A Bold Transportation Plan for Urban America—Dead on Arrival

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s newly released fiscal 2017 budget is about 70 pages long, but you need only look at the cover to catch its drift. The lead image shows the pedestrian-friendly, tree-lined Long Street Bridge in Columbus, Ohio, which reunited two neighborhoods separated in the 1960s by an interstate—a fate shared by so many urban districts. Lest the point get lost, the $98 billion budget makes clear that future transport policies must “reconnect” communities, where past ones “divided” them.

The 2017 DOT budget may get laughed out of a Republican-controlled Congress in this election year, but it nevertheless outlines a bold national transportation policy with American cities at its center. Unlike the recently passed FAST act, which stayed true to historical spending habits that favor highway expansion and worsen congestion, the new budget does more than nod at real change. In that sense it’s truer to the DOT’s 30-year “Beyond Traffic” vision that hopes to pivot away from car-first planning toward more mobility choices.