Thirty billion dollars for new highway construction, $10 billion for transit, railroads, and “reducing congestion” combined. Discuss.

(A clarification, in response to a misconception in the comments: The $30 billion is for new highway construction only, not “repairs to our crumbling roads and bridges.” The stimulus would spend an additional $31 billion repairing and modernizing the nation’s transportation infrastructure.)

20 replies on “The Stimulus”

  1. $30 B would help maintain and repair the vast network of highways (all those collapsing bridges).

    $10 B would be a good place to start expanding the not nearly as vast transit network.

    Simple as that.

  3. $10B is not as big as UMTA from 1968, but it’s a good start. Remember, Joni Earl recently sent a letter asking for $300mil to speed things up with ST2 (“Hey, we just voted on this, but we could totally get things up and running faster if you shove a fistful of cash our way, it’d totally make up for a lot of the problems with Sound Move! Thanks, government! BFF 4eva”) and Rep. Oberstar is asking for $204mil on behalf of the State of Washington.

    And that’s only an immediate relief stimulus package. This plus Oberstar’s package means at least $15bn in transit-specific funding for 2009-10.

  5. Here comes the “zomg america’s addicted to cars mass transit mass transit mass transit mass transit bicycles bicycles bicycles” shitstorm

  8. Thank God.

    As I stated in your little “you can teach people” post, Erica: Decline in per capita miles is not greater than the offset by the growth in population. If we take the numbers straight from the graph:

    530000 * 9700 = 5.141 billion miles.
    592800 * 9200 = 5.454 billion miles.

    So, the total mileage is going up. Which means that more cars are on the road at any given time. Which means more traffic jams. Which means that less people are willing to drive when they don’t need to. Which means that they might be cooped up and miserable. NOT TO MENTION that the daily commute from one side of the water is at least an hour of sitting…at least it was every day last week.

    One can probably assume that more cars are driving at high times, and fewer at lower times, which increases congestion and pollution far more than if people drove normally on larger highways.

  10. The Exurbs need highways. Traffic in Kent is insanely high, where main streets (according to Google) have volumes of traffic higher than thoroughfares such as West Valley.

    It’s in no one’s interest to have kids crossing and bikes trying to ride in highway level traffic — and there’s way that light rail or buses can satisfy the diverse destination of the car transit system.

    So, more new highways are needed.

  12. It’s stimulus, not a transit package. The term “shovel-ready” comes to mind. The idea is to spend as much as possible as soon as possible. I’d like to see complementary figures on how many roads projects are “shovel-ready” vs. how many transit projects are. Also, 1:3 transit-to-roads ratio is a welcome change from, what has it been until now? a 1:100 ratio? Granted, we still need a long-term strategy that makes sure we shift that balance over time, but change comes gradually. We just need to make sure it goes in the right direction.

    Also, “reducing congestion” refers (in part) to removing freight train bottlenecks like bridges and tunnels in places like the Acela corridor.

  13. Too little.

    Take the $350 billion for banks, pull back all loans from the feds to those which won’t give consumers loans, and redistribute it to transit (40 percent), high-speed passenger/freight rail (10 percent), and building/fixing bridges/roads (50 percent).

    That would be better.

    (oh, and yes I know they’re going to bundle the Husky Stadium and pre-tunnel transit work as well as ST LINK work in this existing package)

  14. For someone who promoted change, Obama sure is short of vision. Highway construction has been the bread and butter of stimulus packages for over 80 years.

    “… the reluctance of the state governments of Washington and California, and to some degree Oregon, to provide much more than an expansion of highway construction to absorb the jobless testifies to the desire to keep the relief effort centered in the local community and avoid budget deficits…” -William H. Mullins, The Depression and the Urban West Coast, 1929-33

    It didn’t work in the Depression. Why should it work now?

  15. You should include the link to the PDF: http://beacheconomist.com/Appropriations….

    They specifically list what they’re spending vs. what transportation projects are ready. $140 billion in apparently shovel-ready projects are going unfunded, though admittedly over half that is roads and airport projects. Still, they identify $60 billion in transit spending that could happen right now that they don’t bother funding.

    But hey, there’s a $300 billion tax cut in the deal! I post about the details behind the link.

  16. Also, anyone know if University Link if on the list of pre-approved light rail projects? If so, most of that $1 billion is probably ours.

  19. Airports are mostly a waste, Cascadian. We need to move to high-speed passenger/freight in this country, a greener technology that uses a lot less energy to move people moderate distances.

    And new roads mustly just encourage sprawl and the city-driven Obama support knows that.

    America is changing – and now is the time to do it.

  20. You know, it’s so hard to bring this much-needed shift in our transportation infrastructure spending when even many Democrats don’t realize how much-needed it is.

    Let’s face it, most Democratic politicians fall into the Frank Chopp, Chris Gregoire category. They themselves are clueless as to the need for making mass transit a priority. For example, here’s former Congressman (and I believe a current Obama transition adviser) David Bonior on last Sunday’s “Meet the Press:”

    “They out to be out rebuilding our schools, our highways, our bridges, our buildings, our office buildings, our autos and our trucks. All of that needs to go through a prism of a green new energy economy, because I think that’s the new economy that he is striving for, the president and the Congress, and that’s the one that’s going to really bring us out of this.”

    How you can emphasize highways, autos, and trucks and still view things through “a prism of a green new energy economy” is beyond me. It’s just vapid, meaningless panaceas as far as I can tell.

    So considering what we’re dealing with terms of public perceptions and politicians’ perceptions, I’m kinda with DavidG @12 and blogger Matthew Yglesias here. I’m relieved the ratio isn’t worse; I’m relieved they’ve shown restraint in picking projects.

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