Local officials have ended any hope of completing a bus rapid transit project in the Lansing, Michigan area, for fear of of the budget cuts for transportation investment projects promised by the Trump Administration.
"The Capital Area Transportation Authority is slamming the brakes on its plan to spend $133 million on a proposed Bus Rapid Transit line that the organization had said would transform the region's most important corridor," report Christopher Haxel and Beth LeBlanc from Lansing, Michigan.
Bradley Funkhouser, the agency's deputy CEO, gave the Lansing State Journal two reasons for the project's demise: "up to $100 million of expected funding for CATA's BRT was cut from President Donald Trump's proposed budget," and "CATA officials recently learned they would need to spend more than $700,000 on more traffic studies before the FTA would advance the project from the environmental assessment phase into one that begins finalizing project design." Although Congress has yet to debate or vote on the Trump Administration's proposed budget, "White House support is critical for such projects, which are funded through the Federal Transit Administration," according to the article.
The project has remaining grant money in pocket, which Funkhouser says can still be used for other projects "such as updating shelters along bus routes or developing an app to give real-time updates on bus locations."
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