The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) issued a rebuke of the Trump Administration’s proposal for retooling America’s infrastructure this week, critiquing it for proposing cuts to public transit.
Under the Administration’s plan, $200 billion would be spent on revitalizing the state of transportation throughout the country. To do so, however, the plan calls for cuts to a series of public transportation programs such as the Capital Improvement Grants, the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program and Amtrak. APTA, which asserts that $1 invested into such transit projects sees $4 put back into the economy, argued that this would be a bad decision.
“The cuts the Administration are suggesting in its FY2019 budget mirror the reductions in its proposed 2018 budget which Congress already rejected this measure in the 2018 appropriations process that is nearing completion,” APTA said in a statement. “Congress affirmed this federal responsibility when it authorized $2.3 billion annually, through 2020, for the CIG program in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which was overwhelmingly approved by bipartisan votes of 83-16 in the Senate and 359-65 in the House of Representatives.”
The White House called for an incentives program for states, localities and the private sector. It also called for billions of investment into a Transformative Projects Program for those government entities not able to attract private sector investment, expansion of infrastructure financing programs and rural infrastructure in general.
APTA has called for addressing the $90 billion backlog of repair work on the nation’s roads and a solution for insolvency among the Highway Trust Fund. Yet for the 1,500 member organization, not everything in the White House’s recent proposal was anathema. In fact, they pointed to some encouraging signs.
“Funding public transportation projects is aligned with the Administration’s focus on funding major transformative projects, supporting rural communities, streamlining the federal permitting and approval processes, and investing in a high-skilled, competitive workforce,” APTA said. “We are encouraged by specific provisions in the proposal related to public transportation, including streamlining, preserving and expanding the CIG pilot program and eliminating constraints on private-public partnerships.”