To Secretary Buttigieg and the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut Congressional Delegations:
“There’s no greater infrastructure priority in the country than the Gateway Project,” said President Biden just four years ago.
He also said, “Unless we build the new tunnels and repair the old ones we are courting disaster.” Those words have only become more of a reality since his speech at the Regional Plan Association Assembly in 2017.
The Build Gateway Now Coalition--a group of over 45 civic, labor, business, and elected groups from New York and New Jersey--began in part to heed the President’s warning and work to fully complete the Gateway Program. To achieve a crucial piece of that objective, we are writing to urge you to pass legislation that creates new sources of funding for transportation projects of regional and national significance.
While current federal funding sources are available for infrastructure rebuilding, they are too limited in their scope. They also create an undue burden on localities to fund the majority of transportation projects that have a substantial impact on the national economy.
For example, the main federal grant program being pursued to build the almost $12 billion Hudson Tunnel Project – Capital Investment Grants (CIG) -- had a total of only $1.9 billion to fund the projects in the national pipeline, in the current fiscal year. There are 60 projects in the pipeline, however, seeking this same funding, with cost estimates totaling $67 billion.
The Hudson Tunnel Project is the largest and most urgent of these projects due to its impact on 20% of the US GDP. The project would both build a state-of-the-art new tunnel and fully rehabilitate the existing 110-years-old, ‘one-track in one-track out’ tunnel. This is the only rail connection between New York-New Jersey and the rest of the Northeast Corridor, an area that creates 20% of the nation’s GDP.
There are at least 15 other projects across the country in the CIG pipeline with cost estimates of over $2 billion. Metro areas including Fort Worth, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, and Minneapolis all have major projects in the pipeline or are in competition for the limited CIG funding. Clearly, this existing program can’t fully meet the needs of all these worthy projects, despite their urgency.
At the same time, public transit in the United States was given a grade of C- by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in its 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, released in March. It’s not exactly a grade to write home about.
We can’t simply keep giving lip service to fixing the problem of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. In recent years, Congress has taken some action with the tools it has available to fund important projects and begin rebuilding. Now It’s time for national and local governments to step up and take transformative action.
That’s why we’re urging you to create a new funding source, and new formulas for rail infrastructure to provide funding that truly meets America’s 21st-century transportation needs.
Some ideas include:
Creating a funding source for “Projects of National Significance” to be funded via legislation.
Developing a formula for funding rail transportation projects of national significance, based on the funding formula that is on par with funding for highway improvements in states, which is an automatic 90% federal, 10% local split.
Building new mechanisms to keep this source of funding robust, such as indexing the federal gas tax to inflation and creating a national infrastructure bank the private sector can help fund and invest in.
Establishing a Passenger Rail Trust Fund to provide dedicated, predictable, and ongoing funding for rail projects.
Speaking at the same event President Biden also said, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”
In 2021, ASCE also estimated that we face an unfunded $2 trillion gap between what the nation needs to spend on infrastructure and what it is currently spending. At the same time, infrastructure spending as a total percentage of GDP fell to its lowest level in history, 2.3%. These decreases come at precisely the same time more spending is needed both to finally build 21st-century transportation and create good-paying jobs in the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic. In 2019, the Mckinsey Global Institute estimated closing the gap would result in a 1.2 % increase in employment across the economy, which translates to almost 2 million jobs.
This coalition is ready to partner with the Biden administration, Congress, and stakeholders around the nation to make a dramatic investment in the nation’s transportation infrastructure. This investment will benefit our communities and our economy. Thank you for your attention. We look forward to working with you to keep America moving!
Sincerely,
Brian Fritsch
Campaign Manager, Build Gateway Now
[email protected]
Cc: Polly Trottenberg, Nominee for Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Transportation; Nunia Fernandez, Acting Administrator, Federal Transit Administration; Amit Bose, Acting Administrator, Federal Railroad Administration; Dani Simons, Director of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Transportation
