Biden’s jobs plan focuses on transit
President Biden’s infrastructure spending plan, unveiled Wednesday, was light on details but appeared likely to provide substantial amounts of money for Bay Area and California transportation projects.
The $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan was expected to be topheavy on transportation — and could benefit big Bay Area projects already in the pipeline. The plan is expected to include money to get BART to San Jose and Santa Clara and increasing its capacity, extending the Bay Area’s express lane network and connecting highspeed rail to the region, according to Randy Rentschler, legislative director for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.
And a section of the plan calling for reconnecting communities divided by transportation projects in the past
could help Oakland’s aspirational idea to bury Interstate 980 and turn it into a boulevard lined with housing, parks and room for transit, including a connection to a second transbay rail tube.
“There are big projects in our plan that we are slowly building — and this will speed them up,” Rentschler said. “Any large influx of money can do a lot of good things.”
As for a second transbay rail tunnel, the region may have to wait. The tunnel isn’t likely to benefit much from Biden’s proposal, Rentschler said, as it still faces untold years of gaining environmental approvals needed to build in the bay.
“Telling the Bay Area a new BART tube is just around the corner is just not a promise we can make,” he said. “It’s not fair for us to say ‘Pass this bill and we’ll get a new BART tube,’ because we won’t.”
Bay Area transit agencies, including the dozens that run only buses, could also benefit from the proposal’s emphasis on funding “clean” buses, which run on electricity, natural gas or hydrogen fuel cells, and have been on California roads and on the state’s agenda for decades. California’s transit agencies are moving toward a plan to replace all dieselfueled buses by 2040, and the state is home to four major alternativefuel bus manufacturers.
“California’s fingerprints are on this plan, and we’re just waiting to see how it all works out,” said Michael Pimentel, executive director of the California Transit Association.
California’s transit agencies, struggling to recover from the pandemic, stand to benefit from increased funding as well, Pimentel said, receiving more than double the usual amount in federal funding. The proposal includes eight times as much funding for rail projects, and could benefit Caltrain’s modernization and electrification efforts.
California’s beleaguered highspeed rail project is also likely to be a winner. Rentschler said more rail funding might be used for the socalled “Valley to Valley” connection between the San Joaquin Valley and Silicon Valley, as well as needed improvements to bring highspeed trains up the Peninsula on Caltrain tracks into the Transbay transit center in San
Francisco.
“California’s highspeed rail program will benefit substantially if this plan is enacted,” said Melissa Figueroa, a spokesperson for the California High Speed Rail Authority. “Significant new investment, coupled with the emphasis on new connections and electrification, point the way towards a renewed federalstate partnership for our program.”
Biden introduced his “American Jobs Plan” in Pittsburgh on Wednesday. The proposal includes $932 billion for infrastructure projects with most of it — $621 billion — steered toward transportation. It also includes funding for building schools, improving water systems, constructing and renovating affordable housing, building better internet and communications systems and creating more clean energy infrastructure.
Winning approval for the plan will be no easy feat. Biden proposes funding it by increasing corporate taxes, and Republican congressional leaders have vowed to oppose any bill that raises taxes.
Like many recent federal transportation spending plans, Biden’s package emphasizes rejuvenating the nation’s decaying highways, including 20,000 miles of roads and highways, and repairing or replacing 10,000 bridges.
But the proposal has an ecofriendly slant, boosting funding for public transportation, calling for a network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030 and replacing 50,000 diesel public transit vehicles with alternativefuel buses and trains.
During a Wednesday afternoon speech unveiling the plan, at a carpenters’ union training center, Biden promoted it as a “once in a generation investment in America.” He spoke of the need to fix the nation’s “crumbling infrastructure” but repeatedly spoke of building for the future, including a coasttocoast highspeed rail system.
“We have to move now,” he said. “Because I’m convinced, if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this is the moment America won the future.”