Administration Blinks in Budget Showdown

The Trump administration released its proposed 2018 budget yesterday to great fanfare and gnashing of teeth over proposed cuts to the so-called safety net. The truth is that the document released yesterday actually has less information in it than the budget blueprint that was released a couple of months ago.

More significant is the decision of Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao to provide $647 million of the $1.75 billion needed to electrify commuter trains in San Francisco, a project opposed by every Republican member of Congress from California. The Caltrains commuter trains carry just 4 percent of San Francisco Bay Area transit riders, and the environmental assessment for the project predicts (on page 3-159) that, by slightly speeding trains, electrification will increase ridership by less than 10 percent. The project will be completed in 2021, just about the time that shared, self-driving cars start to take away far more riders than electrification could ever hope to add.

Caltrains electrification is just one of nearly two dozen transit projects funded in the recent 2017 appropriations bill that have no full-funding grant agreements, and Trump’s budget blueprint proposed to sign no more such agreements. The other projects are just as ridiculous as Caltrains, but unlike Caltrains many actually have the support of local Republicans. Now that Chao has caved on Caltrains, how is she going to be able to resist funding the other projects?
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If there’s a difference between Caltrains and the other projects, it is that an Obama administration official actually did sign a full-funding grant agreement for the Caltrains project just before leaving office. By an amazing coincidence, that official took a high-paying job with a Caltrains contractor a few days later. Chao had every reason to overturn that decision, but she apparently decided not to.

The Antiplanner has previously noted that the Caltrains project is a “bellwether for Trump transportation secretary Elaine Chao,” and perhaps for the Trump administration as a whole. The decision Chao made may tell us much more about the Trump administration’s budget than the document that was released yesterday.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

12 Responses to Administration Blinks in Budget Showdown

  1. JOHN1000 says:

    “..an Obama administration official actually did sign a full-funding grant agreement for the Caltrains project just before leaving office. By an amazing coincidence, that official took a high-paying job with a Caltrains contractor a few days later. ”

    This is something foe the US attorney to look at. Taking a bribe is the only was to describe this action.

  2. LazyReader says:

    Unemployment is at an all time low, economic productivity is high, if you cant find a job in this economy you’re either the “R” word or hopeless. private charity is a valid solution to help those who are in need, which is the point conservatives have been making all along.
    That’s what communities and churches and hospital charities are for; sadly as society shifts downward from churches and family based assistance they’re gravitating towards the expensive bureaucratic nightmare of government assistance. Prior to Obamacare, people were not dying in the streets as the result of being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. It’s the long cherished community bonds that rebuild homes destroyed by storms, not the government that gave you toxic FEMA trailers. That’s the best the government can do with millions of employees, thousands of computers and billions of dollars, not a single one of them knows how to saw wood or pour a foundation.

    In the 1920s — the last decade before the Roosevelt administration launched its campaign to federalize…….virtually everything, 30 percent of American men belonged to mutual aid societies, groups of people with similar backgrounds who banded together to help members in trouble. They were especially common among minorities; granted these groups were racial, blacks only helping blacks, indians helping indians so forth. Never the less, Mutual aid societies paid for doctors, built orphanages and cooked for the poor. Neighbors knew best what neighbors needed. Mutual aid didn’t solve every problem, so government stepped in. But government didn’t solve every problem either. Instead, it caused more problems by driving private charity out. Today, there are fewer mutual-aid societies.

  3. msetty says:

    As I’ve pointed out to The Antiplanner recently, technophiliactic faith in self-driving cars (“robocars”) will not “save” us from the “horrors” (in his estimation) of needing cost-effective transit in the U.S.

    I am now 95% certain that robocar will fail in the same sort of way that Uber, Lyft and others of their ilk are failing. That is, at least a few in the media are now starting to “get it” in that for commercial ridesharing to succeed beyond serving relatively tiny niche travel markets, they need to start acting more and more like fixed route rail and bus transit–a move that will also ultimately fail, given the relatively high fares that would be required for their small vehicles compared to well-run, and well-utilized frequent transit service.

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/22/15667008/uber-uberpool-pickup-dropoff-changes-nyc

    http://humantransit.org/2017/05/the-receding-fantasy-of-affordable-urban-transit-to-your-door.html#comments.

    If I had any large amounts of investment in stocks, I would also start to short Ford Motor Company. This is due to Ford just being taken over by the fan-boys of glorified automotive cruise control who think that glorified automotive cruise control can do orders of magnitude more than it actually–or will ever able to–do compared to the wetware between human ears. Soon after 2020, I strongly expect either a huge downsizing of Ford, if not total liquidation after the fiasco of this reliance on glorified automotive cruise control is apparent, except to the most die-hard technophiliacs such as The Antiplanner, Brad Templeton, and so forth.

    Once the non-tech world catches on, or more precisely, the non-tech media, it will be very nice to not hear anymore from techno idiot savants like Kalanick or Musk on glorified automotive cruise control, urban roadway tunnels, and Hyped Loop (though Musk is likely to succeed on rockets, electric cars and batteries for reasons most technophiliacs won’t really understand…)

  4. msetty says:

    As I’ve pointed out to The Antiplanner recently, technophiliactic faith in self-driving cars (“robocars”) will not “save” us from the “horrors” (in his estimation) of needing cost-effective transit in the U.S.

    I am now 95% certain that the sacred robocars will fail in the same sort of way that Uber, Lyft and others of their ilk are failing. That is, at least a few in the media are now starting to “get it” in that for commercial ridesharing to succeed beyond serving relatively tiny niche travel markets, they need to start acting more and more like fixed route rail and bus transit–a move that will also ultimately fail, given the relatively high fares that would be required for their small vehicles compared to well-run, and well-utilized frequent transit service.

    https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/22/15667008/uber-uberpool-pickup-dropoff-changes-nyc

    http://humantransit.org/2017/05/the-receding-fantasy-of-affordable-urban-transit-to-your-door.html#comments.

    If I had any large amounts of investment in stocks, I would also start to short Ford Motor Company. This is due to Ford just being taken over by the fan-boys of glorified automotive cruise control who think that glorified automotive cruise control can do orders of magnitude more than it actually–or will ever able to–do compared to the wetware between human ears. Soon after 2020, I strongly expect either a huge downsizing of Ford, if not total liquidation after the fiasco of this reliance on glorified automotive cruise control is apparent, except to the most die-hard technophiliacs such as The Antiplanner, Brad Templeton, and so forth.

    Once the non-tech world catches on, or more precisely, the non-tech media, it will be very nice to not hear anymore from techno idiot savants like Kalanick or Musk on glorified automotive cruise control, urban roadway tunnels, and Hyped Loop (though Musk is likely to succeed on rockets, electric cars and batteries for reasons most technophiliacs won’t really understand…)

  5. msetty says:

    Interface still screwy…

  6. Frank says:

    Your face is still screwy.

  7. msetty says:

    Frank: Go ram it up down your pie hole, er, ass, ferretface! (with profuse apologies to Alan Alda and others associated with MASH.)

    It wouldn’t surprise me if some libertarian retard in Congress killed this, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/24/15681560/gao-report-transit-construction-costs.

    If transit construction was conducted in a cost-effective manner like everywhere but the U.S., demands for more transit might proliferate like rabbits. Of course, it also could have been some of the contractors who profit profusely from grossly overpriced projects, or perhaps even an evil alliance between the transit-hating former and money-grubbing latter. In either case, their agendas were served by this Congressional cop-out.

  8. prk166 says:


    If I had any large amounts of investment in stocks, I would also start to short Ford Motor Company.
    ” ~msetty

    You don’t need to own a stock to short it. How much have you shorted? When do the options come due?

  9. prk166 says:


    That is, at least a few in the media are now starting to “get it” in that for commercial ridesharing to succeed beyond serving relatively tiny niche travel markets, they need to start acting more and more like fixed route rail and bus transit–a move that will also ultimately fail, given the relatively high fares that would be required for their small vehicles compared to well-run, and well-utilized frequent transit service.
    ” ~msetty

    What they’ve shown is that for the dirt cheap service, Uber Pool, to work in New York City – they have to enact some of the efficiencies that FedEx and UPS have already done. That only speaks to the viability of the cheapest of services in an abnormally high density area like New York City.

    What does the driverless car for a transit service that is already bleeding money like Nashville’s Music City Star? What will it mean for proposed project like Metro Transit’s Southwest Light Rail where they’re counting on ridership to develop along the corridor while express bus service continues to serve the suburban to downtown demand? How will it affect what little revenue is projected for projects like the Research Triangles proposed light rail line or #kcmo’s tram extension?

  10. metrosucks says:

    I am now 95% certain that robocar will fail in the same sort of way that Uber, Lyft and others of their ilk are failing.

    Well that does it! Msetty is 95% certain, good enough for me! Billion dollar a mile rail transit here we cum, uh I mean come. (Maybe cum in the palatial estates of the corrupt contractors who will build those Egyptian Pyramids, and plenty of masturbation at msetty’s sister’s house out in Napa Valley).

  11. prk166 says:


    If I had any large amounts of investment in stocks, I would also start to short Ford Motor Company.
    ” ~msetty

    You don’t need to own a stock to short it. How much have you shorted? When do the options come due?

  12. CapitalistRoader says:

    …robocars will not “save” us from the “horrors” of needing cost-effective transit in the U.S.

    Robocars will comprise the vast majority of cost-effective transit in the US, within 15 years. It will be nice to not have to possess a car. Do you plan on getting rid of your car too?

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