Last month, the Department of Transportation announced 2018 “BUILD” grants totaling $1.5 billion. BUILD, which stands for Better Utilizing Investment to Leverage Development, is the successor to TIGER, which stood for Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery. TIGER was a part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and should have ended after the economy had recovered. But Congress had so much fun spending other people’s money that it simply renamed the program and kept it going.
The 2018 BUILD grants include 91 projects in 49 states — only Hawaii got left out — including such things as highway expansions, bus-rapid transit, port facilities, and autonomous vehicle services. Regardless of what they are, virtually all of the projects are local and should have been funded locally and not out of federal deficit spending.
One project the Antiplanner is familiar with is the Coos Bay rail line, which goes west from Eugene, Oregon to Florence, and then south along the Oregon Coast to Coos Bay, then east to Coquille and (at one time) Myrtle Point and Powers. The Myrtle Point/Powers rails have been torn out but the rest of it remains. Continue reading
