President Obama Warns of Transportation Funding Crisis

TARRYTOWN, NY—As President Barack Obama took to the podium at the Washington Irving Boat Club on the Hudson River shoreline here on Thursday afternoon, behind him almost on cue traffic began to back up on the existing Tappan Zee Bridge, while work continued on about a dozen waterborne cranes on the $3.9-billion new Tappan Zee Bridge.

In his first official visit to Westchester County as President, Obama related that the new bridge was sorely needed to replace the aging, crumbling and obsolete Tappan Zee Bridge. In fact, it was President Obama who, at the behest of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fast-tracked the permitting process for the new Tappan Zee Bridge project, called the 'New, New York Bridge” by state officials, back in October 2011 after more than a decade of delay. The US Department of Transportation in December 2013 closed on a $1.6-billion Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) low-interest loan to help finance the project with the New York State Thruway, the owner of the Tappan Zee Bridge.

“Normally it would have taken three to five years to permit this bridge, we did it in a year-and-a-half,” President Obama said. Later he did poke fun at the name the state has given the new span. “Workers are building a replacement—the first new bridge in New York in 50 years, it's called the New, New York Bridge, which is fine as a name, but for your next bridge you should come up with something more fresh.”

President Obama used the event to warn of an impending transportation funding crisis—the possible insolvency by this fall of the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is the major funding source for road and bridge projects across the country.

“If they (Congress) don't act by the end of the summer, federal funding for transportation projects will run out, there will be no money, the cupboard will be bare,” he said.

Obama said that if Congress does not act and appropriate monies for the Highway Trust Fund, some of the 112,000 active road and bridge projects and 5,600 transit projects across the country and nearly 700,000 jobs would be in jeopardy, which the President related would equal the populations of Tampa and St. Louis combined. He noted that some states are already delaying projects due to the uncertainty of funding from the Highway Trust Fund.

The President also called for support of his previously announced GROW America Act that proposes a $302-billion four-year federal transportation spending program, a 37% increase over current funding levels. He criticized Republican lawmakers who he said are looking to cut federal transportation funding.

“Building a world-class transportation system is one of the reasons America became an economic super power in the first place,” he said. “Over the past 50 years as a share of our economy, our investment in transportation has been shrunk by 50%... Do you know what other countries are doing? European countries now invest twice as much as we do. China invests four times as much as we do on transportation.”