Can Biden turn car culture into transit culture?
“There’s no question that the share of funding going toward transit and rail in Biden’s proposal is vastly larger than in any similar legislation we’ve seen in our lifetime.”
— Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute
If America is dominated by car culture and the call of the open road, there is a big reason for that: Over the past 65 years, the United States has spent nearly $10 trillion in public funds on highways and roads and just onequarter of that on subways, buses and passenger rail.
But President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, unveiled this week, represents one of the most ambitious efforts yet to challenge the centrality of the automobile in American life, by proposing to tilt federal spending far more toward public transportation and coax more people out of their cars. Experts say that transformation is necessary to tackle climate change but could prove extremely difficult in practice.
As part of his plan, Biden wants to spend $85 billion over eight years to help cities modernize and expand their mass transit systems, in effect doubling federal spending on public transportation each year. There is also $80 billion to upgrade and extend intercity rail networks such as Amtrak. That would be one of the largest investments in passenger trains in decades.
And while Biden’s plan offers $115 billion for roads, the emphasis would be on fixing aging highways and bridges rather than expanding the road network. That, too, is a shift in priorities: In recent years, states have spent roughly half their highway money building new roads or widening existing ones — which, studies have found, often just encourages more driving and does little to alleviate congestion.
“There’s no question that the share of funding going toward transit and rail in Biden’s proposal is vastly larger than in any similar legislation we’ve seen in our lifetime,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. “It’s a dramatic shift.”
When Congress writes new multibillion-dollar transportation bills every few years, typically about four-fifths of the money goes to highways and roads, a pattern that has held since the early 1980s. To many, that disparity makes sense. After all, roughly 80% of trips Americans take are by car or light truck, with just 3% by mass transit.
But some experts say this gets the causality backward: Decades of government investment in roads and highways — starting with the creation of the interstate highway system in 1956 — have transformed most cities and suburbs into sprawling, car-centered environments where it can be dangerous to walk or bike. In addition
to that, other reliable transit options are scarce.
“We’re almost forcing everyone to drive,” said Catherine Ross, an expert on transportation planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The choices that individuals make are deeply shaped by the infrastructure that we have built.”
Transportation accounts for one-third of America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, with most of that from hundreds of millions of gasoline-burning cars and SUVs. And while Biden is proposing $174 billion to promote cleaner electric vehicles, experts have said that helping Americans drive less will be crucial to meeting the administration’s climate goals.
“Far too many Americans lack access to affordable public transit, and those who do have access are often met with delays and disruptions,” Biden said Wednesday. “We have the power to change that.”
But Biden, a longtime Amtrak rider and proponent, will face hurdles in trying to make the United States more train- and busfriendly.
His plan still needs to get through Congress, where lawmakers in rural and suburban districts often prefer money for roads. Nationwide, new transit projects have been plagued by soaring costs. The coronavirus pandemic has also led many Americans to avoid subways and buses in favor of private vehicles, and it remains unclear when or whether transit ridership will bounce back.
The Biden administration may also have limited ability to sway the actions of state and local governments, which still account for the vast majority of transportation spending. Many key urban planning decisions — such as whether to build dense housing near light-rail stations — are made locally, and they can determine whether transit systems thrive or struggle.
“States are the emperors of transportation,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, a transit advocacy group. “But so much of the culture of our current program is based on what has come out of the Department of Transportation, so it’s an important statement if the Biden administration is saying it’s time to pivot.”
Analysts cautioned that the White House still has not revealed key details of the plan. Its effectiveness may hinge on how the proposal gets integrated with transportation bills currently being worked on in Congress, which could adjust the balance of funding between highways and transit or impose conditions on how states can use federal funding.
Still, some transit agencies say a large infusion of federal money could be transformative. Many urban transit systems are more than a half-century old and struggle to secure enough funding to address their growing backlog of needed repairs. That typically leaves little money left over to consider major new expansions.
Biden has also proposed spending $80 billion to upgrade and expand intercity rail service such as Amtrak. Right now the busiest Amtrak route is the Northeast Corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston, which Amtrak says needs $38 billion for upgrades and
Other cities have infrequent and often inconvenient connections. For instance, to travel from Cincinnati to Chicago by rail, there is just one train per day. The trip takes nine hours, and the train departs at 1:41 a.m.
Amtrak has suggested that, with $25 billion, it could greatly expand its network by 2035, adding 30 routes to cities unserved by intercity rail, like Las Vegas and Nashville, Tennessee, and improve service along 20 routes to cities like Houston and Cincinnati. Amtrak claimed that annual ridership would increase from 32 million today to 52 million, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by displacing car and air travel.
Yet attempts to expand U.S. transit and rail systems may run into pitfalls.
Building infrastructure in the United States has become notoriously expensive and difficult compared with other countries. In California, a plan for high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco that received federal funding from the Obama administration has struggled with repeated delays and cost overruns, and it remains unclear whether even a partial segment will be finished before 2030. The Biden proposal mentions this cost problem but is vague on ideas for how to fix it.
repairs.