T4America Blog

News, press releases and other updates

Posts Tagged "President Trump"

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.

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BUILDing Complete Streets

By now it’s well known that the Trump administration is no friend to transit funding. Even the BUILD grant program—which was originally designed to fund complex, multimodal projects—has been warped by the administration’s focus on roads. But there is one silver lining from the most recent awards: Complete Streets.

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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. 

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

“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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Federal transit funding delays grab headlines across the country

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.

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Trump administration has effectively halted the pipeline of new transit projects

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. Our 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.

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The TIGER program is no more….in name

The TIGER grant program is now being called BUILD. While the criteria are essentially the same, there’s one big caveat. Under BUILD, USDOT will now require applicants to provide evidence that they have secured and committed new, non-federal revenue for projects requesting funding. And there’s a whole list of reasons why that’s a problem.

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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?

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

press release

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

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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.

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

The President has been telling us that infrastructure is a top priority since the campaign. Tonight, in his State of the Union address, all signs in 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?

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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.

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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.

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Trump admin’s full budget proposal makes clear their intent to end federal support for transit construction

The Trump administration released their full budget proposal for 2018, ending any possible uncertainty about their belief that highway projects are always inherently in the national interest, transit is explicitly a local concern, and leveraging greater local and state investment in transportation is not a trend to be encouraged.

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Trump admin moving to end transit construction program and TIGER immediately

New documents released this week by the Trump administration make it clear that 2018 won’t be soon enough to eliminate funding for future transit construction and TIGER competitive grants — they want them gone now, in 2017.

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Seven things to know about President Trump’s budget proposal

There is no good news for transportation in President Trump’s first budget request to Congress. We take a look beyond the headlines and unpack seven things you need to know about this first salvo in the annual budget-making

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Trump’s budget will hurt local communities

President Trump’s first budget request for Congress is a direct assault on smart infrastructure investment that will do damage to cities and towns of all sizes — from the biggest coastal cities down to small rural towns. Tell your representatives that this proposal is a non-starter and appropriators in Congress should start from scratch.

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