Trump targeting rural projects for popular transportation grants

WASHINGTON — Forget about bike-share stations in Chicago or pedestrian walkways in Oakland. That’s so Obama-era.

In the Trump administration, a popular $500 million transportation grant program is focused more on projects in rural areas that turned out for President Trump in the 2016 election. That means more road and rail projects in GOP strongholds such as Idaho, North Dakota and Oklahoma, and fewer “greenways,” “complete streets” and bike lanes.

The latest round of these grants has nothing for New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. Money in those Democratic heavy states went instead to projects in Trump-friendly regions: repainting a bridge in New York’s North Country, contributing to a highway project in Modesto, Calif., and upgrading an interstate highway in southern Illinois.

It’s a refocusing from the priorities of the previous administration, which gave most of these TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grants to urban areas represented by President Barack Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill.

“More than 64 percent of this round of TIGER funding was awarded to rural projects, a historic number that demonstrates this Administration’s commitment to supporting the country’s rural communities,” the Transportation Department said in a release announcing the grants last month.

“I was very pleased,” said Sen. Susan Collins (RMaine), when asked about the focus on rural areas. Maine won $10.8 million to help repair three rural bridges on routes critical to the state’s timber industry.