White House aims to push U.S. toward mass transit

WASHINGTON — 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 one-quarter 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 percent of trips Americans take are by car or light truck, with just 3 percent 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 bus-friendly. His plan still needs to get through Congress, where lawmakers in rural and suburban districts often prefer money for roads. And nationwide, new transit projects have been plagued by soaring costs.