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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
5 Transit Projects at Risk Under Trump
Transit advocates are watching with concern as several high-profile transit projects across America face uncertain futures under the Trump administration, from New York's congestion pricing to California's high-speed rail.
• NYC's congestion pricing has shown remarkable early success with 70% fewer honking complaints, 50% fewer traffic injuries, and increased transit ridership
• The MTA's $500 million annual revenue from congestion pricing funds critical improvements to accessibility, bus frequency, and subway infrastructure
• California High-Speed Rail construction continues despite funding threats, with $14 billion already invested and 15,000 jobs created
• San Antonio's Green Line BRT project would deliver vital 10-15 minute frequency service along a 12-mile corridor in America's largest city without rail
• Virginia's railway expansion includes crucial bottleneck improvements to the Long Bridge, which operates at 95% capacity
• Austin's highway cap project faces uncertainty with rising costs reaching $1.4 billion while the underlying I-35 expansion proceeds unimpeded
• Projects across the country face delays and funding challenges as previously awarded grants undergo review
Share your thoughts on which transit projects in your area might be at risk and which projects you think should be prioritized! We'd love to hear from you in the comments.
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Speaker 2:Today we're digging into the transit projects now facing an uncertain future under the Trump administration, from high-speed rail to critical infrastructure updates. We break it down on this episode of Transit Tangents. Hey everybody, and welcome back to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Chris and I'm Lewis, and today we are getting into what we are labeling as the top five transit projects or programs that are at risk under the current Trump administration.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I mean there are way more than this five. We just kind of picked five that we thought were interesting. So, as you're watching, if you have some that you think should have made the list, definitely let us know down below. But yeah, these are going to be kind of interesting to go through.
Speaker 2:Yep, and we want to reiterate we're probably going to say this a couple of times in a couple of episodes. We did this in the last episode. We realize things are pretty awful right now with the Trump administration and there's a lot of scary things going on. We know that this is not the worst of the things that are out there. You know there's detentions and all this other stuff happening, but again, we're trying not to be overly political here, so we are going to keep it to a transit transportation focus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with that, let's jump into number one on our list, which is a topic we've discussed quite a few times on the show so far. But it's been a while, so I think it's good to revisit it which is the MTA congestion pricing, as well as some general funding potential issues that are arising.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Let's jump into the new issue first. So there's been a fight now with the Trump administration over funding for MTA and the threatening to remove federal funding from the nation's largest transit agency. Over safety concerns on the subway. There were a couple of high profile safety incidents incidents people being pushed in front of a train and being attacked, things that, while nobody supports them, nobody wants them to happen, things that also just happen in these types of spaces in the united states and in the united states yeah, I mean these things generally.
Speaker 2:They they happen and there may have been a small uptick during um sort of the covid like just after post-COVID years.
Speaker 1:I also think that a lot of it is just being overly visualized now, absolutely Because we're I mean, everyone has a phone in their pocket, obviously, and is recording this stuff, but a lot of conservatives right now are trying to take any opportunity they can to highlight issues in cities in general.
Speaker 2:Yep cities in general. Yep, um. But the uh, sean duffy, the, the our least favorite transportation secretary so far, has picked up this fight with the mta and they are trying to address these safety concerns. And they set a deadline, but for march 31st, which has passed, by the way, but they set a deadline by march 31st for the mta to come up with a comprehensive plan to tackle issues such as assaults on passengers and transit workers, fare evasion and dangerous activities like subway surfing.
Speaker 1:So I mean, what's crazy with this? And like they've done this with New York but other places as well, and like these agencies do have, like these agencies don't want their systems to be having crimes happen in them. Of course, new York has stepped up significantly over the last few years, adding, you know, and there are different strategies you can use here. You can criticize the different strategies, but there are police at most subway stations now, like all the time they're riding the trains. Mta has their own kind of folks who are out monitoring and doing this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:They've added 15,000 cameras to the system, right, so you're always being watched. The MTA was really good about pointing out in their response to the Department of Transportation that there's been a 40% reduction in crime within the MTA system, and that's 40% reduction from pre-COVID levels. Right? So not even like you know, there's a little bit of the COVID spike, but now we're 40% below the pre-COVID level Right.
Speaker 1:This has also been happening quite a bit and I really appreciate his response, which is why I'm calling it out in Washington DC for the WMATA system. The CEO of the WMATA system, randy Clark, is so good PR-wise he's good at operating a transit system, but also PR-wise is just really doing a good job here. He actually met with Sean Duffy yesterday from when we were recording this. So he met with Sean Duffy on April 17th to discuss the WMATA system, and security was one of the options there, and their CEO was really smart in pointing out listen, crime has been going down every year in the system for the last seven years. We're currently at a seven-year low for crime in the WMATA system. Things are all trending in the right direction. So you know, while crime in general is bad of course, no one's saying crime is good these agencies are doing what they can to try to tackle it. Is there room for improvement? Of course, but there's always room for improvement and these agencies are doing it.
Speaker 2:And should you be threatening billions in funding? No.
Speaker 1:Especially when it impacts like they pretend as we kind of transition into congestion pricing here. They pretend to care about the working class folks and whatnot and helping them get around. Cutting money from the MTA will hurt working class folks. Working class folks who live in New York City do not drive cars, they ride the subway period.
Speaker 2:It is unique in the country for that and that should be part of the consideration of the administration, but it doesn't seem to be. But transitioning into the other side of the MTA topic is the congestion pricing. It is a model of tolling all vehicles going into lower Manhattan, so any part of Manhattan that is south of 60th Street or if you're entering through the bridges and tunnels, there is a usage charge for driving on those streets. This took off in January of this year and has had really good results Totally.
Speaker 1:I'm quoting here from a New York Magazine graphic. Here, in the first 100 days of congestion pricing, complaints about honking dropped 70%. Rush hour delays at the Holland Tunnel dropped 65% and travel time through it fell 48%. The number of cars entering lower Manhattan fell by 6 million compared to a year earlier. Traffic-related injuries in the congestion zone dropped by half. Metro North ridership rose 8% and importantly and this was a lot of Doomer content about New York saying congestion pricing was going to hurt businesses visitor counts in business improvement districts increased by 1.5 million year over year.
Speaker 1:So Manhattan's doing fine, yes, and on every metric is doing better. And I like add on top of this the other benefits here you've got, you know, improved air quality, the safety stuff, I mean the number of of traffic related injuries in the congestion zone dropping by half. That's amazing and like this says traffic related injuries, that in a lot of cases means pedestrians and people on bikes getting hit by cars. Dropping, yes, dropping. So I mean this is having amazing effects, both economically reducing traffic for the folks who still do want to drive in you have faster drive times and it's also adding more funding to the MTA, which I saw the MTA announce literally today that they're increasing bus services on a whole wide variety of lines to improve bus service so that people are waiting less because of the revenue they're generating from congestion processing Yep and this revenue is on track to generate around $500 million by the end of this year.
Speaker 2:That revenue then gets invested back into improving the tracks and safety and timing of the trains and bus service as you said, accessibility. Accessibility. If you've been to New York, how many of the uh elevators are broken down, like they never work, so you know you're lucky if the station even has an elevator. Yeah, exactly so you have all this money going into the accessibility side of it and like all these improvements. But the trump administration doesn't like the congestion pricing. They have claimed that it hurts working class.
Speaker 1:New yorkers because every working class new yorker lives in lower manhattan and drives their own car and they can afford to park a car in lower Manhattan and drive in and out. They totally don't take the subway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and a lot of New Yorkers support this program. Trump administration does not, and they have set multiple deadlines for the city to end congestion pricing. Those deadlines have come and passed. They've been extended. The head of the MTA has said don't worry about the deadlines, we will continue operating congestion pricing. Even Kathy Hochul has said the cameras are going to stay on, the tolling is going to stay on. She's met with Trump twice to tell him to drop it. So we'll see what happens At the moment it's still going Through, at least.
Speaker 1:I think there's like a court date in October is kind of what's next.
Speaker 2:So we'll kind of keep an eye on this one, yeah, moving into our number two on the list is the California High-Speed Rail. Now we've done a whole episode about High-Speed Rail. We talked a lot about California, so take a look at that episode.
Speaker 1:We do owe it its own episode. In general, I think California High-Speed Rail should get its own episode yeah absolutely, but just a little bit of a recap.
Speaker 2:California high-speed rail was first approved in 2008 with the goal of connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles with a bullet train that would take you less than three hours to get between the two cities. It has experienced years of delays. Costs have gone up. It was initially planned to be built for.
Speaker 1:There's a clip that's been going around from Gavin Newsom where he was looking really young with no gray hairs or anything. I forget what year it is and he was saying that they'd be riding on it by like 2020, I'm pretty sure, but it's gone through a lot.
Speaker 2:Costs have skyrocketed. We know this. It's a very difficult terrain to build through. There's all of these reasons why.
Speaker 1:Lawsuits over environmental concerns. The EIS statements for this, to put together the environmental impact statements for them, were immense. When you're covering this much ground, especially going through more environmentally sensitive areas and whatnot. It's been just the definition of like over bureaucratized I don't know new word for you. It's been a lot. It's been a lot.
Speaker 2:New words brought to you by Lewis.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So fast forward to this era. Trump is now in his crosshairs and this isn't the first time. They canceled about a billion dollars in federal funding during his first term. That was reinstated during the Biden term and now things have escalated in this new term.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the administration has formally launched a review of the projects targeting $4 billion in federal funding. Sean Duffy actually went to California and had a press conference about this, where he was shouted at by protesters for a lot of it. We'll insert a little clip of that right here, and you know what You're going to have people who love fraud, who love waste, who love trains to nowhere.
Speaker 2:All of us up here. We do not love fraud, waste and abuse. His quote from the press conference we're not going to shovel taxpayer money into a bottomless pit of bureaucratic mismanagement. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's. I mean to pretend that it has been managed well, though I mean I do. There has definitely been some mismanagement, don't get me wrong. But, like at, you want to cut the funding for it. Now, right, like it's, it's, you know they're, it's being built. Like to say that there's no tracks being laid, there's no progress, is incorrect. The project is making forward progress.
Speaker 2:It also still has popular approval in California.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is what matters. They are footing the majority of the bill for this. It's definitely interesting. I do know that they recently appointed a new CEO to California High Speed Rail and that is a sign of like. Okay, they're actively trying to improve. They know that there is room for improvement. But um, to try to kill this project while it's very well underway there, there it. Unlike Texas central, which we talked about in a previous episode, this one is more than shovel ready. It is literally. There are shovels in the ground, there are tracks being laid, there are bridges being built. To stop it now makes no sense.
Speaker 2:Yep, Right now they're focusing on the 171 mile segment between Merced and Bakersfield, hopefully opening by 2033. They've spent $14 billion. 10.5 of that has come from the state of California. They need about $7 billion more to keep construction on track. It creates 15,000 jobs. They've built 50 major structures for this. Like you said, it is going so to threaten to remove funding now, yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1:It's really frustrating to see that, absolutely. So we'll kind of keep folks posted on that as well. I don't know what to say about that one. I'd like to say that I'm optimistic. They're going to figure it. Well. I don't know what to say about that one. I'd like to say that I'm optimistic. They're going to figure it out. I think that they might need to figure it out without more federal funding, and I don't know. I mean, if any state has the resources to do that, it's probably California. I think there's some lawsuits potentially getting involved here too. So I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll keep you posted. We will do a California High Speed episode in the near future.
Speaker 1:We're going to jump right back into this episode in just a second, but first, if you have not liked this video, go ahead and do so. Also, leave a comment. We love reading all of them and respond to as many as we can.
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Speaker 1:The third project on our list is fairly close to home for us. The city we've been to in our San Antonio using only public transit episode is the San Antonio Green Line BRT project. Now this one is literally already being constructed and it is a 12-mile BRT line that will connect from the San Antonio Airport in the north through downtown and to a transit center down in the south. It will actually include a little over four miles of actual dedicated center running BRT lanes that are kind of separated. You're going to have off board, fair, off board, fair off board fair.
Speaker 1:You're going to have an off board fair collection, a lot of things that you'd like to see in a BRT system to kind of keep them moving. If you are interested in a cool BRT project that is just now open actually I'm just thinking about this we did an episode on it a few weeks back the Minneapolis BRT Minneapolis-St Paul kind of BRT stuff going on. You can go check that out. The Gold Line, thank you. Also, with this project in San Antonio you'll have frequencies of every 10 to 15 minutes, which, for transit here in Texas, is pretty gold standard, and they're adding 26 bus stations across the city, which is a huge addition.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and unfortunately, this is another project with some federal funds that are being tied up at the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as you said, some of the construction's already started. They started moving utilities in 2024, and now they were expecting to break ground in early 2025, with operations starting in August of 2027. Right In total, the entire project was estimated at $446 million, which is a lot but not crazy numbers when we talk about transit projects. Right Right Via the agency in San Antonio, they secured a $268 million grant from the federal government to help this project along. It was the largest federal investment in Via in their history. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And for those of you not familiar with San Antonio, there is no rail system at all. It is only buses.
Speaker 2:Largest city in the US without rail.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they have a ton of buses and they actually ran pretty well in our experience when we were there, at least inside of the first highway ring, from what we were talking with folks about. The further out you get, unsurprisingly the worse the service generally gets. So investing in real BRT like this is a huge step for San Antonio. In reading more about this, it seems like some of the reasons that the money is being flagged is literally it's being caught up in some of the DEI type stuff. Right now A lot of grants for transit projects do kind of include that sort of language, because it was a major focus, especially under the Biden administration, making sure the money is being spent equitably and all of this sort of stuff. So included in all of these grant proposals for the most part is all of that language. So this might not be the only and I mean we'll talk more about a few more later but this might not be the only project that's going to be caught up in that.
Speaker 2:Also really frustrating because I mean, what is transit? I mean transit has a lot of DEI focus. You are connecting usually historically disenfranchised parts of cities to the main part of this. You know, the main core people who generally use transit are those who may not have a car and whether that's for income reasons or personal choice, you know you, you have to be able to serve all of the community right and provide equity to all of the community. So of course, if they are doing their search bar you know right investigations into the grant then they're going to find this. What's also the most frustrating about this is that this grant was already awarded. Disbursements should be happening.
Speaker 1:Right, and that is an important point to that. It was already allocated, they already went through their approval process and now they're trying to claw the money back, which not a great look. Uh, making you know, kind of like. Why would anyone trust the federal government about anything If money that the federal government allocates, the federal government actually then later goes oh, actually I don't know about that and then tries to pull it back to your point too.
Speaker 1:On the like, especially in a city like San Antonio, there are very few people who are intentionally wanting to take transit there because San Antonio is such a car centric place. We did meet with one of those groups there, strongtown, san Antonio, who is doing a lot of work. There are some folks in that group who are psyched about using an e-bike and using via when need be and choose to live car free. But the vast majority of folks riding the bus in San Antonio it's not by choice, it's because you know they either can't afford a car, they can't drive a car, whatever their reason may be. So, yeah, it's so important, especially in a city like that. Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2:So number four on our list is the Virginia Railway expansion. This is sort of a collection of projects in the Virginia area, mostly centered around Washington DC. But the TRB program is an effort to enhance passenger and freight rail capacity along the I-95 corridor. Now this project has again it's kind of a lot of projects that are in the works. You have the long bridge expansion, which is one of the primary rail bridges over the potomac. It goes right into washington dc. We've ridden it. When we did our dc in a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of the wmata train lines when connecting to reagan airport um also to other destinations throughout virginia.
Speaker 2:So yeah, absolutely. It passes literally right beside the jefferson memorial, so you have a lot of traffic going through here. It's also one of the vital transportation links in the region and at its peak operation it's hitting like 95% capacity. So they're on the brink of being over capacity on this and it's going to really create more of a bottleneck. So that is a huge critical infrastructure project that needs to get done. Neck so that is a huge critical infrastructure project that needs to get done. You also have the.
Speaker 1:I always say this poorly with the L'Enfant station improvement.
Speaker 2:So this is one of the stations in the DC area but it's one of the busiest VRE stations and they need to increase the service there. And then also third track additions in multiple counties, including Prince William Stadford and Spotsylvania counties to improve their reliability and service.
Speaker 1:And in December 2023, the VPRA, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, secured a $729 million federal grant, and this is currently what is up in the air right now. So this is not a small amount of money and it's affecting several different projects here, as you outlined Again. I mean, when you've got these rail bridges at 95% 97% capacity in our nation's capital also. Basically, it feels like these are the sort of investments that should definitely be being made and it's just yet another thing kind of caught up in the current chaos surrounding all of caught up in the current chaos surrounding all of these projects in the Trump administration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know you can have advocates who are against things like passenger rail, whatever. We have these arguments all the time. But this is also impacting freight rail, right? So this isn't just about passenger rail, it's about total rail connectivity in this region. So these grants, you know they do more than just support. You know the liberal mobility utopia, yes. So with all this up in the air, virginia, with a couple other, they're working with a couple other government agencies to try to find additional funding that can be used for these projects and to get them done. They're also looking at other funding mechanisms. So this is again one that we'll kind of keep an eye on and see if anything else comes up in the works. But I would call that Long Bridge double tracking, that Long Bridge expansion, definitely be in my top five critical transportation projects that the Trump administration is currently threatening Totally.
Speaker 1:And this last one doesn't feel as exactly like a public transit project, but it is a different type of transit project and we wanted to include it because it's something we've talked about in the past before. So this is the highway cap and stitch funding in the city of Austin, here where we live, but this is also affecting other cities as well. Who received money with the reconnecting communities grant? The city of Austin was awarded $105 million from the federal government last year for this project, which would go towards the CAP project in downtown Austin. There are a few CAPs being added on I-35. We've talked about I-35 in the past. They're currently expanding it through downtown Austin, adding basically three additional lanes in each direction. Uh, making the scar through the city even wider. Funny, there's no threat to that project. There's no, no threat to that project so far they've already.
Speaker 2:They've already bulldozed half of the buildings they were going to tear down and they're about to start demolishing the upper decks on their highway.
Speaker 1:It's a little sad to see some of the yeah, I mean a lot of stuff is is yeah, it's going to be an ugly couple years in austin while that project goes underway amongst other projects going on in the city at the same time. But anyway, the $105 million is being spent for the Cesar Chavez to kind of 4th Street highway cap area. The city has plans to do some sort of park on top of it. They're kind of still dialing in exactly what would go there. Yep, um, and if it's actually even going to happen. There was initially we did an episode about highway caps. Uh, it was supposed to be voted on in december and then tech stock got delayed so it got pushed back to march.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then with this it's now pushed back even further it's pushed back to may, I think, and so, uh, it just keeps getting. You know, the football keeps getting kicked down the field, but, um, we'll see what happens. I wasn't expecting a football reference from you.
Speaker 2:Sorry, continue. I grew up in the South. One of the reasons why this keeps getting kicked down the road is that the project has ballooned to about $1.4 billion. A lot of that is cost increase, just post-COVID cost increase. The city of Austin. They have to come up with a $45 million match to actually accept the grant money from the federal government, so there's a lot up in the air with this. We want to see this project happen. We want to see things like the Reconnecting Communities Grant, things like the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program. We want to see these things succeed, because there are areas of the country that were just completely demolished and divided by highways and this is a great opportunity to reconnect those neighborhoods. Also, it's a great opportunity to take what would typically be a dead space in your city and create a vibrant you know, plaza, playground, city market, whatever on top of it, and we've seen great examples of this across the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's like. I think it's important to note here too. Like I do, I have some qualms in general. I mean, we've talked about this further at length in our caps and stitches episode and if you want to have an interesting conversation about caps and stitches, you should talk to Cutter from our previous episode earlier this year. He and I have had some very lengthy discussions about it and they won me over on some of it, but I still think that the downtown caps should happen.
Speaker 1:But $1.4 billion or something to do caps all the way up north of downtown that starts to feel like a lot of money that the city probably could allocate better elsewhere. The only other qualm I have with this is that, like, this is a reconnecting communities grant that is literally being used to essentially support a highway widening project, not a, not, not something that is like really mending wounds and whatnot. It's like, sure, we'll have a cap for a few blocks here, but like, like we're going to have a wider highway through the rest of the city. So I have my fair share of qualms with them. I do think that a downtown highway cap would be a major improvement in Austin. I'm less sold compared to you on some of the more northern ones, but you can go back to our previous episode if you want to learn more about that kind of element to this. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we'll continue to keep an eye on this, so we'll keep you informed. But those are our sort of top five, sort of transit initiatives or transportation projects that we think are sort of at risk with the current administration. There's other notable mentions in there. We had the Texas Central, which we did in a previous episode. We also we should probably talk about this in a future episode, but Trump administration taking over the revitalization of the Penn Station in New York. A lot of interesting stuff there, so take a look at it Totally.
Speaker 1:And I mean some of these. You know the Penn Station thing, like I think you had said before, it's like Kathy Hochul came out and was like great, that's less funding burden on the MTA to kind of make this happen. So some of these could end up being okay. I also have to mention our local project here, Project Connect. At this stage in 2026 is when they would have been really submitting their final application, for I believe the New Starts program, which would require half of Project Connect essentially would be coming from federal funding. I'm pretty I don't want to be a downer but like I'm pretty skeptical that that's going to happen, especially when you look at like all of the documentation that ATP has put together has been, you know, following what the New Starts program is asking for, which includes a whole bunch of like DEI related content. Like I mean there's sections about like equity and race and income and like why you know how this is. All of that stuff's gonna get flagged.
Speaker 2:I say you just take the Word document and you control and replace all mentions of equity with corporate investment.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I do think that they need to reframe a lot and there's still some time to do this, but I'm still pretty nervous about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll see. Like I said, we'll keep you informed, posted on what is happening with Project Connect and other things, as the Trump administration continues on with some of these grant freezes. But that is our list of the top five, plus some honorable mentions there or notable mentions maybe not honorable. If you have your own list, please share those in the comments. Let us know what you think about this list, if you have any opinions about the freezes on these grants or the risks to these programs.
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