Trump, Harris offer starkly different paths on transportation policy

Whoever sits in the White House come January will have a profound impact on the country’s transportation policy, even if that’s not the top issue on the campaign trail these days.

Infrastructure was a central theme in the last two presidential elections. In 2016, Republican Donald Trump promised a $550 billion—later raised to $1 trillion—infrastructure package, after his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, proposed a $275 billion initiative. But as president, Trump was unable to secure a deal. The plan his administration eventually released failed to get support even among fellow Republicans in Congress. After Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020, he made an infrastructure bill one of his top priorities and prodded Congress to pass a $1.2 trillion package in his first year.

With Biden bowing out of the race, his successor will have a chance to cement his legacy by overseeing the completion of many high-profile projects or to undermine it by veering in a different direction.

Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is expected to win the Democratic nomination, have offered starkly different visions for transportation policy over the years. Whoever wins this fall could decide how or whether to expand passenger rail between cities, increase or decrease the amount of greenhouse gases the federal government allows cars and trucks to spew, and oversee a new highway construction scheme once the 2021 infrastructure law largely expires.

“I know this hasn’t been an issue in the campaign so far for maybe the eight days or whatever it’s been” since Biden announced he wouldn’t seek reelection, said Greg Regan, the president of the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, “but it should be.”

“If I was on the Harris team, I would want to start highlighting it,” he said. “Their administration passed the largest investment in transportation in the history of our country: the biggest investment in transit, the biggest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak, the biggest investment in airports and roads. The infrastructure law is a really big deal.”

A second Trump term would likely be far different, Regan said. “You can just look at what he did as president and what the Republicans have done in Congress. Last year’s appropriations bill for transportation in the House was killed by its own members because it would have drastically cut funding for transit and Amtrak, and it never got a vote in the House,” he explained. “Trump always talks about big infrastructure, but when he finally released his infrastructure proposal, it was the looniest, worst bill I’ve seen ever. It flipped the 80-20 split between federal and local investment, and it would have put so much more onus on local and state taxpayers.”

Of course, Republicans are hoping for relief from many of the Biden administration’s policies on curtailing greenhouse gases, beefing up labor requirements and promoting social justice.

“Since President Biden took office, we’ve heard frequently from stakeholders spanning all regions and industries about the burden of this administration’s onerous regulatory agenda,” U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, an Arkansas Republican who chairs the House subcommittee on highways and transit, said last week. “Federal regulations cost the United States economy more than $3 trillion. Yet the administration continues to march forward with crushing regulations, including those that exceed its statutory authority.”

He pointed specifically to a Federal Highway Administration rule that requires states and metropolitan planning organizations to track greenhouse gas emissions on their roads.

Tim Duit, the president of a highway construction company in Oklahoma and the current chair of American Road & Transportation Builders Association, warned members on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure about the impact the new regulations could have on road builders.

“Government wide, 2024 has been one of the most costly years for federal regulations finalized to-date. And since the enactment of [the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act], there have been at least 50 new regulations affecting the transportation construction industry alone,” Duit said in written testimony.

“These rulemakings have generated new uncertainties for the industry as they seek to properly comply, threatening to delay projects and increase costs. A cycle of a proposed rule, finalization, and in some cases, litigation, creates significant challenges for businesses large and small,” he said.

Those are only a few of the many ways that the different parties and their presidential candidates differ significantly on their outlook on transportation policy.

Electric Vehicles

One of the starkest contrasts between Democratic and Republican policies is on the adoption of electric vehicles.

The Republican Party platform, which Trump and his campaign operatives drafted and passed with little room for dissent, calls out Democrats’ push to move away from internal combustion engines.

California administrators and the Biden administration have both issued regulations that drastically limit the amount of pollution new cars and trucks can emit over the coming decades. Neither regulation specifically mandates electric vehicles— hydrogen fuel cells and even battery electric hybrids would meet requirements—but automakers both at home and abroad are betting big on electric vehicles to address climate concerns.

Republicans want to change direction. The platform states that the party “will revive the U.S. Auto Industry by reversing harmful Regulations, canceling Biden’s Electric Vehicle and other Mandates, and preventing the importation of Chinese vehicles.”

Harris, a former senator from California who supported the Green New Deal, has touted the benefits of electric vehicles, especially buses. Like other Democratic officials, she has praised their potential environmental and economic benefits. But she has also called attention to the health benefits for people who live near highways and congested streets.

“Diesel exhaust is a poison. But there is a solution to all of this, and that solution is parked right over there,” she said last year, pointing to several electric buses nearby at an electric bus factory in Minnesota. “Here in St. Cloud, you are not just building better buses. You are building a better America.”

Harris also praised a provision of the 2021 infrastructure law that includes $7.5 billion to build a network of electric vehicle chargers. “Electric vehicles are the future,” she wrote on social media. “[Biden] and I are building a nationwide network of chargers and lowering the cost of electric vehicles with the goal that by 2030, at least half of the cars sold in the U.S. are electric.”

Republicans might face some political resistance from turning away from electric vehicles, though, because many automakers and battery manufacturers chose Republican jurisdictions for new EV factories. The companies have not only flocked to Georgia and other states in the so-called Battery Belt because of subsidies from state and local governments, but also because of major tax incentives included in the federal Inflation Reduction Act.

Greenhouse Gas Regulations

One of the driving factors for the adoption of electric vehicles are concerns about carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released by gas- and diesel-powered vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the U.S., even more than electric generation, which has been moving to cleaner fuels and more renewable sources of energy.

The federal government sets its own vehicle efficiency requirements and pollution thresholds for new cars and trucks. But it also decides whether to approve air quality regulations from California, which can set its own standards under the Clean Air Act.

Trump tried to backpedal on Obama-era emission standards and to strip California’s air pollution authority, but those efforts became moot after Biden took office. Now, the Biden administration put out its own set of rules that would effectively require two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the country to be electric or hybrid by 2032.

“The Biden administration’s clean car and truck policies are steering us to a better future, one with lower costs, more options for drivers and much less of the pollution threatening our health and driving climate change,” said Luke Tonachel, a senior advisor to the NRDC Action Fund, an environmental group. “A Trump administration would make a dangerous U-turn away from progress and backwards towards more pollution, fewer choices of better vehicles for consumers and businesses, and fewer jobs.”

The trucking industry and many congressional Republicans, though, have balked at the Biden administration’s greenhouse gas rules, particularly for truckers.

“Emissions requirements for heavy-duty vehicles should be practical, affordable and reliable,” said Lewie Pugh, the executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, a group of small truckers.  

“Unfortunately, EPA has continued their regulatory blitz on small-business truckers with their latest rule,” he said. “Mom-and-pop trucking businesses would be suffocated by the sheer cost and operational challenges of effectively mandating zero-emission trucks.”

Pugh said mandating battery-powered trucks starting in 2030 was premature, because there is no national charging network for heavy-duty trucks. Truckers are also skeptical of the costs, mileage range, battery weight and safety, charging time, and availability of electric trucks, he added.

Passenger Rail

One of the signature parts of Biden’s infrastructure bill is the $66 billion dedicated to improving passenger rail between cities. Biden has been a unique champion for the cause, because he commuted between his home in Delaware and work in Washington, D.C., for several decades before becoming vice president.

Biden has announced major funding to improve the Northeast Corridor that links Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston. That includes money for new rail tunnels under the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York. His administration also awarded billions to build two separate high-speed rail projects in California and Nevada, and is considering applications to fund improvements to start new passenger rail service in other parts of the country.

But little of that work will be done by the time he leaves office in January. During Trump’s presidency, the Republican tried to revoke funding that had been previously awarded to the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which is building a line between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Congressional Republicans, including U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, have renewed their criticism of the project in recent months.

But Andy Byford, the director of high-speed rail for Amtrak, said that the passenger rail service plans to push for more high-speed rail projects, such as a project to connect Houston and Dallas in Texas that it recently took over.

“Amtrak intends, as the national operator of America’s railroad, to truly push this thing forward, irrespective of who’s in the White House,” Byford said.

Transit Funding

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the conservative think tank’s plan to overhaul the U.S. government, laid out several goals for a potential second Trump administration, including drastic reductions in federal support for transit agencies.

“With the federal government facing mounting debt, the best course of action would be to remove federal subsidies for transit spending, allowing states and localities to decide whether mass transit is a good investment for them,” wrote Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the director of Heritage’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment and a former transportation official in the Trump administration.

She called for a change to federal law that directs 20% of the money that goes into the Highway Trust Fund to be dedicated to transit construction projects. Most of that money comes from federal motor fuels taxes, although Congress has had to shore up the trust fund with money from other parts of the federal budget since 2008.

Furchtgott-Roth also criticized a major program to help build new transit capacity, known as Capital Investment Grants, which Trump unsuccessfully proposed to eliminate during his presidency.

“Because Americans have demonstrated a strong preference for alternative means of transportation, rather than throwing good money after bad by continuing federal subsidies for transit expansion, there should be a focus on reducing costs that make transit uneconomical,” she wrote. “At a minimum, a new conservative administration should ensure that each CIG project meets sound economic standards and a rigorous cost-benefit analysis.”

Trump has distanced himself from the 920-page policy blueprint, which is similar to documents by Heritage in previous presidential elections. But many actions he took as president worry transit advocates.

In four years, for example, Trump never named a permanent head of the Federal Transit Administration. That agency slow-walked nearly $1.8 billion dedicated to new projects like light rail, streetcars and bus rapid transit. A Republican-led Congress eventually forced him to release the money. Trump also changed the focus of a major grant program created during the Obama administration. Under Obama, the so-called TIGER grants were split roughly equally between transit and road projects. When Trump took over, his administration renamed the grants and directed nearly 70% of the funds to roads and bridges, leaving only 11% for transit (the rest went to freight rail or maritime projects).

On the other hand, Trump signed two pieces of pandemic relief that included emergency funds for transit agencies to operate during the height of the COVID-19 outbreak without drastically cutting service or laying off transit workers.

Biden also signed legislation with operational funds for large transit systems, although that money is largely drying up now. His infrastructure package included an influx of money for capital improvements, too.

When Harris ran for president in 2020, she called for boosting transit funding. “We must also incentivize people to reduce car usage and use public transit,” her campaign said in its climate plan. “This starts by funding robust public transportation networks to bring communities together and focusing our transportation infrastructure investments toward projects that reduce vehicle miles traveled and address gaps in first mile, last mile service.”

Sarah Kaufman, a New York University professor and director of the Rudin Center for Transportation, said there is a “decent chance that our transit systems across the country would fall into a state of disrepair, because they wouldn’t be able to cover their capital and operating costs” if the new administration doesn’t find more money for transit improvements in the coming years.

“It’s not out of the question for a potential future Trump administration to fund mass transit,” Kaufman said, citing his support of the emergency funds. “However, the really bold and transformational projects that a lot of cities like Chicago, New York and L.A. want to do can only be done with an influx of cash from the federal government, which will depend on the priorities of the next administration.”

Highway Spending

The 2021 infrastructure law championed by Biden was actually an expansion on a surface transportation bill—often simply called the “highway bill”—that Congress passes roughly every five years. But that means that much of the law is set to expire in 2026, giving Congress a chance to revisit its spending priorities during the next administration.

That could give the incoming president a chance to reshape infrastructure programs.

Shruti Vaidyanathan, a senior advisor to the NRDC Action Fund, said that could have big consequences if the new president has a friendly Congress.

“The infrastructure law started to redirect money and put unprecedented investments towards building affordable, healthy and connected communities,” she said. “That meant residents can start breathing clean air because of the emissions reduction savings that we are seeing from those investments. They have access to clean mobility choices that allow them to walk, take buses and trains, or even use zero-emission vehicles to get from place to place. We saw a lot of money being directed to programs that would help support those outcomes.”

“By comparison, in a potential Trump administration, we’re largely probably going to see an end to those very common-sense investments. We would probably even see a renewed focus on investing in new highways and highway expansion. President Trump likes to build, build, build. Project 2025 points in the direction of highway expansion being the primary approach to his transportation policy.”

But Beth Osborne, the director of Transportation for America and a former transportation official in the Obama administration, said the dynamics of Congress make it nearly impossible to change the bulk of federal transportation spending, which consists of highway-related grants to state transportation departments to spend as they please.

“It’s almost trite, that it’s a bipartisan program, and they’re right,” Osborne said. “The bipartisanship is achieved by never touching the status quo. So what changes is the verbiage, but it’s not the program. The program is exactly the same, and we keep the bipartisanship by not caring if the program delivers on anybody’s priorities, so we evenly undermine both Republican and Democratic priorities. And that's bipartisanship.”

For example, she said, Republicans say they want to invest in roads so people can get where they want to go quicker. But spending money on highways for decades has only led to more traffic and longer travel times. Plus, building out the road network means it has become more expensive to maintain.

“They want to make sure that we can afford to maintain the things we've built. But we don’t,” Osborne said. “We always have a backlog, and what we do is, every five years we say, ‘America’s roads and bridges are crumbling. We need to do something about it!’ And then we put more money into the same program. And everybody says, ‘We’re going to fix our crumbling roads and bridges!’ And we come back five years later, and we haven’t. So we say, ‘We need to fix our crumbling roads and bridges!’ and we put more money into it.”

On the other hand, Osborne said, Democrats say they want to advance priorities such as the environment or public health but don’t advance policies that reflect that.

“We don’t require the money to be spent in a way that would change that trajectory. This administration—a Democratic administration—claims to care about equity, but we’ve built a bunch of stuff that literally knocks down Black and brown people’s houses in order to speed travel for people that don’t live in that community. It won’t work, but we will have knocked down their homes. So yeah, everyone seems comfortable with claiming to care about certain things, not getting it and then spending more money to not get it.”

Labor issues

One of the major focuses of the Biden administration has been to “create good-paying union jobs,” with the president even walking the picket line during a UAW strike against the three major U.S. automakers.

Regan, the union official, said Biden made sure that labor became a consideration for every federal agency, not just the Department of Labor. Regan expects Harris will maintain that support if elected president. Harris was involved with getting worker protections in the infrastructure law, he said.

Harris and her husband would invite labor leaders over for beer, he said, to get a sense of what is important for union members. “That prioritization of working people’s issues has bled through [from Biden] and she’s adopted it,” Regan said. “There’s a reason why he picked her. There’s a reason why he felt comfortable with her as his running mate, because she embodied his values.”

But many business groups worry about the impact those policies will have. Ben Brubeck, the vice president of regulatory, labor and state affairs for the Associated Builders and Contractors, said the Biden administration is poised to issue rules that could make it harder for non-union sponsors to run government-registered apprenticeship programs, which are a consideration for federally funded projects. “It clips the wings of a lot of state apprenticeship agencies going forward, too,” he added. “That can have a big impact on workforce development programs.”

Tightening rules on those programs could further exacerbate worker shortages, he said, because current apprenticeship programs only graduate about 45,000 people a year, while there is a shortage of about 500,000 workers.

The Biden administration has also pushed for states to adopt project labor agreements, which can raise costs even for union contractors, Brubeck said.

Business groups and Republican attorneys general have attacked many of the Biden administration’s regulations in court, which could also affect how far-reaching those federal policies can be. “It may not be specific to transportation, but those labor policies are going to have a big impact on where companies invest and where contractors are building,” he said. “When the Trump administration did a lot of deregulatory activities, companies were saying, ‘We have confidence to invest now that we know where things are going.’ So you might see more of that messaging if the Trump administration wins or some of these outrageous laws are struck down by the courts.”