The recently passed infrastructure bill includes $36 billion for “federal‐​state partnerships for intercity passenger rail grants.”

The only good thing about the infrastructure bill that Congress just passed is that it doesn’t include any money for high‐​speed rail.

As Politico observed last month, House Democrats sought to include several anti-highway provisions in an infrastructure bill, including a “fix-it-first” requirement that would prevent states from adding new highway capacity if some of the roads in the state were in poor condition.

The Senate reportedly passed an infrastructure bill last week, but it was really only a four‐page outline of the bill. Supporters hope that the actual bill will pass this week.

In 1990, a Department of Transportation researcher named Don Pickrell looked at ten rail transit projects completed in the 1980s and found that their construction costs averaged 62 percent more than originally projected, their operating costs were 130 percent more, and their ridership was 47 percent less than projected.

Transit ridership was only 42 percent of pre‐pandemic levels in May 2021, which is making transit agencies desperate to justify their future existence and the subsidies they depend on to keep running.

“More highway spending won’t rev up the economy,” argues a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

At least 33 members of Congress have signed onto a resolution calling for transit parity, by which they mean that the federal government should spend as much money on transit as it spends on highways.

The infrastructure plan recently released by the Biden campaign is a collection of tired ideas that have consistently failed in the past.

Since 1986, low‐income housing tax credits (LIHTCs) are the main way in which the federal government tries to increase the amount of affordable housing for low‐income families.