After the Department of Transportation missed the deadline to provide an updated National Travel and Tourism Infrastructure Strategic Plan, a bipartisan group of senators recently wrote a letter addressed to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asking for an explanation for the delay and to promptly release the strategy plan. The plan supposedly includes recommendations for how to improve the transportation system in consideration of tourism and passenger travel, as well as a 20-year forecast of tourism volume.

On the timeline of DOT’s delay, The Hill reported:

The Transportation Department published the strategy on the last full day of former President Trump’s administration in January 2021 after missing a 2018 deadline mandated by Congress.

Days before the May deadline, Buttigieg testified before a Senate panel that his department was waiting for the federal government’s interagency tourism council, which is led by the Commerce Department, to release its new tourism strategy before the DOT releases its plan.

That group released its plan in June, and the Transportation Department has yet to provide its updated strategy.

“Unfortunately, while it has now been well over 300 days since the [bipartisan infrastructure law] was signed into law, and more than 100 days since the Department of Commerce released its National Travel and Tourism Strategy, we have not yet seen an updated National Travel and Tourism Infrastructure Strategic Plan from DOT,” the senators wrote.