I’m no expert in draining swamps or making anything great, but if the goal was to get rid of a corrupt existing system, wouldn’t you want to zero out subsidies for all transportation (including highways, rail, and aviation), and let them all pay their own way? Cutting funding for transit but leaving it in place for highways doesn’t seem like an economically smart move – I thought you can typically generate more jobs and economic activity by investing in transit in dense areas than in investing in highways in rural areas – i.e. the return on a dollar of investment in a mile of a new subway vs a mile of a new highway vs a mile of a new bike lane, etc.

I thought that’s why people voted for Trump – because politics was preventing us from putting smart economics first. Any Trump supporters on here want to chime in?

As to whether Trump actually wants to build infrastructure or not is unknown, but both houses of congress are clearly on the more highways, less or no trains page. Unless Trump wants to fight with is own party on the issue, we are likely to see spending on highways to nowhere.

Trump has the proven capability to start a fight by walking into an empty room.

In the debates, he even fought in public with his running mate, so…

Trump has talked about building high speed rail. It will be interesting to see what he does with both inter and intra city transit.

Do we have citable evidence that Trump is anti-transit?

Trump is pro high speed rail.
http://time.com/4247162/donald-trump-trains-infrastructure/

Although there are lots of reasons to not like Trump, if you watched his speech last night, you would know he supports infrastructure.

The expectation is that Trump + Republicans will shrink the Federal government.

The Federal gas tax is now a fraction of what it was in 1993, and Republicans aren’t expected to significantly increase that. Same thing for income taxes. We are moving toward a low-tax, low-service Federal government.

It’s time for states to stop belly-aching start to increase state revenues and services to compensate. This situation should be especially favorable for wealthy states like New York, which have always sent more to the Federal government than they received.

You want transit in your state? Then fund transit from the state budget! This should be quite feasible, now that the gas tax is only 40% of what it was in 1993 (inflation-adjusted). The Feds cannot stop states from building transit.

You want high-speed rail? Then build high-speed rail. Like CA is doing. In the Northeast, states could join together in a consortium (confederation?) and work together on regional projects like an improved Northeast Corridor.

You want everyone in your state to have health insurance? Then run a Romneycare plan, as MA did even before Obamacare was put in place. Or do single-payer in your state. The Feds cannot stop a state from providing health insurance for its citizens.

America might be a failed state in the making. But that doesn’t mean that every state in the Union has to become a failed state.

True, but also if we don’t pull states along we’ll never reach climate goals. And CO2 emissions don’t care about state lines.

Total opposition to transit was not in the GOP platform 10 years ago.

Well, San Francisco has been controlled by dems/progressives for decades and our transit continues to suck. While LA is passing measures under the support of its leaders to build rail and expand transit, SF just whines about how pathetic Muni is and complains about worsening traffic. Sure, you have one or two half-baked, bloated projects under construction, like the Central Subway (to nowhere) and Van Ness BRT (decades too late).

While generally speaking I think you’re right about Bay Area whining too much about traffic and doing too little in terms of aggressive transit projects, the Central Subway is going to kick ass, and Van Ness BRT will also be a solid project. The Bay just needs to get its ass in gear and create a cohesive, region-wide plan, just like LA.

I’m in favor of toll roads as it’ll most likely have an effect of building less roads in the long run since people hate paying for things directly.

But only if the taxpayers have zero liability or responsibility if the project goes bankrupt. The normal model of “heads I win, tails you lose” has got to stop.

By design and function, the Central Subway is a joke and will do little if anything to relieve congestion or get more people to use transit. Van Ness BRT will only save a few minutes of travel time (assuming no delays in operation) for its entire length. Trust me, any time savings will be lost when riders make their transfers to bus or rail.

I understand that she’s talking about expanding at a state level, which is “okay” as long as the ramifications don’t impact other states. But we cannot allow “other states” to become failed states with regards to emissions.

The problem is that toll roads don’t really work if existing non-tolled roads get to keep their subsidies.

Good bus service is the base for any strong transit network. Do not write them off because of the lack of investment they’ve been subjected to, that only makes it worse.

Care to explain further? This is one article that explains, somewhat, why it’s not a free market: http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/11/4/the-myth-of-revealed-preference-for-the-suburbs

lol, this is such an earnest response but the Republican position here isn’t actually about policy, it’s about catering to rural distrust of cities.

Sovereign states can use trade policy in negotiating with their neighbors. The USA is a bunch of non-sovereign states with a permanent free-trade agreement between them. So yes, NY would not have as much leverage in such negotiations as it would if it were sovereign.

But realistically… if NJ shuts off the tap (say, by cancelling the ARC tunnel and then having an existing Amtrak tube fail), NJ residents will suffer the most. The immediate drop in NJ home values would be much greater than whatever the ARC might have cost to begin with.

If there’s a shared bus system and NJ cuts off the tap, then the answer is simple: stop running buses to NJ! A rail system would involve more up-front investment, requiring a longer-term commitment. But there is nothing stopping states from entering into long-term commitments with other states; and since they are not sovereign, they cannot manipulate the currency when paying back their debts.

Really, none of this is sounding so different from the way things are today.

> It could be the equivalent of those (in)famous superhighways that stop at state borders because only one side could agree on payment.

In such cases, I wonder whether the highway was really necessary to begin with it. Certainly it seems like a waste of money for the side that built it unilaterally. One result of federal dollars might have been to overbuild our Interstate system.

The Bay Area also has a higher rate of automobile ownership than LA (although they drive them slightly less; but only slightly). Really, Northern vs. Southern CA are two peas in a pod.

What’s really sad is that SF is so outrageously wealthy, and still can’t find the money to build a decent transit system — even as people now endure some of the worst commutes in the world.

Republicans NEVER shrink the federal government. They just make sure that more of the money is extracted in waste, fraud, corruption, and graft, and less of it is spent on useful stuff. 🙁 This has been true since Nixon.

Anyway, we will have to rely on the states.

New York and Massachusetts have sued Ohio and Indiana over their toxic coal power plant emissions at least twice before. The toxic emitters have lost in federal court each time, so far.

I remember there was a veiled threat of trade sanctions from New York against Ohio during one of these cases.