A blueprint with no green
Inside a punishing proposed executive budget that slashes nearly $200 billion in transportation funds alone, even as it pads military spending and lets deficits soar, is a press release masquerading as an infrastructure plan. What President Trump advertises as a $1.5 trillion blueprint to repair America’s crumbling roads, tunnels, bridges, rails and water works is nothing of the sort. It commits $200 billion in federal funds, imagining the rest of the cash will magically materialize from states, cities and private sources.
But that’s just not the way the market works; states and localities are tapped out, and private businesses only plunk down dough where they can be promised healthy returns.
Even for the $200 billion, the source is TBD. In the past, Trump has floated hiking the federal gas tax, but he lacks the courage to actually include that very good idea in his policy package.
Oh, and this is all way late, coming on Day 388, not Day 100, of Trump’s administration. Which isn’t an inconsequential delay. In the interim, far more important — to Trump — priorities reared their ugly heads, most serious of all, a budget-busting tax cut primarily benefiting the wealthy.
But, but, but: There is one really good idea in the 50-page sketch, worth doing even if the funding mechanism is a joke. Namely, streamlining an interminable permitting process, as argued by lawyer Philip K. Howard of the nonprofit Common Good.
Howard estimates that by consolidating reviews, the pre-shovel-in-the-ground process can be slashed from 10 years down to two. This isn’t about short-circuiting environmental, public health and other safeguards, but ending redundancy and exhausting, costly waits.
Case in point: Existing federal rules say that project reviews should be under 300 pages. The review for the higher roadway on the Bayonne Bridge was 20,000 pages. And that was just to shift up the travel lanes on a span erected in 1931.
First in line for faster approval should be longdreamed-of plans to expand rail capacity across the Hudson. Not just an additional Hudson tunnel, but a new bridge over the Hackensack River.
Amtrak stupidly wants to replace an old twotrack bridge twice: They want one new two-track crossing now, a second new two-track span later.
A single four-track bridge would be smarter and cheaper. Amtrak whines that the approvals are in place for Plan A and that Plan B would take forever to approve.
In other words, they want to throw good money after bad. No can do.