This is an opinion piece written by Mike Christensen, executive director of the Utah Rail Passengers Association.
Bottom line up front: passenger rail does not look to fare well under a second Trump presidency.
Few new services will likely be implemented, and existing services will be threatened. Now is the time to reach out to Utah’s congressional delegation to advocate for the preservation of what we currently enjoy and also the time to consider becoming involved in local and national advocacy organizations like the Utah Rail Passengers Association and the national Rail Passengers Association.
Ray Delahanty, YouTube’s CityNerd, made a great overview video of how Project 2025 would affect cities and transportation. Long story short, the game plan would be to revert federal policy to a pollyannish fantasy of single-family homes with two cars in every driveway.
While there is no guarantee that all the policies outlined by Project 2025 would be implemented by a second Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation—author of Project 2025—has a track record of successfully influencing conservative policy. The Heritage Foundation published its original Mandate for Leadership in January 1981, just as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. The Heritage Foundation claims that the Reagan administration implemented 60 percent of its recommendations during Reagan’s first year in office.
Specific to intercity passenger rail, it is likely that Trump will put the brakes on the federal funding programs passed under Biden.
First off, the Corridor Identification and Development Program, which has awarded funding to study 69 corridor in 44 states, will likely be frozen in its tracks.
There will not be a second round of funding for the rejected Boise to Salt Lake City and Las Vegas to Salt Lake City applications to reapply to. This also means that there will not be an opportunity for the corridors outlined in the LinkUtah plan to apply to the program.
The extensive, multi-year Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study will likely be shelved indefinitely. Had it been implemented, this plan would have seen Utah being served by a new Los Angeles to Denver route and a new Seattle to Denver route in addition to Amtrak’s California Zephyr, which crosses Utah on its 2,438-mile journey between Chicago and San Francisco.
As Project 2025 calls for the elimination of subsidies for public transit, it is probable that the federal subsidy that funds Amtrak’s long-distance trains would be cut, leading to the elimination of those services, including the California Zephyr. The various state-supported Amtrak routes would not face the same threat as the routes are funded by state and local governments. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, which generally breaks even on its operations, would also not face the same danger.
If you have a cross-country Amtrak trip on your bucket list, now is the time to book that trip before the long-distance routes disappear!
Given Project 2025’s disdain for diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Grant Program, which focuses on furthering projects that repair the harm caused by infrastructure choices of the past, would likely be doomed.
This would end a source of funding for both studying and implementing potential solutions to Salt Lake City’s east-west divide just as Salt Lake City itself is in the midst of studying solutions and just as support for the citizen-lead Rio Grande Plan begins to gather steam.
In terms of local transit, the elimination of discretionary funding programs called for by Project 2025 would mean no federal funding for projects like FrontRunner 2X (strategic double-tracking) and the Techlink TRAX expansion, which would have to be funded by state and local sources in order to implement.
The elimination of federal funding for transit operations would also be a blow to the Utah Transit Authority, but it would be far more damaging to the budgets of smaller transit agencies, which typically rely much more heavily on federal funding for operations.
Additionally, this past weekend passenger rail advocates from around the nation gathered in Tucson for the national Rail Passengers Association’s fall conference. A policy briefing led by Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs, Sean Jeans-Gail, shared the same concerns over the likely loss of funding programs instituted under the Biden administration and the imminent threat to Amtrak’s long-distance services.
Again, now is the time to reach out to Utah’s congressional delegation in support of preserving what we currently enjoy and also the time to consider becoming involved in local and national advocacy organizations.
Mike Christensen is a long-time transit expert and executive director of the Utah Rail Passengers Association. He also serves on the Salt Lake City Planning Commission.
0 Comments