Bike lanes, congestion pricing, electric vehicles, mass transit and more are all targets in a letter sent to some members of Congress by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy last week.
The letter is a wish list of priorities the Trump administration would like to see in a transportation funding bill renewed by Congress every five years.
But it’s Trump’s request to allow the feds to siphon local property taxes for rebuilding Penn Station and rename it after him that has gotten much of the attention.
“Any bill that renames Penn Station for Trump is dead in the United States Senate,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said. “I will block it.”
There are other requests that could hurt New York and other cities. Schumer says it’s really not up to the transportation secretary.
“It’s Congress’s job to spend the money, to spend money, to take the dollars that taxpayers send us and use it for good things that are required by law,” he said.
Secretary Duffy wants to essentially eliminate funding for green transportation infrastructure, like electric vehicle charging stations.
Among other requests, he’d also like to change the congestion pricing program to prevent toll money from funding transit and prevent other cities from tolling an area rather than a road, condition transit funding on reducing transit crime, and eliminate funding for bike lanes.
City Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn says the city can still build bike lanes.
“Federal funding is not a major share of it,” Flynn said. “So I don’t foresee it having a major impact on us. But we’ll always work with our partners, federal or otherwise, to make it easier and safer for New Yorkers to get around,” Flynn said.
Secretary Duffy has tried to go after the MTA over crime. Yet, according to a recently published federal database that lumps the subway, Staten Island Railway and NJ Transit train service together, crime rates are at 0.15 per 1 million passengers.