President Donald Trump’s Budget could Derail Bay Area transportation Projects in Future

In the new budget of Donald Trump, transit is at the top. This new president’s budget is known as “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,”. This budget mainly promises major cuts to federal dollars that flow to bay area transit projects including TIGER grants and New Starts funding.

This 2018 budget requests approx $16.2 billion for the department of Transit’s optional budget, a $2.4 billion decrease. The local transit agencies depend on federal grants from new BART cars to Muni’s Central Subway to get projects done.

Randy Rentschler who is a director of legislation and public affairs at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, said those New Starts grants threaten most new capital projects in the Bay Area. “It’s ‘D,’ all of the above. It’s everything,” he said, calling Trump’s budget “worrisome.”

Congress has a complete control over the purse strings of the nation in the last few years, there are so many presidential budgets have been tossed by the wayside. According to reports, The Washington Post Hill Republicans have “sharply criticized” his budget.

Rentschler mentioned that, although Trump’s budget is likely not to pass, but he still has the power of the pen over federal transportation grants — he can simply not sign them for approval.

He added, “The President’s 2018 Budget … Limits funding for the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Program to projects with existing full funding grant agreements only. Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.”

BART tweeted “Elimination of New Starts grants from the (Federal Transportation Administration) would be harsh. In the past, this helped pay for BART to SFO.” The tweet was just to explain the possible fallout of Trump’s budget.

BART also wrote, “The president’s change in policy would drastically shift funding downstream, and likely hit local users the hardest.”

2016 S-Class Mercedes: