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Originally Posted by ardecila
Yeah, Crain's spun this as a huge diss from the Trump administration (typical wounded pride from New Yorkers ) but it could be that this is just a minor procedural hangup.
Despite the importance of this project, it should play by the same rules as any other transit project. A verbal agreement from former Transportation Secretary Foxx is not binding. Either it's that, or Trump's team really does want to use this as leverage with Schumer...
What Trump's team should be doing is rebuking New York for its irresponsibility on past capital projects, as the recent NYTimes expose showed. I wouldn't want to keep throwing scarce Federal money down a hole in New York when Denver, Seattle, Los Angeles are able to make big moves in a (relatively) responsible way... If Gateway turned into even half the debacle that East Side Access is, then NY needs to massively tighten its belt before going begging in Washington. Even the design of Gateway is wasteful and boneheaded, with the whole Penn South thing.
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no its more than that. trump's people spun it back like there never was an agreement of any kind, its just a local project and they don't want to pay anything for it at all.
so they are definitely punishing the region, but both sides really need to just grow up and hammer something out. the old tunnels will not hold out and that will be a disaster. anyway, here is what was said, via curbed:
In a letter drafted to the governors, acting Federal Transit Administration administrator K. Jane Williams alleges that there was never an agreement between the two states and the federal government to split the cost of the project, reports Crain’s.
Referencing a recent letter sent to the U.S. Department of Transportation, in which the governors outlined a plan to underwrite their portion of the project’s cost, Williams responded by stating the following:
“Your letter also references a nonexistent ‘50-50’ agreement between USDOT, New York, and New Jersey. There is no such agreement. We consider it unhelpful to reference a nonexistent ‘agreement’ rather than directly address the responsibility for funding a local project where nine out of 10 passengers are local transit riders.”