Washington, D.C. (October 1) — Today, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought via X (formerly known as Twitter) and the United States Department of Transportation, announced the Trump administration has frozen approximately $18 billion in USDOT funding for the nation’s largest transit and passenger rail projects: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)’s Second Avenue Subway and the Hudson Tunnel Project (a component of the Gateway Program), justifying the hold “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.”
Beth Osborne, President and CEO of Smart Growth America, issued the following statement in response to the announcement.
“The same people who say roads can’t be racist seem to think a tunnel will enact DEI. Everyone knows this project is extremely important to the Northeast Corridor, and the Northeast Corridor makes up 20 percent of U.S. GDP. We need this tunnel, and we have been waiting for it for decades. Get it done and stop making excuses.
Transportation leaders on the Hill have been quoted as saying they want to “avoid top-down mandates from Washington, D.C.” and “let states lead.” They say they want to speed project delivery to keep costs down and get things done for the taxpayer. It is unclear how they think actions like this one demonstrate either of those principles. The transportation system is broken, but negotiating a new surface transportation reauthorization while actions like these are ongoing is naive to the extreme.
The Gateway project will be built one day. It will just be much more expensive than it would be if we got moving today. This is the lesson of the Second Avenue Subway and the Hudson Tunnel Project delay. That is, if there is not a bigger emergency caused by a problem that closes the existing tunnel before we can get the Gateway project built.
What got us here?
Transportation for America has been tracking the administration’s actions for months. While they are worrying about how an off-road walking and biking trail might somehow inconvenience drivers, the U.S. has real needs now. The U.S. has a truly embarrassing roadway safety record, trailing several third-world countries. The overall highway and bridge safety and repair record hasn’t budged in the last 20+ years, according to ASCE. Congestion is getting worse in major cities, including those that have lost population—something that makes no sense at all.
A functioning transportation system that is safe and in good condition is the point. The Gateway project is a big part of that. Instead, USDOT is undergoing a paperwork exercise of unknown parameters and length. Stop studying it, talking about it, and reviewing it, and just build it already.
As we have previously suggested to Congress, moving forward with a new bipartisan infrastructure deal if all we will get is more bureaucracy like this is silly. Clearly, real infrastructure investment is not moving forward like promised. To talk about more money for this approach to federal transportation would be a disservice to taxpayers and a self-delusion so staggering that it stretches the mind to grasp how one justifies it. ”
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The post Statement: To demonstrate that the country can “build stuff again” and that it supports states setting transportation priorities, the Trump administration has delayed the nation’s largest public transit and intercity passenger rail project that is supported across the northeast. appeared first on Transportation For America.
