Obama’s 2011 budget gives a lift to livability and transportation
February 2, 2010By Sean Barry
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President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget is a step forward for transportation options and livable communities and contains $1 billion in programs and grants to help turn this positive vision into reality.
In this budget, the President and his advisers attempt to thread a needle between the urgency of unemployment and the longer-term implications of debt. Given these realities, it is gratifying that Obama chose to boost funding on transportation and livability as other programs face cuts. It shows that his team gets it. They understand that investing in the neighborhoods and communities of tomorrow can both create jobs and lay the foundation for future prosperity. Indeed, that dual purpose has been a theme of Obama’s domestic agenda throughout 2009.
The administration had signaled a new path last year with its creation of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, a joint effort among the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation. The administration recognized that making transportation choices, affordable housing and economic opportunity available to more Americans requires real collaboration among these key agencies. The partnership is on track to receive $830 million in the FY 2011 budget.
The budget also allocates $1 billion for high-speed rail, on top of the $2.5 billion in the current year’s budget and $8 million in grants from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Here are few other programs and pilots worth mentioning:
- $4 billion for the National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund
- $150 for the Sustainable Communities Initiative, including an inter-agency research effort on the transportation and housing linkage
- $150 million for Catalytic Investment Competition Grants, a competitive program to support job-creation and large scale projects in disadvantaged areas
- $527 million for the Livable Communities Program
- $32 million for the Healthy Communities Initiative
This is a budget praise-worthy for both the help it delivers today and the investment ushered in for tomorrow. It deserves our support.
3 Responses to “Obama’s 2011 budget gives a lift to livability and transportation”
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February 3rd, 2010 1:17 pm
Yes it is better than nothing, but countries with sensible transportation systems that actually work spend a much higher percentage of their budget on them. The transportation budget is tiny really when you look at it.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/02/01/us/budget.html
The defense budget is so much bigger than Education, healthcare, transportation combined it doesn’t look like a real priority.
February 12th, 2010 5:16 pm
The big question is – how much is allocated to highways?
In New Jersey our new Republican Governor Chris Cristie just axed NJ Transit that runs our
trains and buses $38 Million. In comparison NJ just wasted $70 Million on just ONE
inconvenient highway interchange between the Garden State Parkway and I-78.
At the same time our new Governor is planning on increasing mass transit fares and cut
service (which is actually in essence a hidden fare increase) he has ruled out
increasing our gas tax which is 47th lowest in the US.
Also NJ is planning on spending $7 Billion for highway lane expansion for NJ Turnpike and
the Garden State Parkway.
Again compare the pittance $38 Million CUT from mass transit with the ongoing and planned
expansions for highways totalling billions.
When will the Obama Administration bite the bullet and up the Federal gas tax to renew the
Transportation Fund and get cars and trucks off the roads and onto rails?
DOT Secretary Ray LaHood has ruled out a Federal gas tax increase.
February 26th, 2010 6:05 pm
Please don’t characterize for us the little baby steps this administration is taking to pretend it is transit friendly, as if we are some kind of fools. As mentioned, the big one billion dollars of spending for the nation is but a small fraction of what one state will spend on pavement widening. Meanwhile, the three-quarter trillion insecurity (“defense”) budget is all debt financing – really disgusting, especially considering the petroleum supply agenda.
The job potential for rebuilding our national rail and urban rail systems could carry us forward. However, it seems we are stuck in the bankrupting wagon ruts of petrostate, insecurity state, Wall Street investment bank state, centralized war corporatism. For example, sixty billion for atomic fission (nuclear power) with fifty percent chance of default. This is called regression. Talk about economic “meltdown.”