On one point alone:
“Eliminate federal spending outside of highway freight corridors or at the very least allow federal capital funding to be redirected toward operations and maintenance activities”.
I support the first part of that statement but not the second. The states should cover operations and maintenance activities on projects completed with assistance from federal funds. The federal funds should ONLY be for the capital funding, not an ongoing “entitlement” to the states. Expanding federal funding to operations and maintenance will only detract from the federal funding on the building side.
I think that’s the idea. As pointed out in the article, federal funds being devoted only to capital projects encourages the states themselves to provide their monies as matches to federal capital grants rather than as funding to maintain their roads.