The bill, which President Biden is expected to sign Monday, is likely to fund road and bridge repairs, water infrastructure upgrades and airport expansions.
Repairs to a century-old rail bridge. Cleaning up contaminated ground water. Replacing polluting school and commuter buses with cleaner vehicles.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill that Congress approved in a rare moment of bipartisan accord has the potential to transform New York City and its surrounding region. Officials here, as in much of the country, are confronting a staggeringly long to-do list of public works projects.
The bill, which President Biden is expected to sign into law Monday, should clear the way for several high-profile projects, chief among them the extension of Second Avenue subway in Manhattan and a plan to build a new rail tunnel linking New York and New Jersey.
But its effects will also be felt in numerous less flashy ways in a region with outdated infrastructure whose vulnerability has been especially tested by climate change.
“Really, we have such a backlog in this country,” said Felicia Park-Rogers, the director of regional infrastructure projects for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. “This will help us catch up, and it will help us move forward.”
The core is roads and bridges.
The sprawling bill has funds for high-speed internet, climate resiliency projects, energy grid improvements, transportation projects and environmental programs.
Of the transportation-related funding, about 80 percent is directed to highways and road projects and much of the rest to public transit. Some transportation advocates were disappointed with the split.
“Given that we’re staring down a climate catastrophe, this is not what we would like to see,” Ms. Park-Rogers said.
State agencies have some flexibility in spending and could still use highway funds to, for example, expand bike lanes, said Kate Slevin, the executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, an urban policy group.
But officials want to address the concerns of drivers who have long griped about aging roads and decrepit bridges.
State Senator Tim Kennedy, a Democrat who chairs the New York State Senate’s transportation committee, said the state has more than 1,700 bridges and 7,300 miles of local roads and highways considered to be in poor condition.
Hank Gutman, the city’s transportation commissioner, expects that federal funds could help repair the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, which is crumbling under the weight of more than 150,000 vehicles a day.
In New Jersey, which has some of the nation’s busiest highways, officials said federal money could finance 60 bridge projects.
The bill also funnels money to bridges that carry the nation’s long-neglected railways and could pay to replace the Walk Bridge in Norwalk, Conn., which ferries Amtrak and Metro-North passengers over a crucial crossing. Built more than 120 years ago, it has “experienced repeated operational failures” in recent years, according to transit officials.
The bill also focuses on social equity concerns by seeking to reverse the harm past infrastructure projects have inflicted on low-income and Black communities.
“Cities like Newark, East Orange, New Haven — they were really ripped apart from interstate highway construction and urban renewal projects,” Ms. Slevin said.
In New York, the bill could advance plans to “cap” the Cross Bronx Expressway — cover those parts of the highway that are sunken below street level — and perhaps cover it with a park. Built in the 1950 and 1960s, the Robert Moses-era highway displaced Black families and ripped a hole through several neighborhoods.
Proponents of the plan say it would address air pollution in the Bronx and help protect against severe flooding.
Infrastructure dollars could also help accelerate other long-planned projects to redesign streets and reduce New York City’s vulnerability to climate-related flooding. In East Harlem, federal money could pay to plant trees and rain gardens, and improve street drainage along East 106th Street and First, Second and Third Avenues.
Transit systems could be transformed.
Transit agencies are expected to use much of the money for big-ticket items in their capital plans.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates New York’s subways, buses and two commuter-rail networks, expects to receive $10 billion, and it plans to use some of the money to make the system more accessible.
Currently, only about a quarter of New York City’s 472 subway stations are wheelchair-accessible.
The bill could also improve Long Island Rail Road station capacity at Jamaica in Queens and eliminate the “Jamaica Crawl.” Hundreds of thousands of riders a day pass through the station, which was built more than 100 years ago and where a tangle of different train lines come together.
Kevin Corbett, the president and chief executive of New Jersey Transit, which operates one of the nation’s largest fleet of commuter buses, said the federal funds will help accelerate the purchase of electric buses and the electrification of bus depots. It also set aside about $5 billion to replace older school buses, which generate harmful emissions, with electric or low-emission versions.
Many cities could see cleaner drinking water.
About $55 billion in the infrastructure bill will help improve access to clean drinking water.
In Newburgh, N.Y., a city of about 28,000 people 70 miles north of New York City, thousands of decades-old lead pipelines that deliver water to homes could be replaced. Wayne Vradenburgh, the city’s water superintendent, said he estimated that there were some 2,500 service connections to homes that need replacing.
The Infrastructure Bill at a Glance
The bill receives final approval. The House passed a $1 trillion bill on Nov. 5 to rebuild the country’s aging public works system. The proposal is a central plank of President Biden’s economic agenda, and he is expected to quickly sign it into law. Here what’s inside the bill:
“We want all the lead out,” he said.
George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, said he also hopes to use federal money to replace decades-old pipes and rectify groundwater contamination near the Westchester County Airport, where chemicals used decades ago in firefighting tests have polluted the area.
Officials also hope federal dollars could help pay the high cost of improving sewers in New York City and its suburbs, many of which are a century or more old. Federal dollars could help accelerate projects like a new pumping station in St. Albans, Queens, and sewer improvement along Willow Avenue in Staten Island that residents have been awaiting for nearly a quarter-century.
Airports will see upgrades.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader of the Senate, said the region’s airports can expect millions to help with upgrades, though a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it was still reviewing the bill’s potential benefits.
Smaller regional airports across New York hope the bill can help them with long-delayed runway construction, expansion and refurbishment.
In Connecticut, some officials hope the bill can help fund the construction of a new passenger terminal at Sikorsky Memorial Airport, near Bridgeport.
How the money will be spent.
While government officials have their wish lists ready, it remains too early to know how exactly the money will be distributed and which projects will be the winners.
“What we’re entering now is a crucial implementation phase, where federal, state and local leaders are going to have to coordinate on not just getting the funding out there, but even designing the programs that are going to get the funding out there,” said Joseph Kane, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
Some money will be channeled through various federal agencies, like the Department of Transportation. Another portion will flow to state entities, like the New York Department of Transportation or New Jersey Transit, based on existing, complex formulas. The states will then decide which projects to prioritize.
The process is likely to take years.
But officials are optimistic. Mr. Gutman said that the bill’s priorities matched “the priorities that we set and that we’ve been pursuing.” But now, he said, the city was “going to have the windfall” to achieve them.
Republicans who backed the bill face backlash.
With only 13 House Republicans and 19 Republican senators voting in support of the bill, several who voted yes drew the ire of some rank-and-file conservative voters, highlighting how the country’s sharp polarization could spill over even into roads, pipes and bridges.
Of the House Republicans who supported the bill, four were from New York and two from New Jersey. In Long Island, a man was arrested Wednesday after making death threats against Representative Andrew Garbarino over his vote to pass the bill. In a previous interview with The New York Times, a spokeswoman said the Washington office of Representative Nicole Malliotakis, who represents Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn, has received several angry phone calls, though a majority of callers to her Staten Island office were supportive.
Representative Tom Reed, a Republican who represents rural areas upstate, said his office had received several “aggressive” calls over his vote in favor of the bill. But he believes the vast majority of his constituents support the measure.
“A lot of what’s driven this opposition was purely politically motivated,” Mr. Reed said.
In southern New Jersey, some constituents were upset that Representative Jeff Van Drew had voted for the bill. Mr. Van Drew said the bill would improve internet access in rural areas, update drinking water systems and strengthen the electrical grid.
“I think there’s just some people who think there shouldn’t be any cooperation at all with the other side,” said Michael Donohue, the chairman of the Cape May County Republicans. “And I get that, but it’s not a practical approach.”
Anne Barnard contributed reporting.
"impact" - Google News
November 15, 2021 at 10:36PM
https://ift.tt/31RKXSy
How the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Could Impact New York - The New York Times
"impact" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2RIFll8
https://ift.tt/3fk35XJ
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "How the $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Could Impact New York - The New York Times"
Post a Comment