Tying Transportation Grants to Birth Rates Raises Concerns
Memo From USDOT’s Duffy Says Grants Will Give Preference to Areas With High Marriage, Birth Rates
Cars pass the 95th Street Red Line Station, the train station currently the farthest south on the line and where the Chicago Transit Authority plans to extend from in 2025. (Erin Hooley/AP/File)
[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
CHICAGO — Shortly after he was confirmed as President Donald Trump’s transportation secretary, Sean Duffy circulated a memo that instructed his department to prioritize families by, among other things, giving preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average when awarding grants.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called the directive last week “deeply frightening,” and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) called it “disturbingly dystopian.”
The memo also calls for prohibiting governments that get Department of Transportation funds from imposing vaccine and mask mandates and requiring their cooperation with the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.
With hundreds of billions of dollars in transportation money still unspent from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, such changes could be a boon for projects in Republican-majority states, which on average have higher fertility rates than those leaning Democratic.
States controlled by Democrats were generally more receptive to mask and vaccine rules to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and have been more resistant to Trump’s immigration raids.
More Births for More Roads?
All administrations set their own rules for choosing which transportation projects to prioritize. But …
CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM Transport Topics HERE
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.