President Trump Archives - Transportation For America

What President Trump should tackle on transportation

If President Trump is interested in claiming the mantle of “infrastructure president,” here’s a list of specific actions the president can take to make significant improvements to the federal transportation program.

As we’ve done for past presidents, we’ve put together a list of specific actions that President Trump should take on transportation in his final term. Buckle up for this detailed list of 14 specific to-dos across five different areas:

Finally fix stuff
Actually improve safety
Streamline the process
Reconsider the (broken) models
Improve transparency

As T4A director Beth Osborne wrote recently, the federal transportation program has been failing to deliver for decades. Spending more money has failed to improve congestion, emissions, efficient access to jobs and daily needs, or reduce the number of people struck and killed while walking. President Trump could make a powerful statement by acknowledging that our current strategy isn’t working and urging Congress to beach this rudderless ship of a program that’s sailing off in no particular direction at all.

1) FINALLY FIX STUFF: President Trump can be the first to finally focus federal spending on fixing things first

He should aim to have “the best” infrastructure rather than just “the most”

Unsurprisingly, the American public doesn’t know much about the federal transportation program.¹ Most Americans do not realize there’s no requirement to first repair existing infrastructure before building new assets that require decades upon decades of new, additional maintenance costs. Requiring states to repair things first would likely have immense public support if Congress proposed it, yet a bunch of supposedly fiscally conservative Senators lost their minds at USDOT merely suggesting that states consider doing so.

At some point, we will have to stop expanding a transportation network that is already too large to realistically maintain, or go broke trying. Repair Priorities showed that we’d need $231.4 billion per year just to keep our existing road network in an acceptable state and bring the backlog of roads in poor condition into good repair over a six-year period. Yet across all units of government, in 2015, we spent just $105.4 billion on all highway capital projects. Step one is to stop digging the hole, especially when the gas tax, the primary source of federal funding, has only been covering a fraction of checks that Congress has been writing since as far back as 2008.

President Trump should step in and tell the freeloading members of Congress that the free lunch is over. Tell them their states can’t just expand their transportation system forever with zero thought given to how their children and grandchildren will pay for its upkeep.

(A) Reward areas that are making improvements in the condition of their roadways with competitive grants and limit the grantmaking for those who are not.
More than $200 billion of the $643 billion in the IIJA went to competitive grants, and every administration puts its own stamp on the projects they choose to advance. Add in criteria to reward those who are being the best stewards of the other federal dollars they have received. Those who are begging Congress for more free taxpayer money to expand roads they can’t afford to maintain should not be rewarded with more grant funding to do anything.

(B) Before providing funding for anything new, require transportation agencies to demonstrate they have funding for its maintenance and repair throughout its useful life.
This is another fact that tends to shock people we’ve surveyed: agencies don’t have to prove they can afford to maintain anything they are building. And they can build something new even if it will jeopardize their ability to maintain things they’ve already built. If you or I are buying a house, we have to prove to the bank that we have stable and sufficient income. But when your state DOT takes federal highway formula money and decides to build a new highway with it, they don’t have to prove to anyone that they have enough money to maintain it even for just the next five years, let alone the next 50. It’s time for that to change. USDOT could institute a requirement like this tomorrow with many competitive programs. For formula programs, President Trump can tell Congress to institute this change in the replacement for the IIJA, which is due in September of next year.

(C) When infrastructure fails, whether by natural disasters or otherwise, require that it be updated for current needs.
When floods, fire, extreme heat, or other changes in weather lead to the loss of a road, bridge, transit line, or anything else, transportation agencies should consider whether that asset needs to be replaced, what needs to be done to reduce the chance of a repeat failure, and how the design should be updated to improve priorities like safety and connectivity. Expanding that asset should only be considered if there is a plan to maintain it, as discussed above.

(2) ACTUALLY IMPROVE SAFETY: Stop paying lip service to safety and get the U.S. off the bottom of the rankings

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy came in with a stated interest in improving safety. It’s sorely needed—the U.S. sits at the bottom of the rankings of the developed world on traffic safety. The numbers are even more dire for people walking. Safety is always described as a top priority, though states face no penalties for injuries or fatalities increasing on their roads. It’s time to put safety above all else, penalize those who use federal dollars to make it worse, and reward those who are moving things in the right direction.

(A) Reward improvements in safety.
Reward the cities, metro areas, and states with roadways that are getting safer with increased access to competitive grants, and limit the grantmaking for the places that are not. Consider serious injuries in addition to deaths, and especially evaluate the numbers for people walking, biking, or getting around outside of vehicles.

(B) Make it clear that cities and states can and should be testing to see what safety improvements work in what conditions, and fund them to do so.
The Secretary should write a memo making it clear that the guidance in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is never an excuse to stand in the way of progress on safety. If provisions in the MUTCD are leading to bad safety outcomes, states, and other agencies should not follow that guidance and submit reports to USDOT about provisions that make safety worse. USDOT should consider updating the guide to better prioritize safety or, even better, pare it back entirely to only cover the design of signs, markings and signals. The MUTCD was never intended to govern street design.

(C) Cap vehicle safety ratings at four stars for any vehicles that impede the driver’s ability to see in front of or around them.
As the vehicle fleet gets bigger, taller, and heavier on average, people in older vehicles, and especially people outside of any vehicle, are more at risk. Collisions that were only injuries 20 years ago are becoming fatalities today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other relevant USDOT offices should stop dragging their feet and update the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) on crashworthiness and crash avoidance systems to account for people walking and biking. This is something that’s already been proposed by the National Safety Council. (Page 42)

(3) STREAMLINE: Cut red tape and speed up (good) projects

The President and Secretary Duffy are partially right—good projects do take too long. While we’re also glad that terrible, destructive projects also take too long, there’s absolutely some low-hanging fruit when it comes to improving the process by which projects get planned, designed, and built. Here are three:

(1) Streamline the grant application process for all USDOT grants so that rural and lower-capacity agencies can better compete.
While not easy for any unit of government to navigate, smaller and midsized cities face an uphill challenge with the complex process of applying for USDOT competitive grants. USDOT could do two things to improve that process: First, create an online application and a simple plug-and-play benefit-cost analysis (BCA) calculator so that these places don’t have to hire overpriced consultants. Second, reduce the paperwork and speed up the process for signing a grant agreement. What you might not know when you see that list released of RAISE grant winners (or any other grant program) is that it can take months to years to receive any funding because they have to negotiate a grant agreement with USDOT. Speed that up and simplify that process.

(2) Ensure that project streamlining efforts consistently extend to all modes, all regions, and all transportation agencies.
One reason transit projects get built more slowly (and at higher cost) than highway projects is because Federal Highways (FHWA) district offices and Federal Transit (FTA) regional offices interpret many of the same rules differently. For example, FHWA applies streamlining laws and regulations much more liberally than FTA does. Environmental review should be bypassed or abbreviated for more projects that have clear benefits. And the state DOTs demanding streamlining changes from Congress or USDOT, who subject their local governments to arduous requirements when they subgrant money to them, should stop. This process disproportionately harms the smaller and rural areas this administration claims to prioritize because these places don’t have the funding to take over the project or the size and clout to push back.

(3) Remove burdensome federal requirements to bring down costs.
Highway agencies often feel pressure from FHWA under existing design standards and project development protocols to do things that increase costs, like designing roadways with lanes that are unnecessarily wide for streets where lower speeds are the goal or having to do a costly traffic study before making commonsense improvements like new crosswalks or signals. FHWA claims that state and local agencies have flexibility, but their experience counters that claim.

(4) RECONSIDER THE MODELS: Stop wasting money based on bad data and travel models

(A) Take down the Secretary’s value of time memo.
Rescinding this single memo would have a significant impact overnight. USDOT’s enshrined guidance on the “value of time” leads to an enormous waste of federal money, with billions going toward trying to save certain people a few seconds at a time, claiming that those seconds add up to tens of millions of dollars in economic benefit. Rather than explaining further, just watch our video:

We’ve had the technology for years now to measure the actual time of trips instead of assuming that “slightly faster vehicles on road X = a better system.” The time for inaccurate and misleading proxies has long passed. President Trump should direct Secretary Duffy to rescind this memo yesterday.

(B) Review the accuracy of travel demand models.
Traffic models predicted unimaginable congestion without widening The Katy Expressway in Houston. Yet even after widening it to 26 lanes in some places, traffic got worse, failing to deliver on the projections from the flawed traffic models used to justify the billions spent on it. Yet those same models will be used again and again to justify other similar projects. Agencies (or Congress) almost never look back to evaluate if new projects delivered on the promises made or if the new reality comes close to the rosy projections. Like a weather forecast, we’re mostly just concerned about the predictions for tomorrow and rarely go back five years to consider the accuracy of a past forecast. USDOT should start rigorously comparing past projections with actual outcomes, reporting their findings, and updating the models when there are discrepancies.

graphic combining 20+ increasing projections of VMT

This near-comical graphic from the Frontier Group combines past federal projections of future growth in vehicle miles traveled. The darkest line is reality. Every year the models continued to project basically the same growth in miles traveled, even though every one continued to prove false.

(5) IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY: Make it easier for taxpayers to understand where their money is going and what is being accomplished

The simple truth is that it’s nearly impossible to get up-to-date data on where transportation money has been spent, and the conditions and performance of the transportation system. In fact, when the IIJA expires in September 2026, we’ll just have (an incomplete) picture of where the money went during its predecessor (the FAST Act) from 2015-2021. This means that the members of Congress who will decide how much of your tax money to invest in transportation and how to invest it, have almost no idea about how well the money has been spent for the last 3-4 years. Would you give your employees a raise when you have no idea if they’ve done a good job for the last year? This is yet another reason why public faith in the federal program is incredibly low.

(A) Require project sponsors to report on what their projects have accomplished.
Understanding where and how money is being spent is only part of the question. The administration should also make it easier for taxpayers to learn what has been accomplished with the billions handed out to states and metro areas each year. USDOT should create a new requirement for project sponsors to submit simple reports five years after completion to report on the performance of the project. Did the project deliver all the promised benefits? Did the promised congestion relief materialize? Did the project accomplish its stated goals for improving safety? How does today’s reality match up with the lofty promises used to justify each project?

(B) Standardize transportation spending data format and availability for annual state/metro area spending.
The State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) is a four-year list of projects a state has committed to funding, planning, and building. Though these STIPS are intended to help the public understand how and where their tax dollars are going and hold leaders accountable, good luck deciphering (or even finding, in some cases) your state’s STIP. USDOT should standardize the format and availability of this data so that the public can easily understand how their tax dollars are spent, compare spending across states and metropolitan planning organizations, and hold their agencies and elected leaders accountable.

(C) Require transparency regarding compensation in leadership positions, including bonuses at Amtrak.
One way to fulfill Amtrak’s mission of reliable, quality passenger rail service is by ensuring that every dollar possible helps them improve or expand service. It’s not unreasonable to provide good compensation to smart, motivated, and competent staff or executives, but salary and bonuses should be tied to serving passengers and justified by quantifiable, measurable results in improved service and travel experience. There should also be accounting for the total number of executive staff, their salaries, and all bonuses.

Stay tuned! We’ll be checking in on these items from time to time throughout this administration and reporting back.

Three takeaways from T4A’s webinar on Trump’s executive orders

Yesterday, our Director Beth Osborne led a webinar that provided a high-level overview of our Reauthorization 101 resource and analysis of Trump’s recent executive orders and memos. Here are the top three takeaways from the conversation with over 400 attendees.

1. Many are still confused as to what the administration is trying to accomplish

During the webinar, multiple attendees questioned the purpose of these speedy memos and executive orders. These are largely unprecedented actions and are difficult to calculate since there seems to be much back and forth with legality push backs (even internal push backs with Congress). Much of these actions are difficult to predict and it’s unknown if they are even capable of being implemented. One attendee pointed out how these EO’s could possibly clash with foundational legislation such as the Civil Rights Act. Ultimately, only time can tell and there are multiple variables at play that can reverse or accelerate these actions.

2. Everyone wants to know what they can do during this chaos

As advocates and transportation enthusiasts, attendees questioned what could be done during these times of uncertainty. At this point of time, the most impactful action is to let respective Congressional representatives know about the weight of these issues. Identify your representatives and call their office to explain what projects could be at risk in your community and what those projects bring to enhance life. Emails are another option to inform offices of the possible impact these memos can have on districts and states. DC offices are not the only option to contact, state legislators and state DOTs are also liaisons to contact and escalate how these actions could harm cities.

3. Who is at risk?

A large theme from the webinar was wondering whose communities are at risk of losing out on their obligated funding. T4A wants to equip our partners, advocates, and communities with all the right information and resources. Check out our analysis on funding that is at risk, broken down by state, county, and congressional districts. Be informed, know what is at risk and escalate to your legislators!

Webinar: Executive orders and reauthorization—Navigating the future of federal transportation funding

Join us for a webinar on Tuesday, February 25th at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the state of transportation funding, including recent executive orders and the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization.

Federal transportation funding is at a crossroads, with executive orders and USDOT directives reshaping priorities and halting projects, not to mention federal surface transportation program planning already underway. In a rapidly shifting USDOT, what is the latest on projects across the country facing uncertainty, delays, and outright cuts to obligated funding? How will the Trump administration’s policies influence long-term funding decisions? And could a shift in the reauthorization status quo really be a bad thing?

Join Beth Osborne, Director of Transportation for America, for a timely discussion on the state of federal transportation funding, what to expect in the coming months, and how advocates and practitioners can navigate this evolving landscape.

Supporting Reading:
Unflooding the zone: What do the Trump administration’s latest actions signal for transportation?
Reauthorization 101

Confused about the chaos? Make Congress and the administration clarify the transportation funding freeze

Bird's eye view of construction on a wide road in Los Angeles.

The federal government owes communities upwards of $125.6 billion dollars in federal contract obligations from the infrastructure law but President Trump is threatening to renege on the government’s legally binding commitments. Here’s how much they owe for transportation.

UPDATE 1/29/25 1:15 p.m. ET – The OMB guidance is being rescinded but calls and emails with questions should absolutely continue. See update in red below.

Contact your federal representatives, the administration and the press to ask for clarification on your project’s status, and tell them about the impact.

How much transportation money is being threatened in your community and state? Check out this spreadsheet of all infrastructure law funding currently at risk.

The promised “Golden Age” of travel is already in need of some roadside assistance.

*The funding freeze affecting all IIJA funding could leave construction projects looking half-finished like this for the foreseeable future.*

Amidst a wave of day-one actions by the new administration, President Trump signed the Unleashing American Energy executive order on January 20, 2025, targeting the previous administration’s top priorities. While the rhetoric was focused on stopping spending on diversity and inclusion, and climate and electric vehicles programs, the language was unclear and indiscriminately paused all spending for all programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act. This set the administration up to violate binding, legal contracts paying for everything from train tracks to traffic lights.

Nearly everyone was shocked and confused, including groups like AASHTO which represents state departments of transportation.

The next day, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released guidance (M-25-11) attempting to walk back the scope of the previous day’s order. While still leaving things muddied, the administration was able to articulate its intended action to officials: there would be a halt on new obligations for a group of electric vehicle and community-focused programs, but legally required disbursements to obligated projects would continue.

On Monday of this week, in apparent disregard of the events of the previous week, the OMB issued a new memo (M-25-13) issuing an undefined “temporary pause” on “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance,” expanding the scope of the Unleashing American Energy executive order from the previous administration’s signature programs to nearly every single federally funded project and program in the country. A slew of new documents circulated by the admin has done little to illuminate the administration’s intentions, with documents calling for individual agency staff to figure out if individual programs, including those that are defunct, happen to conflict with the new administration’s priorities.

While a federal judge put a temporary pause on this funding freeze before it was to go into effect late Tuesday, it is not clear if the Trump administration will pause. Therefore, with all federal funding frozen, everything from federally subsidized lunches to efforts that fight avian flu is in limbo. Admittedly, transportation projects are nowhere near as urgent, but that is our field and where we will focus.

UPDATE 1/29/25 1:15 p.m. ET

The New York Times is reporting that the OMB guidance to freeze all federal spending has been rescinded. “In a memo dated Wednesday and distributed to federal agencies, Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, states that OMB memorandum M-25-13 ‘is rescinded.’” This marks the second time in a week that guidance affecting vast swaths of transportation spending has been issued and then rescinded or clarified. They backed off last week but then went broader and bigger with the now-rescinded OMB guidance. But the story does not end here. The original Executive Order required that all spending be reviewed to see if it supports issues the Trump administration opposes, like climate change, DEI and a transition from fossil fuels. Will your project or priority be rejected on that basis, and who is making that decision and by when? You should absolutely continue to call and email your Senators and Representatives, your USDOT contacts and others in the administration as well as the media to clarify where your projects stand.

[End update]

Federal transportation funding is always flowing to all levels of government. Everything on a spectrum from small grant programs (like Safe Streets and Roads for All grants), to the Federal Highway Administration’s largest formula program to states (the National Highway Performance Program) are affected without sufficient clarification about the impacts on active projects.

Assume this pause will directly affect projects in your community. To get answers on what this might mean for your project and how long this pause will last, we strongly encourage you to let people know about the impact a pause or cancellation of your project will have.

Reach out to your contact at USDOT (or elsewhere in the administration) and ask them to clarify if your project is stopped and for how long. Let them know the impact of even a pause. Knowing that there is an upcoming deadline before furloughs or events that have to be canceled might help them to make decisions more quickly.
Contact your federal representatives in the House and the Senate to let them know about your project and get their help to speed a determination about your project and get the funds flowing again. Ask them to clarify the status of your project and explain why it is or is not moving forward. If your member of Congress attended an event or put out a press release announcing your grant, suggest they take a similar action to explain the status of the project under this order.
Make sure your state, county, and local elected officials know about your project and the impact this order will have. They may be able to help you get answers. (Plus, they may be trying to get a handle on everything within their jurisdiction that is impacted and identify ways to help.) Here’s an online tool that may help you find your local and state-level officials.
Call reporters to let them know about your project so that they can get a sense of the impact to your regions. Ask them the same questions you are asking USDOT and your elected leaders—does this order affect our project and why? See if they can write about this and help you get information about what’s happening.

This order could have immense implications for states’ economies and local-level priorities. In 2022, federal funding made up over a third of states’ revenues. On the other hand, it is clear that this action was not thought out. The last 7 days have been chaotic, and we can be sure that the next 7 days will be too.

Don’t make any assumptions about where things are heading. Rather than issuing declarations and statements, involve those who made these decisions and those who have oversight powers over the administration in these questions and challenges. They need to own this mess and figure it out.

Fill their phone lines and inboxes up with so many “do you all know what this means?” questions that they’ll think twice about doing this kind of thing again.

Click the image below to view a spreadsheet of all IIJA funding currently at risk.

EPA rolls back CAFE standards, highlighting the need to reduce driving

This week, as the coronavirus crisis worsens, the Trump administration finalized its rollback of clean car standards, a move that will undermine public health and place even more of a burden on finding ways to reduce driving to reduce emissions.

As expected, the Trump Administration released the second part of the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles rule, which would require automakers increase fuel economy of passenger cars by 1.5 percent each year, compared to the previous more stringent 5 percent increase mandated by the Obama administration. This would allow cars on American roads to emit nearly a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the vehicles.

As cities and towns across the country urge people to stay home and only venture out for essential trips, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions have dropped drastically across the country. In Los Angeles, a city notoriously choked with smog from tailpipe emissions, skies have been remarkably clear as highways have been empty, demonstrating just how much pollution comes from all those cars and endless highways in any other normal week.

But while empty highways have been one of the most visceral signs that our economy has come to a standstill, we shouldn’t need to sacrifice our lungs and health for the sake of a robust economy.

There are ways to have both a booming economy and cleaner air and clear skies. One way is through more efficient and electric vehicles. But with the federal government reluctant to set ambitious efficiency standards for automakers, the floor dropping out on oil prices, and relatively slow sales of EVs, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. (Ford and GM are only planning to make 320,000 electric vehicles in 2026, fewer than Tesla made last year.) The only other way is to provide meaningful transportation options that would help people reduce the distance they need to drive—or eliminate vehicle trips altogether.

We need fuel efficient vehicles, but this crisis has also shown us the deep value of having other transportation options, especially for those who need it the most. Over 600,000 transit commuters work at hospitals, in doctor’s offices, or as home health providers; 165,000 people take transit to jobs in grocery stores or pharmacies; and 150,000 workers in social services commute on transit. Transit is essential now more than ever, and it will be essential to getting our economy back up and running again.

We need more robust federal support for transit operations so buses and trains can provide frequent and reliable service. We also need a better way to fund projects that build new or expand existing transit service. Across the country, there are dozens of projects trying to get off the ground, collectively hoping for more than $23 billion in federal support. To reduce emissions and provide options other than driving, local transit agencies need a reliable federal partner.

While the clean air across the country is welcome but also a painful reminder that we’re in a crisis, it also shows us what could be possible if we found ways to reduce driving and remove even just a small share of cars off the road. But to do that, we need to give people cleaner options. This week’s latest action proves once again that the administration is moving in the wrong direction.

BUILDing Complete Streets

By now it’s well known that the Trump administration is no friend to transit funding. (If this is news to you, see here, here, and here). Even the BUILD grant program—which was originally designed to fund complex, multimodal projects—has been warped by the administration’s focus on roads. Traditional roads and highways have received the most grant dollars since the Trump administration took control of the program in 2017.

Our Taming the TIGER analysis showed how the BUILD program changed after two years with the Trump administration in charge.

The administration recently announced the latest round of BUILD grant recipients (which would be BUILD II if added to the graph above) and the story is much of the same: traditional road projects received the largest share of funding, while transit saw a further decrease—from around 10 percent of funding in 2018 to less than 7 percent. Freight held steady at just under 20 percent.

But there is a bit of a silver lining: Complete Streets & other multimodal projects racked up almost a third of the BUILD funding, the highest percentage such projects have received under the Trump administration. This is also particularly notable given the worrying rise in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities across the country, attributable in large part to the lack of safe infrastructure on our roadways for people without cars.

Among the Complete Streets grants this year is $20 million for the Orange County Local Alternative Mobility Network Project outside Orlando. The project will upgrade existing pedestrian and bicycle paths while constructing “shared mobility lanes,” shelter and naturally shaded environments, new wayfinding, and a transit hub. It will also fund “autonomous vehicle infrastructure facilitating local adoption of AVs.” Another multimodal project, The Underpass Project at Uptown Station in Normal, IL, received a $13 million grant and builds on one of the first projects ever funded through the TIGER program. In 2009, Normal, IL received a grant to build a new Amtrak station and civic space that has been a boon for the entire city. A decade later, this new grant will excavate a path for pedestrians, bicyclists, and passengers under the train tracks and allow a second boarding platform to be constructed.

And while transit only received a tiny sliver of the overall funding, some important projects got a nod, like a new BRT line in Memphis, TN that received $12 million for 28 new stations, nine electric buses, and charging equipment.

The BUILD program is one of the only funding options for innovative, complex, or multi-jurisdictional projects that can be difficult to fund with traditional federal transportation programs. But the Trump administration has made it harder for those projects to receive funding by favoring roads over everything else. Read our full analysis—Taming the TIGER—to see how Congress can help ensure BUILD lives up to its full potential.

What’s inside presidential candidates’ transportation plans?

Our director Beth Osborne often jokes that transportation is the first agenda item on politicians’ second to-do list—which is why it never gets done. Most presidential candidates are no different, advocating for business-as-usual transportation funding or embedding transportation across multiple plans. Here’s what’s in them.

Photo of an Amy Klobuchar campaign event in Des Moines by Phil Roeder on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

At Transportation for America, we believe that transportation shouldn’t play second fiddle. Rethinking transportation policy has enormous potential to solve so many of our problems, from economic inequality to climate change. But transportation is consistently glazed over by our political leaders.

Which is why we ranked leading presidential candidates on how well their platforms meet T4America’s three guiding principles for transportation policy: prioritizing maintenance, safety over speed, and access to jobs and services.

But before we begin: If any campaign wants to reboot their transportation platform, give us a ring—we are happy to help!

Donald Trump: Fail

Our 45th president is under the false impression that the private sector will “gift” government money to fix our infrastructure. But it will never happen.

Both President Trump’s proposed infrastructure package and the Senate bill that POTUS endorsed during the most recent State of the Union—America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act—fails to achieve our three principles. Billions of new dollars for the existing, broken transportation program with no call to use those funds on repair first, address the unsafe design objectives of the main highway program or measure how well the transportation program connects people to jobs and services. This failure to address the major flaws of the underlying program overshadow the Senate bill’s notable new programs, like a climate title and Complete Streets requirements.

We appreciate that President Trump tried to eliminate the funding silos between modes and infrastructure categories and shake up the transportation program. But his administration’s hostility to transit has slowed the release of transit grants and resulted in a $500 million cut to the critical Capital Investment Grants program—the main source of federal funding to build and expand transit around the country. If President Trump wants to make a difference in transportation, he needs to grapple with the fact that transportation investment will require public dollars.

Joe Biden: Fail

Former Vice-President Joe Biden’s plan is business-as-usual. Under his infrastructure plan, federal transportation policy sticks to its storied role as a pass-through program to states and transportation departments, with no real accountability for how the money is spent.

His plan talks about the importance of repairing roads and bridges, but there’s nothing in the proposal to guarantee that it happens. As we learned in our report Repair Priorities, many states spend more on road expansion than maintenance—which is completely legal and would continue to be kosher under the Biden proposal.

To his credit, Biden tries to make up for the emissions and economic damage wrought by the baseline program by funding some side projects—like transit, passenger rail, and Complete Streets. But layering good programs on top of a program that causes the problems isn’t smart policy.

Lastly, Biden’s plan makes no mention of measuring the success of the transportation program by improving people’s access to jobs and services, which is why he flunks on access.

Michael Bloomberg: Pass

There’s a lot to like in Michael Bloomberg’s infrastructure plan. The former New York City mayor is the only candidate who leads with updating and improving the structure of the transportation program itself—not just pouring more money into a broken system. He calls out the transportation program’s total lack of goals and his proposes assessing how transportation projects improve “connectivity to jobs, equity, accessibility, development efficiency, health and environmental effects,” according to his plan.

Additionally, Bloomberg’s plan spends a lot of time detailing the importance of street design in ensuring safety for all road users, which is why he passes our safety metric. He specifically sets a safety goal of saving 20,000 lives by 2025 “by adopting safe street designs, lowering speed limits and implementing other measures.” Setting goals for improved safety at all is a step forward, as there is no federal requirement for states to set safety targets that actually call for fewer fatalities than currently occur in a state.

We’re not thrilled that his first priority is to “fix congestion and bottlenecks.” Oftentimes people interpret this as widening highways; but as many of us know, widening highways only makes traffic worse. However, his proposal calls for addressing congestion by repairing roads and bridges as well as expanding transit.

Pete Buttigieg: Pass

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg would make big changes to the formulas at the heart of the transportation program. His plan would require states plan for maintenance before they’re allowed to build new or wider highways with federal funding. Requiring maintenance before expansion earns Buttigieg a ✓ by our standards.

Pete’s plan calls for instituting a national Vision Zero plan, which is radical for a country where states are allowed to set targets for pedestrian fatalities above the actual number of deaths. He would require that states “actively improve their safety records or road design processes, or else lose federal funding for other roadway projects,” according to his plan.

Lastly, Mayor Pete’s plan scores high on access. He would require that states, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), and any other recipient of federal transportation funding demonstrate how projects improve access to jobs and services. That is key: requiring progress towards goals—and even setting goals—in order to receive funding is common sense. Sadly, it is not a feature of our current transportation program.

Pete’s plan is similar to Bloomberg’s. The big difference is in how he communicates it: Buttigieg leads with funding, not what he’d do with the transportation program. We think this is a bad way to do policy. After all, in what other policy area (or facet of life, for that matter) do people tell you the price before they tell you what they’re selling?

What isn’t clear is how funding will be shifted between modes, if at all. With a President Pete, are we still in a world where highways get 80 percent of the funding pie, leaving only 20 percent for transit?

Elizabeth Warren: Fail

Senator Elizabeth Warren’s transportation “platform” leaves a lot to be desired. Her campaign lacks a dedicated transportation plan, embedding the proposal within other policy platforms.

Similar to Biden, Warren proposes new grant programs designed to fix the problems caused by the traditional federal transportation program, but it doesn’t call for fixing the the program itself. She includes additional funding to electrify our vehicle fleet, but there is no mention of creating safe streets for all users and improving access for non-drivers so that people can emit less by using more efficient modes (while having more equitable, affordable access to economic opportunity).

We admire the creative thinking behind Senator Warren’s “Build Green” program, which is modeled off of USDOT’s successful TIGER program (before the Trump administration watered it down and renamed it BUILD). But without changing our current transportation program—one that builds highways we don’t need while our infrastructure crumbles—Warren’s plan wouldn’t bring about the transformation we need.

Bernie Sanders: Fail

Senator Sanders’ platform includes so much money.

But as we have learned time and time again: more money won’t solve our transportation problems. The problem is what we’re funding, not how much. In fact, more money might make the problem worse.

Sanders’ plan includes $75 billion for the Highway Trust fund “to improve roads, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure,” based off of high 2015 Rebuild America Act. But there are no assurances in the proposal that this money would be dedicated to repair first. We know that when states are not required to repair their infrastructure, they often spend those funds on expansion first. Ribbon cuttings for new things are more fun that maintaining the things we already have, like dessert is more fun than flossing.

While he includes a laudable goal to increase transit ridership by 65 percent by 2030 with a $300 billion investment targeted toward transit-oriented development and improving transit service for seniors, people with disabilities, and and rural communities, there is no mention of investments to make our streets safer so that people can walk to the transit stop. Further, the lack of focus on improving access for all means we would be likely to continue building a program that does not provide equitable, affordable access to economic opportunity.

Amy Klobuchar: Fail

Senator Klobuchar’s plan is even more traditional than Joe Biden’s. Her hope is that putting more money into the current program will inspire it to behave in ways it never has before.

Klobuchar—who represents the state where the notorious 35W Mississippi River Bridge collapsed in 2007—pledges to make “smart investments” to repair our infrastructure, but doesn’t guarantee that states will be required to spend federal dollars on maintenance before expansion. This gives Amy an “F” in our book.

Unlike Biden’s plan, however, Klobuchar doesn’t mention Complete Streets—or any safety measures, for that matter. In addition, Amy doesn’t mention measuring the success of transportation programs by how well they connect people to jobs and services. In fact, performance standards don’t come up once in her plan.

In conclusion…

Only two of the presidential candidates—both former mayors—receive passing grades on their transportation plans, according to our three principles. Only two of the many politicians vying to be the most impactful person in the country understand what it takes to save Americans time, money, and from the dangerous effects of unchecked climate change.

Further, not one candidate speaks honestly about how to pay for their proposed funding increases. In fact, they all seem to propose that we abandon the user pays system, which in many ways we already have. If so, bye-bye, trust fund. They all seem to propose we fund this by deficit spending (as we have been for the last decade) or maybe taxing the wealthy or getting magical private funds?

This reminds us of something former Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee once said about transportation funding: “If something is important enough to have, it’s important enough to pay for.” We’d like to add: If you aren’t willing to pay for it then you don’t believe it is important enough to have.

More money isn’t the solution to our transportation problems. It’s rethinking what we fund. But lawmakers often rely on the rules set by the outdated Highway Trust Fund to make this critical decision for them.

“This budget is disappointing but not surprising”: T4America statement on President Trump’s 2021 budget request

Upon the release of the president’s budget request for FY2021, T4America Beth Osborne offered the following statement:

“With enormous potential to reshape the way Congress and the public think about transportation policy, the President’s FY 2021 budget follows his past budgets, cutting transit, rail and safety for those walking and biking while stressing highway funds require no accountability. It is particularly striking that the very small dedicated program for those outside of a car is eliminated, especially when we consider those who might not have access to personal vehicles: children, some seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income workers.

“The budget fails to prioritize repair first—the number one priority for the vast majority of Americans. It actively harms safety, cutting an extremely important program for those outside of cars. And it does nothing to consider how well the transportation system connects people to jobs and services, especially those that do not have access to a personal vehicle.

“As federal transportation policy expires this September, we’re eager to work with Congress on a better proposal for investing in the country’s infrastructure. We continue to hope that the President joins the effort to address repair needs, safety for all people on our roadways and connecting all people to jobs and services.”

In the Washington Post: Let’s skip the infrastructure spending spree

A new opinion piece in the Washington Post takes a contrarian view of all the talk about money during Infrastructure Week. Let’s skip the infrastructure plan and focus on policy, because without good policy more spending could actually do more harm than good.

Yesterday, Repair Priorities 2019 showed how America desperately needs to change federal transportation policy that allows states to neglect their repair needs in favor of costly road expansions.

Today, a new piece in the Washington Post from Transportation for America Director Beth Osborne makes that clear with some pointed language:

At best, this infrastructure plan would throw more money into the same flawed system. At worst, Congress and the president would be signing a blank check with no sense of what the money is intended to accomplish, no clear system for accountability, no requirements for states to actually repair our “crumbling roads and bridges” and no guarantees that any of us would have an easier time getting from A to B when all that money has been spent.

What we need from Congress is an update to federal transportation policy for the next six years, which governs how we spend some $61 billion annually on highways and transit programs. And we need lawmakers to find more than $13 billion a year to cover shrinking gas-tax revenue.

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Agencies competing for limited federal funds to expand transit must prove they can also cover long-term maintenance and operations, something no road project ever has to do. When state highway departments can’t cover their commitments because they’ve prioritized expansion over repair, they’ll just ask for more money.

After all, there will always be another Infrastructure Week.

While decision makers are focused on infrastructure this week, so are we. Read the full op-ed and then share Beth’s message with your networks on Twitter and/or Facebook to help us spread the word!

If verbal gymnastics was an Olympic sport, USDOT would take a medal

A deceptive announcement by USDOT two weeks ago resulted in mistaken headlines across the country giving credit to USDOT and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for “awarding” funding to a number of transit projects. A closer read reveals that USDOT didn’t actually distribute or award a single dime to advance new transit projects.

In a self-congratulatory press release on April 9, USDOT Secretary Elaine Chao touted the agency’s efforts to “strengthen our country’s transit infrastructure and improve mobility” and “announced a total of $1.36 billion in federal funding allocations to 16 new and existing transit projects.” [italics ours]

In reality, no dollars for new transit projects were awarded or obligated. No new grant agreements were signed to allow projects to proceed. No new shovel-ready transit projects got a check in the mail from FTA. Why is that? Because FTA is just announcing “funding allocations.”

A “funding allocation” is just fancy language for an internal plan to award money…eventually

Here’s a way to understand “funding allocations.” Let’s say you’re planning to buy a new roof for your house. To prepare, you “allocate” some money to yourself by moving it from your savings account into your checking account so that when the time comes, you can cut a roofer a check. But you still haven’t actually hired a roofer, written them a check, and you certainly haven’t started replacing your roof yet. Should the roofer you haven’t yet hired be celebrating?

In other words, USDOT put out a press release that’s mostly about them moving some numbers around on a spreadsheet and posting it on their website. Congrats? It’s an extraordinary display of verbal gymnastics by USDOT to make it appear that they’re doing much more to fund transit than they actually are—notably released just the day before Secretary Chao testified before the House Appropriations Committee about USDOT’s budget.

And they are succeeding at misleading the public— look no further than the resulting media coverage thus far.

Want to know what’s actually happening with federal transit funding? See Stuck in the Station >>

But this press release has—perhaps inadvertently—also helped illuminate some troubling developments from an agency that has become much less transparent under the Trump administration. Here are five things we found:

1) USDOT wildly overstates how much money they’ve spent

The press release says, “with this announcement, FTA has advanced funding for 22 new [transit Capital Investment Grant] projects throughout the nation under this administration since January 20, 2017, totaling approximately $5.06 billion in funding commitments.”

In fact, FTA has only actually spent a fraction of that $5.06 billion, and if you define advancing funding as actually awarding (i.e., spending) it, FTA has only advanced 10 new projects with money from 2017 or later, far short of the 22 as they claim.

They take credit for providing more than $3.3 billion to 13 ongoing projects (including the canceled Wave streetcar in Ft. Lauderdale, more on that later), three of which are multi-year projects. Though FTA is legally required to continue funding such multi-year projects under binding “full funding grant agreements,” those transit projects have not yet received the full amount. And FTA is also counting more than $1.7 billion in funding for nine projects that they have not actually signed agreements to fund or advance.

2) USDOT is claiming progress by allocating more FY 2018 funding to two projects that already received 2018 funding

At first glance this sounds like good news: Two large-scale projects with grant agreements that were signed during the Obama administration will get an extra dose of money to perhaps speed them along. The Peninsula Corridor Electrification Project in San Carlos, CA and the Red and Purple Modernization Project in Chicago, IL are scheduled to receive an extra $100 million dollars each on top of the $100 million FTA had previously allocated to each project this year. That’s $200 million each for the 2018 fiscal year.

This is highly unusual, and it could also be a way for USDOT to do an end-around of requirements from Congress. FTA usually allocates no more than $100 million to a single project in a given year. The fact that FTA is doubling up on 2018 dollars is most interesting in light of new requirements that Congress imposed requiring USDOT to spend at least 80 percent of their FY 2018 funding by the end of this calendar year. Stuck in the Station now tracks USDOT progress towards that benchmark.

Double dipping in 2018 funds to expedite funding for existing projects allows USDOT to come closer to meeting Congress’ requirements without actually funding any new transit projects.

3) No new projects are being funded

The major development at first glance is that FTA is “allocating” money to five new transit projects. But none of these projects were actually approved or awarded money, even though local media fell for FTA’s misdirection. These five projects will join four other projects that FTA announced “allocations” for months ago. None of these nine “allocated” projects have a funding agreement in place yet, nor are we aware of FTA notifying Congress of their intent to sign any grant agreements (which is legally required).

4) USDOT wants credit for allocating money to a canceled project

The Wave streetcar in Fort Lauderdale is an unfortunate story. It was set to receive $60.66 million from USDOT in October of 2017 but local politics intervened at the last second and torpedoed the project. The streetcar was canceled and no federal money was spent. But FTA still claims credit for allocating that $60.66 million to the now defunct project and counts The Wave as one of the 13 projects they’ve advanced.

5) Minneapolis is left in limbo, and Los Angeles is still awaiting a final guarantee of funding

Late last year, FTA made news by sending what’s known as a letter of no prejudice to both Los Angeles and Minneapolis for their Purple Line and Green Line extensions, respectively. Such letters don’t guarantee future funding but they are generally seen as an implicit approval giving localities permission to begin work on a project with their own money.

Los Angeles’ Purple Line extension is included in the list of nine future projects that FTA anticipates funding (but still hasn’t yet). But Minneapolis’ Green Line extension is notably absent from this list, even though they have the same letter as LA. This could just be an egregious error on the part of the agency, but it’s more likely that FTA has no intention of signing a grant agreement with Minneapolis this year.

Delay, mislead, misdirect

FTA chose its words very carefully in this press release. They never say that they’re “funding” or “approving” new projects. They use the words “allocation” and “advancing” repeatedly. While all of this makes it sound like they’re spending lots of money and advancing lots of projects, that’s simply not true. Stuck in the Station tracks how much funding has been actually obligated to new transit projects, which projects are currently eligible and waiting for funding, and how close USDOT is to meeting congressional requirements for its 2018 funding.

USDOT is still working diligently to hinder predictable and stable federal funding for transit. We’ll keep holding them accountable. When USDOT finally moves beyond creating new spreadsheets and does advance new projects, we’ll be the first to commend them for it. But for now, it appears that USDOT is more interested in looking like it’s doing its job than actually doing its job.

View Stuck in the Station

A new countdown for USDOT transit funding

As Congress enters negotiations for the next long-term transportation bill and works to pass a new annual budget, our Stuck in the Station resource has been updated to provide a complete list of transit projects awaiting funding in 2019 and track USDOT’s progress towards meeting hard and fast deadlines imposed by an impatient Congress.

Last August, we launched Stuck in the Station to catalogue the Trump administration’s efforts to hamstring federal transit funding. From day one, the administration has proposed to defund the largest federal grant program for new transit projects and system expansions. Congress said “no” and gave them more than $2.3 billion dedicated to getting new projects off the ground, and the political appointees over at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) decided they just wouldn’t spend any of that money. Maybe they thought no one would notice. Except we did, and we called out their foot dragging with Stuck in the Station.

That was six months ago, at which point the administration had not signed a single new full funding grant agreement in a year, despite being flush with funds appropriated by Congress. Now, after months of increasing pressure from Congress, the public, and inquisitive media outlets in scores of metro areas, USDOT has signed 10 grants, accounting for about 45 percent of their available funds.

That’s progress, but it’s still woefully inadequate. After updating Stuck in the Station to add additional projects in the transit pipeline that have been rated “medium” or higher and are therefore eligible for funding, there are at least 26 projects in 20 communities that are waiting for a piece of the $1.1 billion available right now. And once a new transportation appropriations bill is signed (it’s among the funding bills being held up in the current government shutdown/funding standoff), USDOT will likely receive even more money to get these project rolling—perhaps another $2 billion or more.

Update: a new government spending bill signed by the president on Friday, February 15 adds another $1,491,505,856 in funding for new transportation projects. The new total is reflected in Stuck in the Station.

Every delay means that bulldozers and heavy machinery are sitting idle. Steel and other materials are getting more expensive. Potential construction workers are still waiting to hear about jobs that should have materialized yesterday. And everyday travelers counting on improved transit service are left wondering if their government will ever start doing its job.

Congress took unprecedented steps to require USDOT to act

The administration’s previous actions to slow roll transit funding proved that it couldn’t be trusted to execute transit grants in good faith, so Congress made a bipartisan move to add strings. In the 2018 transportation funding bill, Congress specified that USDOT must spend at least 80 percent of these transit capital funds by the end of the (calendar year) 2019. While USDOT has made progress as they advanced some projects in 2018, they still have hundreds of millions of dollars left to obligate to meet that statutory requirement.

Our updated Stuck in the Station resource now includes a countdown to the end of 2019 and a tracker showing how much USDOT still needs to award before the clock strikes zero, based on the most up-to-date information available about USDOT’s progress.

View Stuck in the Station

It’s important to note that even if USDOT reaches their 80 percent benchmark—which is an open question—that’s only a ‘B-‘ grade. Satisfactory. Whether the administration is willing to believe it or not, transit is a critical solution for looming crises like climate change and burgeoning inequity in our communities.

Failing to use the funds at their disposal would be a dangerous abdication of responsibility by USDOT leaders to carry out the agency’s mission: “ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.”

Federal transit funding delays grab headlines across the country

President Donald Trump reportedly consumes a lot of media, so what better way to get the administration’s attention than by going to the media. Since we launched Stuck in the Station this summer—which catalogues the egregious (and wholly avoidable) delays in transit funding under this administration—dozens of media outlets across the country have covered the news.

Some of the outlets are those you might expect, which regularly cover transportation and urbanism issues. Streetsblog USA declared that the Federal Transit Administration has “gone rogue.” CityLab cited the “splashy countdown clock” in cataloguing the inexplicable delays to major transit projects.

Understandably, reporters and editorial boards in cities with transit projects on the “awaiting funding” list also are taking a strong interest. News outlets in Tampa, FL, Tempe, AZ, Sacramento, CA, Atlanta, GA, and New York, NY all questioned how the delays will ultimately affect long-awaited projects in their cities, and the taxpayers who are already committed to footing half or more of the bill in most cases. In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times highlighted the central role of the Purple Line Subway extension in the 2028 Olympics. The line will eventually connect athletes housed at UCLA with sporting venues across the city, if it’s completed on time. But due to funding delays, “whether the project meets its deadlines is in the hands of the Trump administration.”

“But local and state dollars cannot replace federal funding. Nor should they. The federal government has a shared national interest in a country that’s safe and well-connected, and where people and goods move efficiently. The Purple Line subway is the perfect example. It will help move people through one of the country’s most congested corridors.”

–The Los Angeles Times.

Similarly, the Star Tribune editorial board (in Minneapolis, MN) pleaded with the Trump administration to approve funding for a major light rail extension before civil contractor bids were set to expire. At this point, according to the paper, the only thing holding back the project is the lack of expected federal funding. “A longer delay would almost certainly mean higher costs and could unravel the project’s painstakingly woven funding arrangements, achieved through years of arduous political exertion by jurisdictions along the proposed 14.5-mile line,” the editorial board notes.

None of the cities mentioned here have received grant agreements from the USDOT as of this writing, leaving the future of their projects (and years of hard work) in limbo. Los Angeles and Minneapolis both received Letters of No Prejudice—though such letters do not guarantee any future federal funding—and have begun construction. In essence, these two cities are taking multibillion-dollar gambles, though ones predicated on the expectation that USDOT will continue approving transit grants as they always have through the last decade or two.

President Trump has been in office for almost two years now, but the administration has only spent a measly 23 percent of the $2.3 billion that Congress appropriated to fund new transit capital projects since 2017. (Though USDOT has reportedly approved the Lynwood light rail project in the Seattle region, no final funding agreement has yet to be signed or money sent out the door. That could happen before the end of the year and would represent the first multi-year, big-ticket full funding grant agreement advanced solely by this administration.)

While the president himself hasn’t responded to any of this media coverage—based on his tweets at least—USDOT definitely has. During a recent speaking engagement, Jane Williams, the top administrator for the department that oversees the transit grant program, seemed irritated by all the coverage the funding delays have been getting. “It seems to occupy 80 percent of the attention,” Williams said, “it is the elephant in the room.”

But when you’re failing to do your job, people, including the media, tend to notice. So get to work.

Trump administration has effectively halted the pipeline of new transit projects

How long will the Trump administration sit on transit funding? Click to view Stuck in the Station, a new resource tracking the unnecessary and costly delays in transit funding.

Last March, Congress provided the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) with about $1.4 billion to help build and expand transit systems across the country. 142 days later and counting, FTA has obligated almost none of these funds to new transit projects. A new Transportation for America resource—Stuck in the Station—will continue tracking exactly how long FTA has been declining to do their job, how much money has been committed, and which communities are paying a hefty price in avoidable delays.

For 142 days and counting, Trump’s FTA has declined to distribute virtually all of the $1.4 billion appropriated by Congress in 2018 for 17 transit projects in 14 communities that were expecting to receive it sometime this year. Other than one small grant to Indianapolis for their Red Line all-electric bus rapid transit project, the pipeline of new transit projects has effectively ground to a halt.

As a result, bulldozers and heavy machinery are sitting idle. Steel and other materials are getting more expensive by the day. Potential construction workers are waiting to hear about a job that should have materialized yesterday. And everyday travelers counting on improved transit service are left wondering when FTA will do their job and get these projects moving.

“When it comes to funding for infrastructure, this administration has repeatedly made it clear they expect states and cities to pick up part of the tab,” said Beth Osborne, Transportation for America senior policy advisor. “Yet these communities are doing exactly what the administration has asked for by committing their own dollars to fund these transit projects—in some cases, going to the ballot box to raise their own taxes—and yet still the administration does nothing.”

Fourteen communities in total are waiting on this funding appropriated by Congress—and approved by the president—earlier in 2018.

Dallas is waiting on more than $74 million to lengthen platforms at 28 DART stations in order to accommodate longer trains and increase the system capacity. In Reno, NV, the transit provider is waiting on $40 million to extend their bus rapid transit system from downtown to the university and provide upgrades to the existing line. Minneapolis/St. Paul is waiting on three different grants totaling an estimated $274 million to help extend two existing light rail lines (including new park & ride stations and additional trains) to reach surrounding towns and build a new bus rapid transit line. Twelve other projects, most of them brand new rail and bus lines, are also waiting for grants ranging from $23 million to $177 million.

President Trump’s stated ambitions to make a big investment in infrastructure have largely been thwarted by his and Congress’ inability to find or approve any new sources of funding. Yet right now, the administration has $1.4 billion for infrastructure sitting idle in the bank for transit, money that could be used to buy materials that are getting more expensive by the day, fire up the heavy equipment, and fill new jobs with construction workers helping to bring new bus or rail service to everyday commuters who are counting on it.

So how much money did Congress put in the Trump administration’s hands, and how much has the FTA actually distributed to these ready-to-go transit projects? Which communities are paying the price in expensive but entirely avoidable delays?

Browse Stuck in the Station, Transportation for America’s new resource for tracking how much money has been obligated to transit projects in the pipeline.

View Stuck in the Station and take action

In this case “obligating” means simply having the FTA (acting) administrator sign a grant contract for a project that’s already been in the federal pipeline for years. To be clear, FTA has already identified the projects that will receive grants, Congress has approved overall funding levels, and local projects have accounted for this federal money in their budgets. Local communities are just waiting on Secretary Elaine Chao and the acting administrator of the FTA to put pen to paper and actually deliver the money they’ve been promised.

It’s time for FTA to fulfill its promises and get these projects moving.

The TIGER program is no more….in name

A rendering of the Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project (MCORE) in Urbana and Champagne, Illinois is a complex street safety enhancement project that involved two city governments, the local transit agency, the University of Illinois, and the state. It wouldn’t have been possible without a TIGER grant.

Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) released the FY 2018 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the program formerly known as Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER). The NOFO declares that USDOT has rebranded TIGER as the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development or “BUILD” program. The criteria for funding under BUILD and TIGER are essentially the same—with one big caveat. Under BUILD, USDOT is putting a new emphasis on securing and committing new, non-federal revenue for projects requesting funding.

USDOT defines new revenue as “revenue that is not included in current and projected funding levels and results from specific actions taken to increase transportation infrastructure investment.” And any local or state revenue authorized before January 1, 2015 is not considered new revenue and cannot be applied as matching funding for BUILD projects.

Examples of “new revenue” according to USDOT are asset recycling, tolling, tax-increment financing, or sales or gas tax increases. Under this definition, bonds do not qualify as a new revenue source.

If this sounds familiar that is because it is! The criteria for funding consideration under BUILD is a lot like the requirement that the Trump administration included in their proposed infrastructure package earlier this year. As T4America’s analysis of the infrastructure package revealed, this criteria penalizes states and localities who have already raised more local revenue for transportation projects. Why are we penalizing states and cities who acted first?

Since 2012, 31 states have raised new transportation revenues and 12 of those states raised revenue before 2015—mostly by raising or otherwise modifying their gas taxes. Beyond states, many localities like Clayton County, GA and Alameda County, CA raised local funding before 2015 through ballot measures. Even if the taxes or other funding tools are producing new revenue today, if it happened before 2015, the Trump administration doesn’t care. Many of those cities (and the 12 states) would have to raise even more new funding to meet this criteria.

Asking localities to simply kick in more money would do little to guarantee better projects—it’ll just occupy more of the local funding that states or cities could invest elsewhere or spend on long-term maintenance. And the feds shouldn’t be pointing fingers about raising more money. Unlike these states and cities, the federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax (the largest source of federal transportation dollars) since 1993.

Rural communities get shortchanged by BUILD

This is especially problematic for rural communities who already have a difficult time raising new revenue. Many of the sources of new revenue suggested by U.S. DOT—asset recycling, tolling, tax-increment financing—are not feasible in rural areas because there is little to no private demand to finance infrastructure in rural areas because it’s not profitable.

The administration has talked a big game about the need to improve infrastructure in rural areas and this NOFO is on message, saying that’s a priority for this year’s BUILD program. But this new criteria actively makes it harder for rural areas to be competitive for funding because they will struggle to raise new revenue.

With this big change, the BUILD program has already built something: another obstacle to rural communities getting the transportation funding they need.

Background on TIGER

The FY 18 omnibus package enacted into law last month tripled the size of the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program from $500 million to $1.5 billion. The omnibus rejected the president’s proposal to eliminate the TIGER program. This NOFO makes available the $1.5 billion from the omnibus and requires applications to be submitted to USDOT by July 19, 2018.

The TIGER program was one of the only ways that local communities could apply for and directly receive federal dollars for their most needed transportation projects. TIGER enabled the development of complete streets and walkable communities, expanded intermodal access to our nation’s ports, improved our public transit network, made our highway and railway systems more efficient, and helped to strengthen our passenger ferry network. TIGER routinely had requests for three to four times more in funding than was available—making it a very competitive program—and raised $3.6 in additional funding for every dollar appropriated through TIGER. In short, TIGER has been a widely successful and popular program.

T4America members recently got the inside scoop on this next round of TIGER/BUILD via an exclusive webinar with USDOT.

Not yet a member? T4America regularly offers members more in-depth summaries of USDOT actions like this NOFO. In the days ahead, we will be helping members to make their applications more competitive.

Learn more about T4America membership here.

Eight things to know about the president’s budget and infrastructure plan

After promising the release of an infrastructure plan since the early days of his administration over a year ago, President Trump finally released his long-awaited plan for infrastructure investment. Since he did it on the same day he released his budget request for the next fiscal year, it’s worth considering them together and asking: what do these proposals mean for infrastructure?

Here are eight things worth knowing about both the president’s infrastructure plan and his budget for 2019. Read T4America’s full statement on both proposals here.

1) “One cannot claim to be investing in infrastructure on the one hand while cutting it with the other.”

By only including a modest $200 billion in federal investment over ten years, the president’s so-called $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan isn’t a real plan—it’s a hopeful call for local communities, states, and the private sector to invest $1.3 trillion of their own money in infrastructure while the federal government largely sits on the sidelines. Look even deeper and you’ll discover that the $200 billion in federal investment isn’t actually new money overall—it’s mostly sourced from cuts to other programs, including key transportation programs. The president calls for large investments in infrastructure on the one hand while proposing to cut infrastructure programs in the budget with the other hand. Considered together, the infrastructure plan is like getting a bonus from the boss after their new budget just slashed your salary.

2) If the goal is to repair “crumbling” infrastructure, why not require it?

If our infrastructure is “crumbling,” why advance an infrastructure plan that doesn’t do anything to require that states or cities prioritize repair and maintenance with the new funding? Why give out new money that states can spend on costly new infrastructure with decades of built-in maintenance costs when we can’t afford to maintain what we’ve already built? A proposal meant to address America’s crumbling infrastructure almost never mentions maintenance or repair anywhere within it.

“One of the reasons there’s a break in trust between the taxpayer and the federal government is that there’s only so many times you can come before the taxpayer and say, ‘our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling, please give us more money to fix it,’ and then not dedicate it to fixing it,” noted T4A senior policy advisor Beth Osborne on CBC News on Monday evening. We’ve made this point routinely over the years: Why do we keep spending hefty sums on new roads and new lanes while repair backlogs get ignored?

Little accountability, no performance measures: In addition, though this proposal claims to be outcomes-based, there is almost no mention of actual goals. It proposes to invest new money, but to accomplish what exactly? It includes no requirements to measure how these billions will lead to improved roads, bridges or transit systems, better connect people to jobs and opportunity, or move people and goods more efficiently. There are no requirements to measure performance or hold anyone accountable for accomplishing specific goals with the money.

3) Ends federal support for building or improving public transportation

Just like the president’s first budget proposal released a year ago, this one also calls for an immediate halt to federally supported transit projects by eliminating 100 percent of funding for transit projects in development that don’t already have signed funding agreements with the federal government. This pulls the rug out from under at least 41 cities—many of whom have already raised new transportation revenues from voters at the ballot box—that were fully expecting the federal government to share around 50 percent of the cost. While transit projects could still theoretically compete for funding from the plan’s “incentives” program, they would have to compete against transportation, water, waste, power, and broadband projects for a smaller pool of funding.

Seattle is one of many cities that have raised new transportation revenues for transit at the ballot box with the full expectation of a federal contribution to help complete their projects.

4) Roadway projects will be free of new requirements to create value that would be imposed on transit projects

Value capture is a creative way to finance transit projects by “capturing” some of the increased land value that transit provides and using those anticipated revenues on the front end to pay a share of the costs. It can help fund transit improvements, but it’s not a solution that works everywhere, in part because many states don’t allow it and/or most transit agencies have zero control over land use. This infrastructure proposal treats transit projects differently than all other modes by requiring the use of this financing mechanism. New roads? They won’t even need to create a dime of new value to win funding from new incentive or grant programs, much less capture any of that value to pay for their costs. Like Alabama’s $5.3 billion, 52-mile bypass, known as the Northern Beltline, to be constructed north of Birmingham. At $102 million per mile, the project will be one of the country’s most expensive roadway projects, yet it and projects like it would be exempt from these requirements to create any value to pay a share of the costs.

This top-down requirement would put a burden on new transit projects that is not placed on any other new transportation investment and would essentially halt the development of dozens of smart transit projects across the country. It would also jeopardize funding for capital improvements for more than 400 rural transit providers where value capture is rarely feasible.

5) Cities and states already raising new transportation funding will have to do even more

The federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax since 1993. Since just 2012, 31 states have raised new transportation revenues — mostly by raising or otherwise modifying their fuel taxes. Yet the largest program ($100 billion) in this proposal flips the script and puts the onus on these same local and state taxpayers by changing the federal match on new projects from 80 percent to 20 percent. Asking localities to simply kick in more money would do little to guarantee better projects or even less reliance on federal funding—it’ll just occupy more of the local funding that states or cities could invest elsewhere or spend on long-term maintenance, and could just incentivize huge tolling projects, others with some sort of repayment mechanism, or the sale of public assets.

It either devalues or ignores outright local dollars already raised: This proposal penalizes cities like Indianapolis, Seattle, Raleigh, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Atlanta and scores of others that have already done the hard work of securing new local funding for transportation. How? Though localities are required to come up with 80 percent of a project’s cost, the plan ignores any funds raised more than three years ago—even if it’s a tax producing new revenue today. And for new funds raised within the last three years, there’s a sliding scale for how much those dollars are worth. The specific percentages aren’t detailed in the plan, but for example, $1.00 raised at the ballot box two years ago might only be worth 0.50¢ toward the 80 percent local share required by this plan. Many of those cities (and the 31 states) would have to raise yet more new funding to qualify.

6) It eliminates TIGER, one of the few competitive programs that exist today

The proposal completely eliminates the fiercely competitive TIGER program. This $500 million grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects and one of the most fiscally responsible transportation programs. TIGER projects brought 3.5 other dollars to the table for each federal dollar awarded through the first five rounds. And the competition for funds is in stark contrast to the majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to ensure that all states or metro areas get a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars. Unlike the old system of congressional earmarks, the projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible. There’s a reason that TIGER remains so popular with local communities even though around 95 percent of applicants lose in every round—it’s one of the only ways to fund the multimodal projects that are difficult to advance through conventional, narrowly-focused federal programs.

7) Money is set aside for rural areas, but governors will still control it

The plan sets aside $50 billion for rural areas, allocated directly to governors and awarded at their discretion to the projects that they choose. Each governor’s share will be determined via a formula that considers only lane miles and population while purporting to build transportation, water, waste, power, and broadband infrastructure. Is lane-miles an adequate metric for the full range of needs that our rural areas have? Block-granting money to states does not guarantee that local communities will get funding to invest in their highest priority infrastructure projects. Incentivizing cities and towns through competition is proven to be more effective in producing long-term results.

Without this money set aside, rural areas (and smaller cities) would have few chances to successfully win funding from the plan’s $100 billion incentives program. As Aarian Marshall wrote in Wired today, it “would favor applicants that can ‘secure and commit’ continuing funds for their project, including future money for operation, maintenance, and rehab. The ventures, in other words, that can pick up most of the tab. That’s a problem for cities that don’t have steady funding streams, or that find themselves in any of the 42 states that restrict locales’ rights to tax their citizens.” And these smaller areas will never be attractive places for the private investment that this plan assumes will materialize to make up that $1.3 trillion funding gap.

8) Makes long-term cuts to overall transportation funding

Buried in the document is a tiny yet significant detail about scaling down overall transportation spending by as much as $21 billion each year by the end of the decade due to the declining value of the gas tax. So in addition to making cuts to core transportation programs and providing no new revenue for transportation in the infrastructure proposal, the budget actually proposes to reduce transportation investment overall year by year, putting the screws to the cities, towns, and transit properties that depend upon formula funding to operate and maintain existing transportation programs or to make critical capital improvements.

Considered with the president’s FY19 budget request, this infrastructure plan will result in a net reduction in transportation spending and investment. It does not require that we first repair the myriad of assets already in a state of disrepair. It punishes communities that have already stepped up to address their own infrastructure challenges. It leaves rural areas without any guarantees and it hollows out the core funding for transportation that has carried the program for more than a generation. We strongly urge Congress to start over and craft a plan that provides real funding, fixes our current infrastructure inventory, funds smart, locally-driven and supported projects, and requires performance measures that enable taxpayers to understand what benefits they will receive for their investments.

“One cannot claim to invest in infrastructure while also cutting it”—T4 statement on President Trump’s infrastructure proposal and 2019 budget request

Upon the release of the president’s infrastructure plan and his budget request for FY19, T4America Director Kevin F. Thompson offered the following statement:

“One cannot claim to be investing in infrastructure on the one hand while cutting it with the other. The president’s infrastructure plan is merely a shell game, ‘investing’ money that his budget proposes to cut from other vital transportation and infrastructure programs. Taken together, they provide zero new dollars to invest in our country’s pressing infrastructure needs.”

“This proposal makes no progress on the four simple priorities we believe are essential for success. It provides no new money, does nothing to prioritize the smartest projects, and eliminates the programs that are most responsive to local needs. The president’s plan also fails to include any requirements to prioritize repair, even though he stated a clear preference for repair in his remarks this morning.

“The budget signals to local elected officials and taxpayers that they are on their own if they are to invest in transit, penalizing the communities that have already taken the initiative to raise local funding for new or improved transit service. The infrastructure plan gives blank checks out to governors to spend on projects with the greatest political sway—hardly the kind of accountability that taxpayers are clamoring for.

“We’re eager to work with Congress as they begin drafting their own infrastructure plan and setting the budget for the rest of this year and the next, and we hope they’ll follow our four simple principles and advance a national transportation program that invests more real dollars, rewards innovation and local revenue, funds only the smartest new projects, and provides states and localities with a trustworthy federal partner in their efforts.”

President Trump talks infrastructure in State of the Union, but with few specifics

As expected, President Trump used his first State of the Union Address Tuesday night as an opportunity to discuss infrastructure. The speech was light on specifics, though the Washington Post and other outlets continue to report that the White House is preparing a full plan to be released in a few weeks.

In his address, the president urged Congress to “produce a bill that generates at least $1.5 trillion for the new infrastructure investment we need” and said “every federal dollar” should be leveraged by funds from local governments and the private sector. Other than these few remarks, there were few details offered in the speech itself.

We agree with the president that it’s high time to repair and invest in our infrastructure.

This goal cannot be achieved without presidential leadership, and we appreciate the president’s stated commitment to this issue, beginning as a candidate and continuing through today. We look forward to seeing the details of a plan and are ready to work with the administration and Congress to develop an infrastructure plan that 1) provides real funding, 2) fixes our existing infrastructure, 3) funds smart, new projects, and 4) measures success.

Repairing the country’s roads, bridges, and transit systems while investing in new projects to strengthen the country’s global competitiveness does require a real commitment from the federal government. Gutting existing federal funds from other programs (such as transit, as Trump representatives have proposed) will undercut that effort during a time of mounting needs and increasing competition for waning federal funds. Only real funding will be able to fulfill the diverse infrastructure needs we have nationwide.

Yet over the past year, this administration has repeatedly proposed cutting federal funding for transportation projects, while hoping that private capital or dramatically increased local funding can make up the yawning gap. Picking projects only from communities that can come to the federal government with a huge chunk of their own money, or those that have high tolls to repay financing costs, does nothing to guarantee that we’re selecting the best projects to deliver long-term economic growth. The needs of smaller, rural, and poorer communities in particular will go unmet in this scenario as these communities won’t be able to compete against larger cities.

Further, a true effort to rebuild will ensure that repairing deficient bridges, deteriorating roads, and aging railways gets priority for funding. We cannot simply dole more money out to states in a big block and hope that they spend the money well—taxpayers deserve better. Any infrastructure plan should include clear goals and metrics for determining whether our investments are meeting our national goals.

Finally, the president spoke of the need to speed up the permitting and approval process for transportation projects. There are indeed many ways we can and should improve the process for new projects to both save money and time. However, it is important to remember that the approval process is not a trivial review or bureaucratic exercise. It’s the process by which we protect private property rights and ensure that communities are not divided or harmed unnecessarily. We could certainly build projects much faster if we simply seized people’s property and laid highways over neighborhoods. China and Russia can build much faster by taking that approach, but it’s not the American way. Speed of project delivery is not more important than building cost-effective projects that build strong communities.

To be successful, we urge the president to propose real funding targeted specifically to rebuild crumbling infrastructure in all communities across the country—large and small, rich or poor.

We look forward to seeing such a proposal from the administration in the coming weeks. In the meantime, though written as a preview of the speech, this post highlighting eight key questions about the president’s plan is still a relevant guide to evaluating what you hear from Washington when it comes to infrastructure.

Eight questions to ask about infrastructure during tonight’s State of the Union

Eight questions to ask about infrastructure during tonight’s State of the Union

President Trump has been telling us that infrastructure is a top priority since his campaign. Tonight, in his State of the Union address, all signs point toward the president providing a preview of his infrastructure plan followed shortly by a public release. If enacted, this plan could reshape our communities. As we listen tonight, how should we evaluate what we hear from the president on infrastructure?

Update: Few details were shared during the president’s State of the Union speech (here’s the full text on infrastructure.) But until we hear answers, these eight key questions are just as relevant and remain in the front of our minds as we await a more detailed version of the president’s infrastructure plan. -Ed.

As we watch the president’s speech tonight, here are eight key questions, derived in part from our own set of four simple guiding principles for infrastructure investment, to help analyze what we hear tonight when it comes to transportation funding and policy.

1) Does this plan actually propose real funding? Or will they gut transit and Amtrak to pay for it? 11 minutes after promising the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week that the president’s plan would not cut existing funding to pay the tab for their proposal, White House advisor DJ Gribbin reversed himself and said the administration is in fact planning to eliminate funding for Amtrak, new transit construction, and passenger rail to pay for part of it. To be clear, neither cutting funding that cities and states rely on nor simply shifting existing money around within federal transportation programs represent real new funding.

Clarified to say, that the funding for the package “WILL be a repurposing of existing transportation program funding, like @Amtrak and transit.” #funding #infrastructure #budgetcuts @usmayors

— Sabrina Sussman (@SSussman) January 25, 2018

2) Other than slashing its funding, did you hear anything else about transit? In a dramatic shift, young people, empty nesters, and major corporations are voting with their feet and choosing to live and work in locations with access to transit. Is this administration serious about supporting the cities of all sizes that are investing their own dollars in transit to move people and connect them to opportunity? Amazon’s clear preference for a robust transit network in any potential host city for their second headquarters was a wake-up call for cities small and large, and like these state lawmakers in Indiana once opposed to transit, others have awoken to the reality that it’s a vital part of any metro area with a strong economy that’s competitive for talent. Whatever the president proposes for transit tonight, remember that this administration’s 2018 budget already proposed eliminating all funding to build or expand transit.

3) Will this plan shift the cost burden to states and localities? The federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax since 1994, so states and localities have been taking the hard votes to make up at least some of that difference between mounting needs and a stagnating federal gas tax. Whether the 31 states that have raised new transportation revenues since 2012 or the $2 billion in new local revenues for transportation raised in November 2016 alone at the ballot box, locals are already bearing the burden. Will this infrastructure plan meet them in the middle as a partner, or just further undermine local efforts to reinvest? And while some cities can go to the ballot or easily raise new revenues, many cities and smaller areas may not have the capacity to raise their own new transportation revenues to fill the gap.

4) Did you hear any recognition of the difference between financing and funding? We don’t lack financing for infrastructure projects, we lack the cold hard cash required to pay for them. Our highways and transit systems were built with real money, not financing gimmicks. Public-private partnerships and other financing tools can help, but they don’t replace real funding. The White House has consistently talked about unleashing private financing in infrastructure, but private financiers don’t invest in infrastructure as a charity, they expect to make money. If they’re financing a project with money up front, it’s because they expect to make more of it in the long-term through repayments of some kind, such as regular bond payments or a dedicated funding stream like toll revenues. We don’t lack for financing opportunities, we lack the money to pay that financing back. Incentivizing more private financing won’t fix that.

5) Where do rural areas, towns, and cities fit into this plan? The status quo prioritizes state DOTs over local governments. While larger metro areas receive some funds directly, cities themselves have no direct control of those federal transportation dollars. And though metropolitan areas drive our economy, will this plan recognize that fact by giving them greater access to federal transportation dollars? There are rumors that the plan could require 25 percent of the proposed funding be set aside for rural areas, which includes a lot of smaller cities. But even with such a requirement, that money would be directly controlled by the governor or their state DOT—not local communities. Will money for rural communities be spent on them, or by them? There’s a big difference between money being spent in their area according to someone else’s priorities, and controlling that money themselves.

6) Did you hear any focus on boring ol’ repair and maintenance? Any proposal that doesn’t prioritize repairing our existing infrastructure is not a proposal worth taking seriously. It makes little sense to build costly new infrastructure (which is equally expensive to maintain) without any accountability for maintaining what we’ve got. If the rhetoric is accurate and our infrastructure truly is “crumbling,” then simply building something new and shiny doesn’t solve the underlying problem. If your house has a leaky roof, are you going to take out a loan for an expensive new addition, or are you going to fix your roof first?

7) Will the plan prioritize building the smartest new projects, or just more of the same? If this plan produces any new money to invest in infrastructure, it should be awarded by the merits on a competitive basis to only the best projects. We know both that competition helps the best projects rise to the top, and that spending new money through outdated formulas will just lead to the same old projects. Will the president model his plan on successful competitive programs like TIGER, or will he just pour more money into the status quo and go ahead with his budgetary plan to eliminate TIGER?

8) Did you hear a call for accountability and measuring what we get for our billions in spending? Or just the same tired infrastructure rhetoric. Why spend more money on infrastructure if we don’t know that we’re going to be better off afterward? Why spend more if we don’t know that we’re going to create lasting prosperity or build a resilient framework for creating and capturing value? Spending more money on infrastructure without measuring success and considering the value of our investments is not only short-sighted, but wasteful and irresponsible. We need a transparent system of measuring performance and holding states and metro areas accountable for hitting those targets.

Our four principles place a new emphasis on measuring progress and success, rather than just focusing on how much it all costs. We want real funding for infrastructure, not just ways to borrow money or sell off public assets as a means to pay for projects. We want a real commitment to prioritize fixing our aging infrastructure before building expensive new liabilities. We want new projects to be selected competitively with more local control, spurred by innovation and creativity. And yes, we want to ensure greater accountability so taxpayers understand the benefits they are actually receiving for their billions of dollars.

So as you listen tonight (and when a specific plan is released), keep these eight simple questions in mind and ask yourself: did you hear the answers to these questions?

One thing is certain: this has definitely been the longest “infrastructure week” of all time. And it’s apparently not over yet.

The rapidly disappearing infrastructure promises of 2017

The House-approved tax reform legislation is the most recent evidence that neither the administration nor Congress seems to be very serious about supporting and encouraging infrastructure investment.

On the campaign trail, in his inaugural address and in numerous press conferences and events throughout 2017, President Trump and members of his administration have been promising a much-needed investment in infrastructure. “Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports, and railways gleaming across our very, very beautiful land,” the President recently said in a statement. After nearly a year of waiting for an infrastructure plan that was always just right around the corner, as we were frequently told, the Trump administration has only managed to release a few broad principles. Numerous congressional leaders have joined the chorus, yet nothing has been accomplished.

In the total absence of a specific infrastructure plan from the administration, we can only look for clues. The most obvious is the President’s budget proposal for 2018 — the priorities of which stand in stark contrast to his stated commitment to rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, luring more private sector involvement into infrastructure planning and spending, or the early promises to make a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure.

Under the president’s budget for next year:

Overall infrastructure spending would go down. The President’s budget proposal for next year recommends funding the highway and transit formula programs at levels prescribed by the 2015 FAST Act, but capping the Highway Trust Fund in 2019 and 2020 at FY2018 levels, effectively cutting about $2.4 billion in transportation funding already authorized by Congress.

Funding for new transit construction would be slashed…and eventually eliminated. The President’s budget reduces and eventually eliminates another $2.4 billion in annual funding that helps states and cities of all sizes build or expand public transportation systems. Some of these projects already have signed funding agreements from the federal government, matched by local and state dollars committed by voters at ballot boxes.

The only funding that communities can currently tap directly would disappear. The budget also eliminates the $500 million competitive TIGER (Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery) program — the only multimodal transportation investment program directly available to local governments. At a time when we should be awarding more dollars to the best possible projects, this budget dumps one of the only programs intended to do so.

Promises have already been scaled back, and are shrinking as we speak. The President’s budget suggests that his infrastructure initiative will have $200 billion in direct federal spending over ten years, far less than the $1 trillion program previously promised by the administration. And after nearly a year, the administration has only offered vague principles for such a package.

The administration has suggested that the massive gap between their original $1 trillion figure and the $200 billion, ten-year plan be filled by increasing and encouraging more private investment in our infrastructure. Yet the House Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — the House’s tax reform proposal, which passed last week with the President’s thumbs up —eliminated private activity bonds, a specific financing mechanism that encourages greater private investment in infrastructure.

Private activity bonds are tax-exempt bonds that fund infrastructure projects with a “private” use of at least 10 percent, and they’ve been used on a wide range of infrastructure projects around the country, including roads, highways, housing, hospitals and airports. Most notably, these bonds have also been instrumental in several public-private partnerships (P3s), including the Purple Line light rail project in Maryland and the Rapid Bridge Replacement Project in Pennsylvania. Encouraging more P3s has been one of the core pillars of the administration’s approach to supporting infrastructure investment.

But to save just $39 billion over ten years, the House did away with these tax-exempt bonds, hindering the ability of state and local governments and private entities to obtain financing and build more complicated infrastructure projects like toll roads and transit and rail stations. This is after the administration’s 2018 budget proposal — harmful in so many other ways — proposed expanding the number of infrastructure projects that could tap private activity bonds as one of their few infrastructure investment proposals. The administration even stated that they “support the expansion of PAB eligibility.”

As we wait for a substantial infrastructure plan from the administration, which will almost certainly not be released until 2018, if at all, last week Transportation for America released its own set of guiding principles to help inform or evaluate any standalone infrastructure bill.

As Congress works on a tax plan and a 2018 budget, let’s keep infrastructure funding in the forefront and stop advancing short-sighted plans that undermine or circumvent our ability to connect communities, create jobs and secure our economic future.

Download the full one page principles document here.

Transportation for America’s guiding principles for an infrastructure plan

As we continue to await either broad principles or specifics of the Trump’s administration much-anticipated infrastructure plan, T4America has released these four simple guiding principles to inform and evaluate any such future plan.

It’s past time to elevate the national conversation about infrastructure beyond just the breadth and cost of it. We need an examination of exactly which projects we are investing in and why. Whether the $50 billion we currently spend each year or the $1 trillion originally suggested by the administration, we need to do more than just pour money into the same old system for planning and building transportation projects.

America’s current federal transportation program does not bring us the returns we deserve for the sums we invest. There’s far too little accountability for accomplishing anything measurable and tangible with the billions we spend.

We urgently need a new way of doing business.

To get us there and truly realize the benefits of robust federal transportation infrastructure investments, we need a renewed focus on fixing our existing system first and foremost, on investing new dollars in only the smartest projects, and on creating new mechanisms to measure what we get in return for our money.

In lieu of any substantive details offered by the administration, Transportation for America offers its own set of guiding principles to help inform or evaluate any standalone infrastructure bill, aimed at influencing the national dialogue and encouraging members of Congress and White House officials to talk plainly and honestly about a smart approach to infrastructure planning and funding. They are:

1 – Provide real funding

We need real federal funding, not just new ways to borrow money or sell off existing assets, to rebuild our transportation systems. Historically, economic development and opportunity have depended on federal investments in transportation that connect communities and allow businesses to bring goods to market. Direct federal investment funded the construction of our highways, bridges, and transit systems, creating economic opportunities. Today, deteriorating transportation infrastructure—the result of years of reduced federal investment—is a roadblock to continued economic growth. Real funding, invested according to the principles outlined here, will rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure and restore economic opportunity.

2 – Fix the existing system first

We must immediately fix the transportation system we have and fund needed repairs to aging infrastructure. If we have a house with a leaky roof, it’s only prudent to fix the roof before building a new addition. Our transportation systems are no different.

Congress should dedicate federal transportation formula dollars to maintenance to make sure the system is returned to a state of good repair, is resilient, and works for all users; before funding new projects that bring years of additional maintenance costs. The application of federal performance measures to both the state and metro area programs would help prioritize needs and ensure that the greatest of them are addressed first.

3 – Build smart new projects

At a time when transportation resources are scarce, it is critical that funds go only to the best new projects. Competition, local control, and objective evaluation can ensure that federal funds flow to the projects that deliver the greatest benefit to communities. When communities are given the opportunity to compete for federal funds, they work harder to put forward projects that maximize return on investment, provide creative solutions, and involve a diverse range of stakeholders. Congress should direct new federal transportation dollars through competitive processes, such as the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant programs, which are accessible directly to city, county, regional, and state governments. Merely adding new funding into existing and outdated formula funding programs will not deliver the transformative projects that deliver long-term economic growth.

4 – Measure success

Investments in transportation are not an end in and of themselves. They are a means to foster economic development and improve all Americans’ access to jobs and opportunity. Agencies should be held accountable by evaluating how well their investments help achieve their regions’ goals. Newly available data and tools allow agencies to measure—better than ever before—how well transportation networks connect people to jobs and other necessities. The federal government should harness these tools so that state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations can ensure that federally funded investments are effectively connecting people to economic opportunity.

Download these principles as a sharable one-page PDF here or by clicking below: