Report: Working Draft Of Trump Infrastructure Plan Revealed
Airlines & Airports Rich Thomaselli January 26, 2017
A working draft of infrastructure projects to be tasked by the Trump administration, given to the National Governors Association last month by the Trump Transition Team and obtained by the Washington Post, shows a list of 50 potential improvements, including airports.
President Trump used infrastructure as a campaign hook, though not as extensively as immigration and the economy. Nonetheless, after referring to some U.S. airports as “third world” in his first presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Trump continued to hammer home the need for improvements and pledged $1 trillion to various national projects.
We know what some of them might be, although the Post cautioned that what was given to the National Governors Association on Dec. 13 was still a working draft.
READ MORE: The Working Draft Of The 50 Potential Infrastructure Projects Under Trump
Among the possible projects:
* PORTS: Mississippi River Shipping Channel Dredging; Savannah Harbor Expansion Acceleration; Port Newark Container Terminal Improvements.
* RAIL: Chicago Union Station Redevelopment; Washington, D.C. Union Station Expansion and Rehabilitation.
* AIRPORTS: Kansas City International Airport; Seattle-Tacoma Airport Expansion; St. Louis Lambert Field.
Most of the potential plan is dotted with improvements for highways and bridges, as well as mass transit. Though it seems airports could have been better represented, some—such as New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the example both Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden used in describing “third-world” conditions—are already doing massive overhauls and improvements with a combination of city, state, federal and private funding.
READ MORE: The TravelPulse Top 100 U.S. Airports
More notably, however, is a potential project on the document listed as a “National Initiative” for the airport and aviation industry—the NextGen Air Traffic Control System. Presumably, it would mean increased or expedited funding for the system, which was to be rolled out between 2012 and 2025 to update the nation’s air traffic control system from radar-based to satellite/GPS technology.
As encouraging as it all sounds, remember that politics is still involved and Democrats and Republicans have two vastly different ideas on how to pay for.
Democrats say any plan must include more direct federal spending and introduced their own $1 trillion infrastructure plan on Tuesday that would create 15 million jobs over a decade.
Trump and the Republicans are looking for a mixture of federal spending and private investors, to whom he is offering tax credits that he said would pay for themselves with the creation of new jobs.
For now, it remains a wait-and-see issue, with wait being the operative word. The new administration has indicated that infrastructure will not be part of Trump’s initiatives in his first 100 days in office in lieu of repealing Obamacare and other issues.
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