In this episode we dive into recent federal legislation aimed at improving transportation and infrastructure across the country.
In this episode we dive into recent federal legislation aimed at improving transportation and infrastructure across the country.
On this episode of transit tangents, we discuss federal infrastructure bills that have been passed under the latest administration. The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly as it pertains to transit spending coming up on transit tangents.
Chris:How's it going, Lewis?
Louis:Things are going well. Yeah, busy, busy week, but happy to be here. Working on our fifth episode. I thought that was transit tangents here. So excited to get into it. Yeah. Today,
Chris:we're talking about infrastructure, infrastructure spending, I think that's a really sexy topic, people are going to really be into
Louis:Yeah, and I mean, it's, uh, infrastructure covers a lot of the things that we like to talk about also some things that are like, a little less relevant. But
Chris:yeah, what does it What does infrastructure mean to you personally?
Louis:I mean, it's like building, building things, building physical things. I would say, building things that are generally speaking like utilities for the greater good of like, the whole society, I don't think like you or I could build infrastructure for I guess you get a personal infrastructure for your homes or whatnot. But I'm thinking like big projects big.
Chris:Yeah, I think I think it was kind of like the connection of how societies put together you know, you have roads app to convey people or goods or messages, you have communication networks, you have public utilities. It's kind of everything that is out there to really bring society together and make society function and work. I think that to me, that's what infrastructure means
Louis:that's such a more eloquent, really put way of what I said, Oh, you building big thing? And you're like, well, infrastructure is very nicely. Well put together. I agree with you. I think that that's a, that's a much more cohesive definition.
Chris:I like to I like to think that I'm looking at it from a higher, higher picture. Yes, sir. way of thinking thinking. Yeah, so we're talking about structure specifically, though, for transit tangents we're talking about anything that's going to be transit related infrastructure. And as we go through our episodes, we're going to be talking a lot about trains and buses and highways, gondolas, all of the all of the modes of transportation to get people around. And the more and more we talk about it, and we start talking about numbers and how much all of this cost, the more people are going to probably be curious about, well, how do these things actually get funded? And I think this would be a great episode to take a minute and step back from everything else we've talked about, and really have a discussion about what infrastructure spending is looked like in the US up to this point, and then talk about some of the more recent developments that have come up, particularly with the new administration. Yeah,
Louis:absolutely. I mean, then there has been a lot passed in the last couple of years here. But let's first like, look back historically, at how spending has looked over time, so kind of, you know, more recent history, if you will, back when all of the highways were built in the United States, there's a big bump in spending in the 50s and 60s, we're sorry,
Chris:I don't mean to laugh at you. I'm imagining I'm imagining in the post it for this, that you see us sitting on the couch, and there's just like a little time wave like the the image waves and then it's just us sitting here in like, 1940 suit and hat.
Louis:Oh, that would be I'm gonna have to do that now. But yeah, I
Chris:mean, we're gonna we're gonna work on a prop budget. So when we have a Patreon in the future, that's gonna go towards our budget for those kinds of
Louis:Yep. So back in the olden days, when, you know, Chris and I were in our, our 1950s. I don't even know what they drove back then.
Chris:Obviously, mobile team, definitely.
Louis:Fast forward from there. But there was a big bump in infrastructure spending, because that was probably like the biggest, you know, with the exception of like the railroad that went all the way across the United States, the highway project. I mean, it's way way bigger than that way more expensive. Yeah, essentially connecting all major cities across the United States and not even cities at the time of a lot of small towns. There was a big
Chris:need for it back then. I mean, we had in the 1800s, we had the rail network that really connected all cities. And that's something that we will talk about more in this podcast is how we really took away a lot of that passenger rail network with the advent of cars, and the highway program that really sort of decimated a lot of the the railway projects we had in the country. But there was a need for it in the 20s and 30s. Driving from coast to coast in the country was a weeks long endeavor. And you had to take you know, extra tires and all these and mechanical goods to make sure that your vehicle would even make it right. I don't have a great reference to the story, but I know that there was a project by the US Army to see how long it would tape to move troops from one side of the country to the other for defensive reasons, and basically sent these soldiers out on the road trip. And I don't know if they ever heard from again, no, but they did. They made it from one side to the other. But it took a very long time. And that was one of the reasons they took this report. And one of the reasons that when they went back to Congress, they said, Look, we have to have money to build a highway in this country to be able to move initially to be able to move troops around the country for defensive purposes. But the added benefit of that, and what sells that to communities is now we're also going to connect all of our cities and boosts people's economic outlooks.
Louis:You know, I It's been a long time since I've heard that story. But I remember hearing that now, and it sparked an idea in my brain is we somehow need to come up with a military application for public transportation, and maybe we'll get some more funding for it. Because as we're gonna get into here, public transportation funding, there has been times in in the history that it has gone up and down and whatnot. But it's it's kind of nothing in comparison to a lot of the the other spending towards roads and bridges and that sort of stuff throughout time. So we had this big, big burst of spending after after the, you know, the highway projects come in, as the highway projects across the United States start to be completed, the spending starts to go down. You know, it goes from in the 40s, it almost more than triples really going into the highway expansions and highways being built across the US. slight decline as that happens. In the 1970s, as the energy crisis happens, we actually do start to see federal dollars going towards public transportation. Yeah, up until that point, there really wasn't federal dollars going towards public transportation, it would all be state and local funds. Up until that point, I actually
Chris:have to point a lot of it was privately funded. So a lot of the what we consider mass transit and public transportation entities were private companies that were running those programs. So when you think about the railroad programs, and the passenger network, a program like Amtrak didn't really exist at the time, it was all a lot of the freight companies we have. Yeah, well, it was a lot of the freight companies that we have now ended up buying a lot of these private rail companies that were that were ferrying passengers around the country. But also you will look at train systems that are local more commuter train systems, bus lines, trolley lines, all of these things really started out initially as private investment in the community and not really started out as private investment in these communities, and not necessarily as a public good,
Louis:right. Yeah, so But basically, since since this timeframe of the 1970s, everything's been kind of flat. As far as spending is concerned, it's slightly goes up each year, as it should have just like the cost of everything goes up each year. But we haven't had any real major spikes with the exception of a spike around the COVID pandemic. But that wasn't necessarily related to the US actually doing a whole bunch of extra stuff. It was just like getting ready for we don't know what the hell's gonna happen, major pandemic happening. We
Chris:had this big boost in the 70s. And then we just kind of leveled out. We didn't we didn't spend any more to build new programs or new new systems, right?
Louis:Yeah, it feels like it just kind of enough to maintain was existing, maybe expand a little bit on the margins, but no real major increases in funding for new systems and from the federal level from the federal level, and there's definitely been demand for it. So yeah,
Chris:I think you you go down. If you continue to follow the timeline, you'll see that with the spending, we did see a small uptick around just after 2008. So we had the 2008 financial crisis. And it was in the Obama era, that they introduced a few more options for transit related spending. When we were going through the data earlier, we came across a term that I had not heard before, which was called Tiger, right. And it was
Louis:funny you were looking at this, this graph, basically and it's a block of color for for highways, a block of color for public transit, a block of color for like water, or ferries or something transit and rail rail. Yep. And then there's Tiger and it's just this tiny little sliver, you almost can't see it. You have to continually zoom into the mat enhance it.
Chris:Yeah, exactly. To be able to see this like little sliver, and is escaping me what what Tiger stood for. But it was a sort of Obama era initiative to help cities invest in multimodal transit, pedestrian ways bikeways rail networks, some highway programs as well. But it was this sort of supplemental funding that cities could apply for, and that really, I think, laid the groundwork for what we would eventually pass in the new administration. We were looking at the data we saw that Congress al allocated about 600 million to this program to Tiger. In the process of states applying, again, yet 600 million in this bucket, there was about $9.6 billion requested from cities. So we're not even close to what Congress is giving local governments and what local governments are telling the federal government that they that they need to improve the mobility in there. So
Louis:9.6 billion requested out of a $600 million fund. And I'm sure that there were probably a whole bunch more projects. But if you're trying, you know, the odds of you getting money from that, yeah, is slim. So if you're allocating your resources of like, what are we going to apply for? I'm sure so many local governments and cities, we're just like, there's no way we're going to get this for this fund that we need, we'll try to just go get it another way. So clearly, the the, the need is there for those sorts of projects. And even you know, we talked about it as a bump in 2008. But kind of a small bump, nothing compared to you know, we haven't done anything in this country to the scale of the highway project since it happened. Nowhere even close on the spending,
Chris:I would argue that we're also as good as things are looking right now for infrastructure, we're still not doing anything on the scale that we need to right. But we'll get to that we'll get to
Louis:Yeah. But let's Yeah, let's let's now kind of move forward unless you want to, I'm missing anything here into kind of the more recent legislation that's passed, obviously, you know, I mentioned a little bit already, during COVID, there was an increase in spending on all sorts of different things throughout government, including infrastructure. But in the last two years now, under the Biden administration, there's been a couple bills that have had some major focus on infrastructure, you've got the inflation Reduction Act build back better, and the infrastructure investment and jobs act. The last one kind of being the one most focused on infrastructure, but all three of those have had some type of infrastructure spending involved on them. And even some that that ties directly into transportation in one way or another, whether that be public transportation, all of them got money for highways, of course, electric vehicle, infrastructure, all of that sort of stuff. And those have all happened in the last two years, in general. So
Chris:I like to I like to see in those bills, a lot of the public transit oriented funds have also been tied to combating climate change. So when we look at build back better, for instance, there's a huge portion of build back better that's really dedicated, it is really a climate bill that's dedicated to fighting climate change. And a lot of the money from build back better went to upgrading bus systems to using more fuel efficient buses use more green energy. So electric buses, natural gas, natural gas fighting climate change, I don't know. But but you know, using better a better bus systems. And I think that's a huge contributor, that cities, you know, they can look at that as a huge contributor in their cities to co2 emissions. And this program provided a chance for them to upgrade their systems. So very much, much needed assistance. But as you're saying, you look at the infrastructure bill, the one that's actually dedicated infrastructure, and we go so much further.
Louis:Oh, yeah, we go so much further. And while I do commend to the green energy kind of push in so many of these, a lot of it just like kind of negates itself when you're spending the amount of money that we're spending on on purchasing more car infrastructure. I agree. idealist I know you're you're right, you're right. I'm always I nitpick all sorts of things. I look for the This is terrible. I generally am like, so I have a negative outlook on so many things that our government does for us these days, because I've been disappointed someone. Yeah, yeah, appointed too much. But I know your stories,
Chris:we can share those later. That's a transit tangent after our getting into the dark and dirty of the government. But
Louis:just to give an update, we'll look specifically I mean, these kind of vary between the different bills, but the infrastructure and Jobs Act is the one that is kind of most focused on infrastructure. So that bill was what's the top line number, remind me one point 1.3, or one sorry, $1.2 trillion$1.2 trillion, lot of money to date. We're recording this at the end of 2023. In December, roughly 20, roughly 29% of it has been spent, which means it's roughly on track for the five year span of spending on
Chris:it and actually give you to give you a better number. Yeah. So we're talking about about 2928 to 29% of the overall allocated amount for this bill has been awarded to city so and so it has necessarily been spent yet but it has been awarded to cities. And that comes out to about $347 billion 347 billion. That is a lot of money. It is a lot of money. And when I saw that, I thought wow, we've already spent most of this money this bill. And then I realized how big a trillion is I'm like, oh, yeah, we have a ways to
Louis:go. And it's also one of those things. We were actually just talking about this a little bit earlier. like some of the infrastructure projects that we see locally happen, you know, when I'm riding my bike, if I see a new part of town where it's like, Oh, they've redone the bike lane, there's a nice protected bike lane here. And then you see a sign that says, like, paid for by the 2016, mobility bond, that's like 2016. That was, you know, years and years ago, it's not like that, it's going to take that long, unfortunately, in a lot of cases, to actually see this maybe be spent allocated as one thing. But you know, after it goes through freaking nine layers of review and everything else that needs to happen. It's it's a whole ordeal, basically, oh,
Chris:and you say, is kind of a sort of a negative, this is your negative outlook on the government, because I kind of disagree with you. I think the you know, obviously, these projects don't need to last for a generation before they get realized. But you know, these projects don't happen overnight. And they're gonna take a little while. And in that process, more jobs are going to be sustained. Yes. And no,
Louis:they happen overnight in other parts of the world. I mean, not not overnight, but like, we're just talking about the US. I know, I know. But it's just if China can do it, why can't we do it? I think that's a I think we could do things to make things go faster. But that's a conversation for I think we could
Chris:but I do like the idea of some of this money going to local communities and like what you're saying with the bike lanes in the better pedestrian ways in the Austin area, for instance, yeah, the money, the projects that we're seeing come to fruition today. We passed the money for in 2016. Yeah, as a citywide referendum here in this in Austin. Similar to that, with this money, it's going to go into a budget, and that's going to be slowly processed and more projects built out over time, on the local level that is good for jobs keeps people in the city government employed, you know, people who are working in infrastructure, they can go through and have a guaranteed guaranteed job for a while I'm
Louis:not No, I agree. I agree. And I think you know, I explain to us right now, while you're anti job i i want to talk a little bit to on so we roughly 29% spent, how it's spent is also interesting. So 60% of the money from the the bill is decided and where it goes via a formula. Yeah, 40% of it is done via grant. The grant style is kind of similar to what you talked about. And under the Obama administration, when they put out the tiger money, you essentially like kind of put in a grant proposal or request to get the money.
Chris:For Tiger, tiger. Sorry.
Louis:But so 6040 formula and grant the formula money, from what we can understand looks like it basically goes to the States. It's basically broken down by population, California was getting the most followed by Texas was in the tech couple. Yeah. So your Florida, Illinois.
Chris:Yeah. All the big states you expect to get the most money?
Louis:Yeah, yep. And I mean, it makes sense to a degree. But the 6040 breakdown is a little bit interesting, because when you look at the money that's just sent down to the states, it seems like it's fairly no strings attached. Because, for example, we looked at at the state of Texas where we are and surprise, surprise of the 28 billion that the state of Texas gets from this, almost 27 billion of the 28 billion is literally going to highways. Yeah. Again, not surprised being here that that's the case. But
Chris:it's interesting, when you do look at this, no strings attached money that goes to the states, it allows the states to spend the money in the way that meets or matches the state government's ideals. Yeah. So what's interesting is we looked at California, we look to Texas, I think that's a great example where you can look at California, Florida. Yeah. But I think that those are two good examples to see which state is leading the liberal states in the country, which state is arguably leading the conservative states in the country. And the way they're using this money is indicative of sort of the political parties and what they believe totally that infrastructure money should go to Texas, as you said, it's, it's like 90 something percent of the money is going to highways, which is ridiculous, in my opinion, even living here, you know, we we're not going to agree with the state government. But then you look at California, and it's 50% of the highways. Right? California has a massive highway system. We they have more cities that are larger than Texas cities. They have a lot more of areas to connect, and they're spending half of the money. Yeah, now granted, they are they're getting more of the money, but only by like a percentage and rathmore.
Louis:And I think I think that makes sense. And they're just to tie in another state I looked at I don't have the number right in front of me, but it looked at Massachusetts as well. Massachusetts has been spending a lot of money on public infrastructure, or sorry, public transportation. Boston is working on expanding you know, they've recently expanded part of the the T system, they're working on doing more of that lots of bike lanes and whatnot. And in Massachusetts, 25% of their money is actually going directly to public transit highways was less than 50% as well. So yeah, it does track and I think that that does make some sense. I just don't love that. The 6040 number, I think that it could be tweaked a little bit differently so that the money could be going towards things that make more sense or even put some strings attached on it that like you can use money for for highways, but like we shouldn't be adding, you know, making highways much wider in the middle of our downtown cities, things like that. We talked a lot about that, and the remaining 35 won't work. Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know if you disagree, if you agree with that statement. In some cases?
Chris:I don't know. I don't always Yeah, I don't always agree with the statement.
Louis:But uh, yeah, you're
Chris:anti labor, I'm anti. I don't have my anti.
Louis:The it is interesting, though, to see see the breakdown there. Especially I liked the grant idea, though, of increasing the grant money. Because you could say x, you know, when you're passing legislation to try to get it more bipartisan, because that's the only way you're gonna be able to get anything passed in DC, unfortunately, because no one can work on anything. Even if it does have benefit, I would say like infrastructure is like the clearest thing that is going to benefit you even for President Trump was trying to push a $4 trillion infrastructure bill, obviously he didn't get it done. But the top line on this is a little obviously, he's almost 25% of what that was many years later.
Chris:I don't know, I wonder what the breakdown would have been under the Trump administration, if it would have been a higher percentage to states for states to make those decisions? Probably, you know, yeah. Because I feel like one one thing I really like about and I know, you want to see that there's more grant money. I agree. I think I think a good 5050 Split would have been great. Yeah, maybe 4060. Yeah, on the other way, but 5050 would have been great. I think what the grant program does is that it kind of throws a lifeline to cities that are at odds with their state government. I think like cities like Austin, or, you know, maybe Atlanta, you know, there's there's sort of larger, more liberal cities that are going that are typically not all of them, but are typically going to be more public transit focused. Sidewalks bike lane, pedestrian, we're focused than cities like Phoenix, Arizona, or, you know, maybe more slightly more conservative cities. And I'm not trying to call it Phoenix or any cities, any cities politically, there's nothing wrong either way with the cities. But it is kind of a lifeline like for cities like Austin, which are constantly at war with the State House. And it allows the city to apply for funds, to continue to build out their networks that meet their citizens needs, even if the that need is not recognized by the state government. So I do appreciate that being part of this bill.
Louis:One more thing, I want to point out on the grant thing as well is I then the reason I like it is the bill overall could have some at least broad themes to it. And you can kind of make sure that the money is actually being spent, at least in the correct theme of what you're trying to accomplish in the bill. So much of our like, legislation is just like super broad, no one has any clue what's in and whatnot. And this would help make sure things are kind of on those themes. So the theme, you know, regardless or depending on who's passing it and what kind of negotiations you're doing could be that X percentage is going to be focused on highways, X percentage on public transit, that sort of stuff, just so that it doesn't, you know, not all of it just gets passed on to the states to willy nilly do it. If this is federal money, most state infrastructure is paid for at the state and local level already. So the federal monies, generally speaking are meant to be for these big projects that need to be tackled. The highway system is a clear example of that. And the state and local governments deal with things that are more at their scale, basically.
Chris:I agree with that. I think I think, you know, state and local governments, because one thing I don't think we pointed out earlier is that, up until this point, the majority of infrastructure spending in the country has been done on the state and local level. And this is sort of matching that state local level amount that we're already spending. Right. But yeah, St. Louis level, great for connecting a suburb to downtown, right. But when you're looking at a regional transit plan, even when involves multiple counties, multiple states, especially states in there kind of close together. You look at high speed rail networks, all of that is going to require some type of federal coordination. It's going to take federal money.
Louis:Oh, yeah. Because I mean, those are above the level of what a state or a local government can afford. In most cases. Obviously, there are always exceptions to the rule. California, obviously, being one of the biggest states in the US and one of the largest economies in the world on its own is trying to do high speed rail on its own, but it has definitely had a lot of issues in the process of doing it. It's way behind schedule. Love to see it happen. I think it will happen at some point here. It's under construction. But you know, even the largest state in the US is having a hard time doing that, essentially on their own. They're getting some federal money, but obviously more would help
Chris:and we can also look at Florida, you with the bright line company. You know how much of that is public versus private funding? And I don't know the answer to that, but that would be that's a great topic for another episode. Yeah. But yeah, it sort of requires federal oversight federal funding. But also, maybe you do bring in private investors for some of these. So,
Louis:yeah, yeah. brightline is a good example. And like projects like that, in my opinion, I mean, especially because like, they've kind of proven that that is a successful little model, at least, like looking at it from afar. Yeah, they built it fairly quickly, they had an operating line, they've already expanded that line open to the expansion. They recently had some success in like a layer of the planning process with the LA to Vegas line. But to tie that into, like themes of money to be spent, you could very easily take, like a theme of saying, hey, private rail programs that could use some extra help to get them going faster. Like if that's working like let's let's actually try to incentivize a little bit. You know, that's maybe not the initial approach that I would take. But if I'm looking at who has built a new train line faster in the United States, Amtrak or bright line, like if I was trying to get somebody to make something expensive quickly, I'm 100% Calling bright line to do that right now over Amtrak, unfortunately, I love Amtrak. I've written on it a handful of times and every time I've done it, it's it's lovely. It is slow. It is infrequent, I don't know especially outside of the Northeast, totally. Oh, yeah. Northeast Corridor, very different than Amtrak experience in the rest of the country. Yeah, it's it's not really a viable option for most of the rest of the country to be able to use it and it
Chris:took a took an Amtrak from Carbondale No, sorry, from Hammond, Louisiana to Carbondale Illinois, and I think it took us 12 hours by train. Yeah, it's
Louis:like ridiculous. It's like an eight hour drive. It's it's it's fake. It's like in so many you know, it, it's not a real option. It's like a novelty and so much of the country right now, but But an example of a theme is like you could set aside money for someone like a bright line to be able to like spur more of that happening, there are so many city pairs, it doesn't need to be some national full, huge system to get it going. But like imagine, locally here connecting San Antonio Austin Delino, the Houston like the Texas triangle, that would be amazing. Imagine in Ohio that like connecting the Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati, like there's so many little city pairs and trios are a country that there are so
Chris:many future episodes that you were just foreshadowing right now, I got to visit brightline, we got to talk about the Texas High Speed Rail, we have to go to Cincinnati and see the abandoned subway system.
Louis:Yeah. Unfortunately, breaking this down by percentage. The percentages are not leaning towards fun projects like this right now. Just to give you an overview, roughly 50% of all spending on the infrastructure investment in Jobs Act is on roads, bridges and major projects is what it's categorized under roughly 9% on public transit. Couple other things, though, that I think are interesting tied into, again, these three pieces of legislation, I'm gonna branch off a little bit from the infrastructure investment JOBS Act, but I believe this was in the inflation Reduction Act was the electric vehicle subsidies, a lot of electric vehicle money in general is kind of thrown in to the three of these, whether it be charging infrastructure, or literally just subsidies, because in a whole, like these infrastructure, bills are are totally a step in the right direction. I'll acknowledge that. In my opinion, though, are they some sort of like big transformational change? Unfortunately, no, I mean, when you're seeing so much of the money as far as transportation goes spent on just like, car infrastructure, that's that's not ideal to me. Now, I do appreciate there is some car infrastructure money that's going towards things like Vision Zero programs, and like Safe Streets programs, which are, you know, doing things like, you know, improving crosswalks, and doing things like adding bike like protected bike lanes, yeah. You know, better pedestrian crossings and all sorts of things like that. Those are totally a good thing. But so much of this money is not being spent on
Chris:Yeah, it really feels like when you when you start to break it down and look at it by the numbers. It really feels like what this what this really was, and this isn't a bad thing. But what it really was, was our attempt to salvage what we've already built in a lot of ways. So when you look at the the 50%, that's going to roads and bridges and highways, a lot of that is maintaining those roads, bridges and highways that we've already built and haven't put enough funding towards maintaining Yeah, so
Louis:now bridges and stuff are like literally original from like 19. Exactly. Somebody their original
Chris:highway bridges. I've driven over many of them when I drive to go see my family from Austin to mobile. You drive over some of these bridges on itin and Louisiana and I'm like one more hurricane. But you know, those bridges are getting replaced through this through this bill which is good and vital and absolutely needed totally. But what you're saying is something that I also feel when I'm looking at this bill and looking at the numbers we are we are spending this money on maintaining what we have doing some marginal improvements, but we're not set Getting the country up for the next 100 years. Yes. And I think that's going to take a lot more money, it's going to take a lot more core cooperation in Congress to get that money passed. I think this is a step in the right direction. But I hope people don't come away from this, this big push, and think that this is all we need, because this is just the first step. Yeah,
Louis:yeah, this is even like getting us ready for the first step. This is like, like you're saying, this is like, kind of fulfilling like a lot of backlogs and a lot of cases, there are some new projects with this, for sure. But like, a lot of it is fixing this bridge that's been there for however long and like that bridge is in your town somewhere, too, you know what I mean? It's all over the place. So a lot of this is getting getting people up to speed. But also, you know, right, there is no like transformational vision of like, we're gonna get X percentage more people like riding trains between cities where that makes sense. There's no vision for like converting a whole bunch of people who like have five minute drives to work into riding their bike to work instead of their car, think things like that are making it so that that's an option for people. Right?
Chris:I think that's the biggest thing. I think you have to make those things, options for people, right, if I had the ability, and I think most people would do this, if I had the ability to to hop on a train from here to Chicago, and it takes me six hours. Right? I would probably do that. And that's over anyway. Yeah, I would probably do that over, you know, going to the airport, going through Tsa, tsa, and the whole the whole process, you know, I don't want to be the podcast that compares everything the US to Europe, but there are certain things that they that they do over there as far as connectivity and infrastructure spending. That is just so nice. And so forward thinking that we we don't touch here in the US. Yeah.
Louis:And it would have like a material impact on like, a kind of your wallet. In a lot of cases, like if those systems were in place, like car ownership is not in necessity, like it is now. Like think about how much money you know, I like car payment insurance, gas, you're talking for a lot of people five $600 a month more in a lot of cases, when you factor in all of the maintenance that you wouldn't have to put towards all of that, like that's, that's most households multiply that by two, yeah, you're talking over$1,000 a month, at least, yeah, to have a car. But I do want to take
Chris:a second I want to I want to break down just what this money's going toward, when we when we talk about this bill. So like we said, in total 1.2 or$1.3 trillion, we've spent about 346 billion with a B, so far or not so spent, that we've we've allocated that money to projects. Out of that 69% Is transportation, we have 17% going towards climate energy in the environment. So that's it's great that that's included, we have the 13% going toward broadband Internet access. And then we have point 17% going to other other projects. So you know, other types of projects that would fall under these categories, but are sorry, that would not fall under these categories, but are still desperately needed. The one I want to call out those when we look at transportation, it is interesting, we already talked about how 50% of this money is going to roads, bridges and other major projects. absolutely needed. We understand that some of it is also going to highway expansion. We talked about that in the wider won't work episode with with the I 35 expansion here in Austin. But it's also going to some other interesting things. You know, after the 50%, the next largest amount of or chunk of money, lakes and rivers largest amount is just under 10%. And that's going to public transit. I would I would bet and I haven't dug into the numbers for specific cities and public transit. So much of that's going to the northeast, because the Northeast is so heavily dependent on public transit infrastructure, I would I would bet money that so much of that is going to the northeastern corridor to maintain the older subway networks and elevated train networks that we already have. Yeah. And I'm not allowed to go into new programs.
Louis:So for sure, and I like that's 100% needed. And like for example, like Boston has had a couple instances now in a row where like they've had to close stretches of their of their tea system because of fire and like they've had GCS and all derailments and like those are old. I mean, Boston is the oldest subway in the is it the world or the country or the country? Okay. Yeah, London is the world I think, right? I could be wrong. Yes. But Boston is the oldest in the country. And and again, I mean, you can tell when you're in there, like I've got a lot of family in Boston, and it's it's a you can see
Chris:the horse pulling the subway. Yeah.
Louis:But yeah, we're not seeing that you're right, to going towards new systems for the most part. We have a great example here of one that it should be going to that is struggling on the funding department. Austin is now the 10th largest city in the United States. Um, Project Connect is the name of the new kind of transit system we're trying to put in here includes light rail, small commuter rail, the system or the the plan has been scaled back pretty dramatically. Yeah, considerably
Chris:scaled back to a point that net to the point that there's now a lawsuit over. However, the overall scale back it is saying that why are we going to spend the money on this small program when we actually want it to pay for something much larger? It's a whole other conversation. Yeah.
Louis:But it's, it's frustrating to not see some of that investment like it would make a huge, even like $1 billion, would make a huge impact on like, trying, you know, the plan right now, as it stands, is gonna cost more than a billion dollars, but a billion dollars in extra help, you know, it would make a huge difference here.
Chris:And there's a chance that they could get that money as it stands. Now, when we're looking at this data. Again, this is end of the year 2023. But we're looking at this data, and Kevin was not on there. And the project NET project is not on there, there, there has not been allocated funds from this infrastructure bill. And as you're saying that that is really disappointing. Some of the other things that are added on here that are that are much smaller percentages. The next in line after the 9% is only about three and a half percent go into safety. So safety is going to go I think, go back to improved sideways networks. And it's like you say in safe streets, and that sort of Vision Zero, those sorts of programs that are vitally important to local cities. But it is a much smaller number of this. From this. We're also looking at airports. So again, I know we talk a lot about all things. It's our home city, but something desperately needed here with our airports. Our airport hit its design capacity, 20 years early. So we're in desperate need of funds. But we're not the only people in that situation. There are airports, I do fly a lot. There are airports all over this country that are consistently crowded, delayed. There's there's problems with their network infrastructure, which further delays things when you can't get your bag, baggage systems that connect and the gate systems that connect there's all kinds of issues. So I do like the fact that we have a decent chunk of money going towards
Louis:the airport, we also have for capacity issues of the airports if all these short, short flights with close city pairs had reliable rail between them. Yeah, maybe the maybe the capacity is fine. I wonder how many flights from Austin go to Houston and Dallas? I would imagine a lot. I mean, Austin's airports needs to be needs expansion regardless. But I would imagine there are a lot of flights every single day that go to Dallas. And so
Chris:you got to be careful because the airport lobby is going to be shut down. This is the last episode of the Labor Day.
Louis:Yeah, yeah. But
Chris:then we look at a passenger and freight rail. So that is even actually separated from public transportation. So we look at passenger rail, they're talking about long, long haul connections, like what you're referring to basically, Amtrak is kind of Yeah, and it comes out 2.3% point 3% of the total funding of the infrastructure bill.
Louis:I will say though, I don't have it on the top of my head here. But I don't know if it was billed back better, or the inflation Reduction Act, I think was built back better. Amtrak did get something like 60 billion, the number might be wrong, but they did get a larger chunk of money and one of the other bills, so it's not going to reflect in that 130 did get somebody the other. It's, again, though, it's like basically, like eliminates their maintenance backlog. Yeah. Not not like the not improving service. It's not building new rail line, right. It's basically like right away of fixing tunnels that are 120 years old. And like, like the, you know, there's like two, there's a great YouTube video of I'll link it and find it that talks about the there's a handful of tunnels that like connect in New York City, via freight and passenger, and like, there's two of them, and they're both just like dilapidated and falling apart. And it's gonna cost a crazy amount of money. I don't know, that's it's a whole thing. But basically trying to catch up that backlog and the 60 billion doesn't even get close to paying for the tunnels I'm talking about but a lot of other critical infrastructure along the routes. Yeah.
Chris:And you know, that doesn't scratch the surface of of one of the big problems with passenger rail in this country is that freight is prioritized over passenger in the majority of the country. So you're not buying right away access or anything with that money, or really improving or any
Louis:access with the outside of the Northeast Corridor, right, basically, yeah. One
Chris:thing on here that I did, I did like to see electric vehicles, buses, and ferries, I was actually surprised by the amount of money going to ferries in the country. I think that needs to be an entire couple episodes of just visiting city ferries. But that was another one that was on here. And then the last one to really call out the ports and waterways which are again going to be vital not necessarily for transportation of people. But for services and goods. You know, you have to improve the port infrastructure in the country.
Louis:And we saw what happens when you don't back was the tail end of the pandemic timeframe where the Port of LA or whatever or Long Beach Yeah, just like a total backlog. Everyone's ship everyone's goods were delayed shortages of all sorts of things.
Chris:But I think I think what it really boils down to is we are are about 40% of the way through this authorization period for the bill, which means there's a lot of money still out there to be spent. And I think it's a good opportunity for people who are listening to this to go to your community, look at what projects are on the horizon. Talk to your local representatives, a lot of transportation boards have citizen boards. So for instance, Cap Metro here in Austin has opportunities for citizens to apply to the board and voice their opinions, they have public meetings, this is a prime opportunity to go to your local government and say, Look, there's a lot of money out there, and I need x thing in the city, I need better bus connections I need I want to see better rail transit in the city, there's all of these opportunities, or all of this money, that's an opportunity for you to go to the local level and tell your local leaders, we need to request this money. We need to capitalize on
Louis:this. Yeah. And I mean, they're the ones who are going to actually like listen to you in a lot of cases like a city council member, a Stephen a state representative or something like that. Like they're the ones who are going to they'll answer your call, they might be able to, you might be able to meet with them in person meet with someone from their office, point out specific projects, if you can. But yeah, I mean, the you mentioned to like different boards and whatnot. There's usually like a Bicycle Advisory Committee, a pedestrian committee, you can be on all sorts of stuff like this. And you can help voice and even if you don't sit on these committees, you can go and speak to them and say, Hey, these are the problem areas in my town and my city, whatever it may be. And yeah, I mean, there again, 40% of this is available for cities to fill out grants and localities and states to apply for grants for specific projects, including things that like might be as simple as, you know, fixing the sidewalk, you know, near your, you know, connecting connecting to streets via a bike path, whatever it might be. So
Chris:yeah, money's out there. We need to capitalize on it, and we need to capitalize it, capitalize on it for projects that are improving our communities, not just maintaining our communities. Yeah,
Louis:yeah. And I mean, if, if you like me are a little upset to see how much of it goes directly to just highways in so many cases. Again, I'm not even anti highway, I think highways between city makes sense. But like, so much of this money is going to go towards projects like the 35 expansion in downtown Austin. So much of it is going to go towards things like that. And it's going to continue to do that if people don't say, Hey, I would really like to see my tax dollars be spent on protected bike lanes or hey, I would really like to see my tax dollars be spent on increasing the bus frequency in my city or hey, I would love to see an inner city rail between my city and the city two hours from here that is, you know, a kind of annoying drive but it's too short to fly like none of that is going to happen if you're just
Chris:describing Austin San Antonio. Yes, Austin to San Antonio. That's exactly how it is two hours too far. Too far to fly or too short to fly.
Louis:And then there's traffic and all sorts of stuff but like it's it's it's there, but it's also so many other cities across the country. So go out and say something about it.
Chris:Yeah, saying something. I heard a phrase of the day and I'd never heard this before. So I feel I felt so far behind because everyone made fun of me for this but I'd never heard the phrase. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Oh yeah. Yeah. So go out and be the squeaky wheels. Yeah,
Louis:totally. No, absolutely. And there are a lot of squeaky the squeaky wheels are getting the the grease right now and that's the stuff that is getting fixed right now literally squeaky wheels of the maintenance backlog. But also the people who are making noise right now as far as all that money going to highways and whatnot. I mean there's like all the car companies and all this there's there's so much big oil and what they want to see highway expansion so that cars are the main way of transporting stuff. fixes the squeaky wheel big shit all right. Yeah,
Chris:I think we that's I think that's it so we ended there on go out and be the squeaky wheel. Yeah, be the squeakiest wheel that you can be. Yep. And maybe
Louis:you'll get some grease.
Chris:Until next time, I'm saving that transitory reset.
Louis:Watch me go