God Help Us, It's Really Infrastructure Week
The War on Cars
The War on Cars, LLC
4.9 • 937 Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2021
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Breaking News! Following weeks of negotiations, and as a mind-boggling heat wave settled on the Pacific Northwest, President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of ten Senators stepped out of a closed-door meeting at the White House to announce they'd made a deal. There will be infrastructure! $579 billion worth of it, in fact. The biggest federal investment in infrastructure in more than a hundred years and, according to President Biden, the 21st century equivalent to our historic investments in the Interstate Highway System and the transcontinental railroad. But if you're a tad skeptical about what this deal might mean for The War on Cars, you have good reason. Federal transportation investments have not been kind to Americans who wish to live untethered from an automobile. And in U.S. political discourse, "infrastructure" has typically been shorthand for "car stuff." But could this moment be different? Here to help us understand the big infrastructure package and the arcane world of federal transportation policy is Beth Osborne, executive director of Transportation for America. Warning: This episode includes a brief audio clip of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
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SHOW NOTES:
Episode 62: It's Finally Infrastructure Week, April 3, 2021. (The War on Cars)
Learn more about Transportation for America here.
Follow Beth Osborne on Twitter.
President Biden Announces Support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (WhiteHouse.gov)
What's in the White House, Senate bipartisan infrastructure package (Washington Post)
As Feds Debate Transportation Pay-Fors, Don't Forget What We're Buying (Streetsblog USA)
Biden's infrastructure deal proves bipartisanship can't deliver (Vox)
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This episode was edited by Ali Lemer and produced by Aaron Naparstek. Our music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Our logo is by Dani Finkel of Crucial D.
Find us on Twitter: @TheWarOnCars, Aaron Naparstek @Naparstek, Doug Gordon @BrooklynSpoke, Sarah Goodyear @buttermilk1.
Questions, comments or suggestions? Email us: thewaroncars@gmail.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Your question assumes that anyone is having a substantive conversation about any of this at all. |
| 0:06.0 | And I would like to rid you of that foolish and frankly ignorant thought. |
| 0:13.0 | No, we're not having that level of conversation. |
| 0:16.0 | We are having a conversation about how much money we can come up with |
| 0:21.0 | and how to distribute it so every Senate office can have a nice press release |
| 0:25.3 | about what's coming to their state. |
| 0:27.0 | Hey, it's Aaron Napa Stack here, and you know, we don't usually do breaking news here at the |
| 0:38.9 | War on Cars, but we're making a bit of an exception for this episode because folks it is finally here it is happening |
| 0:47.8 | it's Infrastructure Week last Thursday following weeks of negotiations and a closed-door meeting in the White House, |
| 0:55.2 | President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of 10 senators announced, |
| 1:01.0 | We had a really good meeting and answer a direct question. We have a deal. |
| 1:07.0 | They made a deal on a 579 billion dollar federal infrastructure package. |
| 1:15.0 | And it legitimately seems like kind of a big deal. |
| 1:18.4 | If it moves forward, this would be the largest federal investment in infrastructure in a century. |
| 1:25.0 | Now, President Biden and these senators, they didn't really hash out many of the details. |
| 1:31.0 | But they agreed on a general framework for how the funds would be spent. |
| 1:37.5 | On the transportation front, there would be $49 billion for public transit. |
| 1:43.4 | And that would be the biggest federal investment ever |
| 1:46.7 | in the history of US public transit. |
| 1:50.2 | 66 billion for passenger and freight rail. |
| 1:53.5 | 7.5 billion for electric vehicle infrastructure |
| 1:56.7 | and another 7.5 billion for electric buses. |
... |
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