Voters Backed Transit Funds. Will Congress OK Trump Infrastructure Plan?
KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
One of the lesser-known stories from Election Day is that trains and buses did really well. At the top of the ticket, there's Donald Trump, who's called for a huge investment in infrastructure - up to a trillion dollars. Transit advocates are hoping to capitalize on that. And in many cities, voters approved tax increases to expand and improve public transit. NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER, BYLINE: On a night that the national election results had her discouraged, Seattle resident Anne Johnson had at least one ballot measure to celebrate - ST3 - which will raise the local sales tax in Seattle to pump $54 billion into expanding that area's rail and bus system. It has by a wide margin.
ANNE JOHNSON: That is awesome, and we've put a lot of work into that. And I'm excited for the direction that that will take Seattle.
SCHAPER: Seattle voters aren't alone in approving new transit funding. San Francisco Bay Area voters OKed a tax increase to upgrade the aging BART system. Los Angeles County voted in a tax increase to expand commuter rail and bus service. And Atlanta voters approved expanding that city's transit lines.
JASON JORDAN: Election Day 2016 was historic for ballot measures that supported investment in public transportation.
SCHAPER: Jason Jordan is director of the Center for Transportation Excellence, which tracks such ballot initiatives.
JORDAN: We saw a record number of measures on ballots. There were 77 measures nationwide. Seventy-one percent of those passed. That accounts for almost $170 billion in new transit funding.
SCHAPER: Funding that would come directly out of local residents' pockets, not from Washington. And Jordan says transit didn't just win in big cities and blue states. Voters approved referendums in more traditionally car-centric cities, too, including new rail and bus rapid transit in Raleigh, N.C., and transit expansions in Phoenix, Indianapolis and Toledo among other cities. Art Guzzetti is with the American Public Transportation Association.
ART GUZZETTI: There's an infrastructure deficit out there, and that's existing everywhere, red state or blue state.
SCHAPER: Guzzetti now expects President-elect Trump's huge infrastructure plan to get bipartisan support in Washington.
GUZZETTI: Both sides have an inclination of getting this issue on the agenda early. Both sides believe in infrastructure, and it's definitely going to be one of the first issues taken up by the next Congress.
SCHAPER: Trump's call to spend big on infrastructure might be the only plan that congressional Democrats can embrace, and many Republicans who rejected some of the Obama administration's infrastructure proposals now seem to be onboard, too. So what could go wrong?
DAN LIPINSKI: It very quickly gets to be much more difficult and complicated when we talk about how we're going to pay for this.
SCHAPER: Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski of Chicago sits on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He's not so sure his Republican colleagues will go along with funding public transit in big Democratic-voting cities. And even if they do, he's skeptical about one of the possible funding sources.
President-elect Trump wants to create an infrastructure bank using tax credits to leverage private investment in infrastructure projects, loans that would have to be paid back with revenue from things like toll roads.
LIPINSKI: We do not, first of all, want to make every road a toll road. And there are things, such as public transportation, which would not ever get funded in this manner.
SCHAPER: President-elect Trump also suggests another funding source - repatriating profits corporations hold overseas. But there are big disagreements over how much to tax those profits and how much money it would bring in. Plus, says Steve Schlickman, who's with the Alliance for Regional Development in Chicago, says that's just a one-time source of funds.
STEVE SCHLICKMAN: That's not the type of revenue stream that you would want to rely on. But at this point, if that's all that's politically doable, then fine, let's do it.
SCHAPER: Many transportation experts say that while a long-term funding source like an increase in the gas tax is still needed, now is not the time for transit advocates to quibble over such matters. They should just try to cash in on having a president-elect who wants to do something huge. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.