Cuts leave bridge, rail projects hanging
When President Donald Trump pledged during the campaign to spend 1 trillion to restore the United States’ crumbling bridges and roads, supporters across the country cheered.
A leaked list of the Trump administration’s priorit y projects seemed to speak to the scope of the president’s ambitions: a high-speed rail line linking Houston and Dallas; a desalination plant in Orange County, Calif.; and improvements to the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana, the longest continuous bridge over water in the world.
Then came Trump’s budget proposal, which would sl a sh t he Depar t ment of Transportation’s spending by 13 percent, end subsidies for Amtrak’s long-distance trains and eliminate the Obama admini s t rat i on’s “Ti ger ” grant program, which has helped fund mass transit systems across the country.
Among the potential victims of the president’s proposed cutbacks: Maryland’s long-awaited Purple Line, a planned 16- mile light rail system through the capital’s suburbs.
Maryland had been just four days away from clinching some $900 million in federal aid in August when a U.S. judge ruled to tem- porarily invalidate environmental approvals for the project. But under Trump’s plan, projects that don’t yet have complete federal funding agreements would be fifinanced “by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.”
Supporters of the project are devastated.
It was on the 1-yard line,” said Art Guzzetti, vice president for policy at the American Public Transportation A s s o c i a t i o n , a Washi n gton-based advocacy group.
Elaine Chao, the transpor t at i on s e c re t a r y, has sought to quell concerns. Trump remains committed to his infrastructure initiative, which he intended to announce later this year, she said recently.
“The president has consistently emphasized that one of his top priorities is modernizing our country’s outdated infrastructure,” she said. “The proposal will cover more than transportation infrastructure. It will include energy, water and potentially broadband and veterans hospitals, as well.”