Yup!….
Around my way?
TONS of Local and State streets HAVE been resurfaced…..
(JOBS!)
TONS….
It ain’t Trump or GOPer Money folks….
Roads, roads and more roads. The US is continuing to spend billions of dollars on expanding enormous highways rather than fund public transport, with a landmark infrastructure bill lauded by Joe Biden only further accelerating the dominance of cars at the expense, critics say, of communities and the climate.
Since the passage of the enormous $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, hailed by Biden as a generational effort to upgrade the US’s crumbling bridges, roads, ports and public transit, money has overwhelmingly poured into the maintenance and widening of roads rather than improving the threadbare network of bus, rail and cycling options available to Americans, a new analysis has found.
Of reported funds dispersed to states, more than half – around $70bn – have been spent on the resurfacing and expansion of highways, a process that researchers have consistently found only spurs greater use of cars and therefore more congestion.
Just a fifth of the money has gone so far to public transit, with much of the remainder also facilitating more car driving, such as the refurbishment of bridges….
…
Funding from the federal government has been given to states with broad flexibility on how to use it and state authorities, by and large, have chosen to persist with car-centric infrastructure. The Biden administration’s department of transportation did advise states to prioritize road repair, rather than expansion, and to bear in mind communities, usually of color, that have been severed by highways and are subjected to the resulting air pollution.
However, this stance prompted a backlash from Republicans in Congress and been mostly overlooked by states such as Texas and even California, considered a progressive bastion of climate policy, that have pushed ahead plans to add more and more lanes to highways.
…
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a centerpiece of his first term — and a huge windfall for New York. The state is expected to receive $36 billion from the law to upgrade its transportation system, a once-in-a-generation gift.
Biden hailed the 2021 law as a chance to “transform our transportation system” and “turn the climate crisis into an opportunity.” Much of the money was dedicated to public transit and will fund marquee projects like the Second Avenue Subway expansion. But a giant pot was left to states to decide how to spend — either on maintaining and widening roads, or, with federal sign-off, on climate-friendly infrastructure like subways, trains, and sidewalks.
So far, Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration has overwhelmingly chosen the former.
By August 2023, the state Department of Transportation had spent over $1 billion in infrastructure law “flexible funds” that could have gone to either roads or climate-friendly projects. Over 90 percent went to roads, and less than one percent to projects primarily focused on public transportation, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Green New Deal Network and reviewed by New York Focus. (Some of the road projects did include non-car elements like bike paths and bus shelters.)….
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