Transit funds now going to rural areas

Gone is spending on Obama-era greenways

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 Donald 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, California, and upgrading an interstate highway in southern Illinois. Some $25 million would help Arizona ease congestion from a busy U.s.-mexico port of entry in Nogales.

It’s a refocusing from the priorities of the previous administration, which gave most of these 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 last month.

Questions arose during the Obama administration about political favoritism when grants consistently went in greater numbers to congressional districts represented by Democrats. In 2013, about two-thirds of TIGER money was awarded to such districts.

Of the 41 grants announced by the Trump administration, 25 totaling $271 million were awarded to projects in congressional districts represented by Republicans. Districts represented by Democrats garnered 14 projects and $190 million. Two grants worth $25 million went to projects spanning district lines.

That’s a reversal from the Obama administration, which in its last year in office provided $102 million in grants to rural areas.