After that, the Secretary must set up an ongoing process to keep updating and redesignating them regularly. (e) Report. During each designation or redesignation, the Secretary must issue a report that: (1) identifies infrastructure and standardization needs for electricity, industrial gas, and natural gas providers, infrastructure providers, vehicle manufacturers, and fuel purchasers; (2) describes efforts — including grants awarded under subsection (f) — that help achieve strategic deployment of this infrastructure in the corridors; and (3) summarizes best practices and provides guidance, developed with the Secretary of Energy, for building this infrastructure predictably at the state, tribal, and local level. (f) Grant Program. This is the largest part of the section. It creates a grant program to help pay for this infrastructure. (1) "Private entity" means a corporation, partnership, company, or nonprofit organization. (2) Within one year of the 2021 Act, the Secretary must establish a grant program for the activities described in paragraph (6). (3) Eligible grant recipients include: states or their political subdivisions; metropolitan planning organizations; units of local government; special-purpose districts or public authorities with a transportation function, including port authorities; Indian tribes; U.S. territories; entities owned by any of these; or groups of these entities. (4) To apply, an entity must describe how it considered: public access to the infrastructure (connector types, real-time availability information, and secure, fair payment methods); collaboration with stakeholders to foster investment, expand deployment, protect privacy and cybersecurity, and ensure a properly trained workforce; the site's location (nearby amenities like restrooms or food, disability access, height and capacity for large vehicles, and spacing to avoid gaps or redundancy); designing infrastructure that can adapt to future technology, such as autonomous vehicles and vehicle-to-grid charging; and how the infrastructure will be operated and maintained long-term, to avoid becoming a stranded asset. Applicants must also assess the emissions they expect to reduce, using a specific federal tool (the AFLEET tool, or its successor). (5) In selecting grant recipients, the Secretary must consider: whether the project improves the corridor network (for example, converting "corridor-pending" to "corridor-ready" status, or adding redundancy where demand is high or congestion exists); whether it meets current or anticipated market demand; whether it would be unlikely to happen without federal assistance; whether it supports a long-term competitive market without significantly harming existing infrastructure providers; whether it reaches areas with current or forecasted need; and whether it serves medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, including along the National Highway Freight Network and near intermodal transfer stations. The Secretary must also try, as much as practicable, to spread grants geographically. The Secretary must consider whether the private entity involved has submitted recent audited financial statements and has experience installing and operating this kind of infrastructure, and whether the public and private partners have agreed on operating and maintaining the infrastructure, with a remedy and a chance to fix problems if that agreement is not met. (6) Use of funds: A grant recipient may use the funds only to contract with a private entity to acquire and install publicly accessible charging or fueling infrastructure directly related to fueling a vehicle. That infrastructure must be located along a designated corridor, and any affected Indian tribes must be consulted before the corridor is designated. A recipient may use part of its grant to give the private entity up to five years of "operating assistance" while the facility transitions to independent operation, but this assistance is limited to costs of operating and maintaining the infrastructure and cannot exceed the amount of the original acquisition-and-installation contract. Grant funds may also pay for traffic control devices in the right-of-way that direct people to the infrastructure — though this doesn't create authority to install signs an entity wasn't otherwise allowed to install, and this spending also cannot exceed the acquisition-and-installation contract amount. A recipient and its private partner may enter a cost-sharing agreement where the private entity shares infrastructure revenue with the recipient, but that shared revenue can only be used for another project eligible under this title. (7) Grants for propane fueling infrastructure under this subsection are limited to infrastructure for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. (8) Community grants. The Secretary must reserve 50 percent of each fiscal year's funding for this section for a separate community-grant track, with a broader group of eligible applicants (also including state or local authorities that own publicly accessible transportation facilities). These grants can fund not just infrastructure but also planning, feasibility, environmental review, and design work, at any public road or other publicly accessible location, such as parking facilities at public buildings, schools, or parks. The Secretary must give priority to projects that expand access within rural areas, low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and communities with little private parking or a high ratio of multi-unit housing. The Secretary must also weigh geographic diversity (including an urban-rural balance) and current or anticipated market demand, including fast-charging capability. Recipients may hire private entities to acquire, build, maintain, or operate the infrastructure. No community grant may exceed $15,000,000. Of the reserved funds, the Secretary may use up to 1 percent for technical assistance to applicants, and a grant recipient may use up to 5 percent of its own grant on educational and community-engagement activities supporting zero-emission vehicles. (9) Any project funded under this subsection is treated as a project on a Federal-aid highway. Any traffic control device or sign funded under this subsection must comply with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (if located in the right-of-way) and other applicable federal, state, and local law. (10) The federal government's share of a project's cost may not exceed 80 percent of total project cost. As a condition of contracting with the grant recipient, the private entity must agree to pay whatever share of the cost the federal government does not cover. (11) Within three years of this subsection's enactment, the Secretary must submit to the relevant Senate and House committees, and make publicly available, a report on the progress and implementation of this grant program.