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Originally Posted by emathias
We're obviously not there yet, but all it really would have taken is for the Republican Congress to agree to spend more of the approved stimulus on productive investments instead of only whatever piddling "shovel ready" projects there were and there could easily have been hundreds of billions of dollars spent in the Northeast, Upper Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and California. And maybe even Texas and the Mid-Atlantic.
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The whole point about stimulus is speed. It doesn't stimulate the economy if you dole out the money and it has to sit in escrow for six years while planning, environmental studies and engineering are done.
Road projects work better under the "shovel-ready" rubric because most states have an ongoing funding stream for planning, environmental, and engineering work that is premised on the reliable funding streams from state and Federal gas tax. Give states a larger than normal check for road projects, and they will have ways to spend it.
If you want to create a big long-term funding program for intercity and urban rail projects, that's something entirely different than stimulus.
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Attach zoning requirements to the funds and development will fill out a customer base.
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Attach zoning requirements to a rail project and watch any local support evaporate. It's a valid planning goal but there's no way it works politically with the homeowner class. Transit agencies are doing what they can to increase density on a case-by-case basis around stations, but each station ends up being an independent process and a negotiation with each community where added density is no guarantee.