While Joe Biden wants to invest in US public transport, Republicans have other ideas

I had a chat during the week with Minister for Transport and leader of the Green Party Eamon Ryan on the margins of his attendance at the United Nations in New York.

He spoke about Ireland’s progress in delivering on its sustainable development goals, the impact of the renewed blockade by Russia of grain exports from Ukraine and about trains. The Minister says he will soon publish plans for redeveloping the rail network in Ireland over the next 20-30 years, which would see trains reappearing in areas where they have not been seen in decades.

Ryan is an enthusiastic supporter of public transport. As is US president Joe Biden. As a senator Biden went home after work on the train from Washington to Delaware most days.

The rail network in the United States is largely devoted to freight. Passenger services come second to the enormous goods trains that transport cargo across the country. It is mainly on the northeast corridor from Boston to Washington – taking in cities such as New York and Philadelphia – that frequent long-distance passenger services operate, and even then they do not generally compare with European high-speed lines.

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US infrastructure is also ageing. There have been high profile freight train derailments – one in Ohio in February involved wagons carrying hazardous materials – while a part of the main interstate motorway on the US east coast, near Philadelphia, collapsed in June.

In 2021 the Biden administration secured a big win when, after years of talking, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill to redevelop roads, bridges, railways and ports. A key part of this initiative involved a redevelopment of the railways with new routes and more modern track and infrastructure. Biden himself attended the launch of plans to replace rail tunnels in New York and Baltimore that date back more than 100 years.

However, as Ryan was speaking about his vision for the future of rail in Ireland on Capitol Hill some on the right of the Republican Party were seeking to reverse Biden’s plans and cut funding earmarked for transport.

It was one of those examples that shows the difference between politics in Ireland and the US. If an Irish government decided to fund a new railway or some other popular public transport or infrastructure project, few politicians would likely go out of their way to undermine it, although some economists might. But politics in Washington is both partisan and ideologically driven.

When 13 Republican members of the US House of Representatives voted to back Biden’s infrastructure bill they were criticised by Donald Trump for giving the president a political victory.

Some on the right do not want to support anything that could be linked to what they see as Biden’s green agenda, such as getting more people out of cars and on to trains. Some ideologically believe in small government. They worry that the federal government is just spending too much and that this is driving inflation.

There have also been some examples of political play acting, with politicians voting against bills authorising investments in Washington but welcoming the particular projects that received the funding back home in their constituencies.

Some Republicans last week sought to curtail the operating budgets of federal agencies for next year. Amtrak, the operator of most passenger services, would have been particularly hard hit, potentially losing $1.5 billion in funding.

The company’s chief executive, Stephen Gardner, warned if the Republican proposals were implemented it would “have to radically reduce or suspend service on various routes across the nation”. He said the rail operator would also be forced to immediately reduce repairs needed to operate its network reliably and defer many of the modernisation projects that were funded under the Biden infrastructure legislation.

Travelling across the United States it is obvious that roads, railways and bridges badly need repair and investment. But the battle over the budget this week showed again that it is almost as if there are two Americas.

There was another perfect example of the different ways the two political sides think in recent days when right wing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, in a speech to a conservative conference, compared Biden to former Democrat presidents Franklin D Roosevelt and Lyndon B Johnson. “Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programmes; that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete.”

Taylor Greene sought to brand the work of all three as “socialism”.

The Biden campaign edited the video of her speech and turned it into a political advertisement. Biden took the remarks as a compliment. “I approve this message”, he said.