Trump's Infrastructure Wish List: 'Big Shiny Projects'

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DALLAS -- Incoming Trump administration officials are looking for large transportation projects in Virginia with a potential for tolling that would be suitable for the new president’s $1 trillion infrastructure proposal.

“He’s asked us for a list for big projects that had other revenue sources,” Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne said Wednesday at the Commonwealth Transportation Board’s (CTB’s) January meeting, referring to the president-elect.

“The best way I’ve heard described so far of what we’ve seen [of] the Trump vision [is that he] is going for big, shiny legacy projects,” Layne told the commission members.

The infrastructure proposal released by the Trump campaign in late October seeks to promote the use of public-private partnerships to finance transportation projects. The linchpin of the Trump plan is $137 billion of federal tax credits for private investments in public infrastructure that could be leveraged into $1 trillion of funding in the first 10 years.

The list of Virginia projects with potential revenue sources provided to the new administration ranged from upgrades to the Port of Virginia to the expansion of Interstate 81, Layne said.

“We’d be very happy to have more,” Layne said. “But quite frankly, it’s only a very small part of our projects because it’s going to require tolling.”

The focus on tolling at the national as well as state level to fund major transportation efforts is due to dwindling of the gasoline and diesel tax revenues needed for large infrastructure projects, Layne said.

“The reality is the gas tax is a dying method of financing,” he said. “You need a sustainable, multimodal, growing revenue source. So far, that hasn’t come out of the Congress and the Trump administration.”

Layne said he does not expect quick action from Congress on the Trump proposal.

“It does not appear there’s going to be any major move in the first 100 days either on tax issues or infrastructure spending,” Layne told the CTB members.

The Trump infrastructure proposal is just one part of the funding solution to the nation’s infrastructure woes, said Wilbur Ross, co-author of the plan and Trump’s nominee as commerce secretary.

“The infrastructure paper I put out was meant to provide another tool, not to be the ‘be all and end all,’” Ross said Wednesday during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

“The reason I think we need another tool is the infrastructure needs of this country have gotten so monumental that we need any available source of capital in order to meet it on a timely basis,” he said.

Ross said that Trump’s infrastructure oversight council headed by New York City developers Steven Roth of Vornado Realty and Richard LeFrak of LeFrak Organization will identify infrastructure projects that could attract private investments.

“I don’t think the list has been refined yet,” Ross said. “They will play a big role in helping determine what are the key projects and how to implement them.”

The final plan may include more federal funding for transportation, Ross said. "I think there will be some necessity for it, whether it's in the form of guarantees or direct investment or whatever,” Ross said. “It's really for the Congress and the president to figure out what should be the quantity of it and what should be the nature of the projects."

Public-private partnerships are suitable at best for only 20% of U.S. transportation infrastructure projects, outgoing Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told the Associated Press earlier this week.

“We're still going to need a fair amount of public funding," Foxx said. "I don't see public-private partnership as a 100% strategy to solve our transportation problems."

 

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