How Trump undermined one of the nation’s most critical infrastructure projects.
By
Tara Golshan Mar 22, 2018, 2:10pm EDT
It’s
always infrastructure week in President Donald Trump’s White House. So when
Trump threatened to shut down the government over an infrastructure project in
his home state, it threw Congress for a loop.
Trump’s
refusal to sign a spending bill with funding for the Gateway project, a $30
billion commuter rail, bridge, and tunnel proposal connecting New York and New
Jersey under the Hudson River — which advocates call one of the nation’s most
“critical infrastructure” projects — was one of the major hang-ups in Congress’s
last-minute negotiations over government spending this week.
Trump,
who has promised to fix the country’s “crumbling” bridges and roads with “the
biggest and boldest infrastructure investment in American history,” has
repeatedly and systematically undermined Gateway’s urgency. Why? Republican
lawmakers suspect it’s because of an ongoing feud with Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer, one of the project’s fiercest advocates.
Now,
as lawmakers scramble to pass a spending bill to keep the government open past
March 23, they’ve had to leave out the bipartisan $900 million infrastructure
spending proposal for Gateway. Instead, the spending bill will include as much
as $446 million through Amtrak, and more in federal grants that do not require
the Department of Transportation’s stamp of approval, that can go toward
Gateway.
According
to reporting from Bloomberg, Amtrak estimates it will be able to contribute $388
million to building Gateway. Republicans are telling Trump that he now has more
control over the funding.
Infrastructure
has long been hailed as a policy area ripe for bipartisan legislating. But Trump
has made it clear his big talk on infrastructure might be just that.
What
is the Gateway Project?
In
the past year, commuting between New York and New Jersey has fraught with
delays, accidents, and track closures. Only last week, the Portal Bridge, an
Amtrak-operated rail bridge connecting Newark, New Jersey, and Jersey City, was
stuck in the open position for hours, delaying hundreds of morning
commuters.
“Pretty
frustrated, I’ve been doing this for 30 some-odd years, this is the worst it’s
ever been, absolutely the worst, no question,” commuter Dave Gialinilla told the
local ABC station after the delay.
Put
simply, the infrastructure is old and crumbling. The tunnels under the Hudson
River were built more than 100 years ago, and engineers estimate they will fail
within the next decade — a deterioration that was only amplified by Hurricane
Sandy. As Gateway advocates are quick to tell you, these railways carry more
than 800,000 riders per day — the most heavily used passenger rail line in the
country — and serve a region that makes up 17 percent of the country’s
population and produces $3 trillion in economic output, or 20 percent of the
national gross domestic product.
In
other words, the stakes are high.
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