Federal Funding

The tax bill Republicans in Washington hope to pass before they head home for Christmas break will have a "devastating" effect on NYC's transit system, according to an analysis by the Riders Alliance and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.

Congress is on track to trigger spending austerity that will cut programs like New Starts and TIGER.

Millions of dollars that should have gone toward building safer sidewalks or bike lanes near schools were instead forfeited by state DOTs that couldn't get their acts together.

It's been clear since Donald Trump was elected and Republicans hung on to majorities in Congress that federal transit funding is at risk. But a phone call to your representative could protect transit in the current round of budget negotiations.

The Trump administration's fiscal year 2018 budget, released yesterday, includes severe cuts to federal transit funding. Amid this looming austerity, Trump wants to insert his infrastructure plan, which calls for $800 billion in private financing suited for building toll roads (if they're profitable) but not transit infrastructure. Next stop: Congress, which will consider the president's proposal before it passes a budget over the summer.

A new report from Manhattan Institute senior fellow Aaron Renn argues that the federal government should stop supporting new rail lines in cities across the country.

Yesterday, Congress came out with a funding package that keeps the government operating until the end of September. Officially, it's known as the omnibus appropriations package for fiscal year 2017. Unofficially, it's a Republican Congress ignoring the wishes of President Donald J. Trump, and for transit projects around the country, it's what amounts to good news these days.

Eight years in the making, the project was undone by suburban opposition. Now, transit advocates in Michigan's capital are figuring out what can be done to improve transit while their opponents take a victory lap.

The insistence that transit is a local issue while highways are a national concern is an article of faith at right-wing think tanks. But highways mostly serve the same type of trips that Republicans believe are inappropriate for federal funding.