Hillary Clinton

Factsheets

Hillary Clinton’s Infrastructure Plan: 

Link to Full Policy Statement Issued and Posted

Expand public transit options to lower transportation costs and unlock economic opportunity for Americans in opportunity deserts.  Americans are increasingly living and working in and around urban communities, and they want a range of safe, affordable, convenient, and environmentally sustainable transportation options.  But even as transit ridership grows dramatically across the country in communities of all sizes, transit investments have not kept pace with demand.  This underinvestment is particularly costly for many low-income communities and communities of color, as a dearth of reliable and efficient public transportation options often creates a huge barrier to Americans attempting to build better lives. Clinton will prioritize and increase investments in public transit to connect Americans to jobs, spur economic growth, and improve quality of life in our communities.  And she will encourage local governments to work with low-income communities to ensure that these investments are creating transit options that connect the unemployed and underemployed to the jobs they need. She will also support bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure—reducing carbon emissions, improving public health and safety, and further providing Americans with affordable transportation options.

Build a faster, safer, and higher capacity passenger rail system. Although more and more Americans are traveling via train, our passenger rail infrastructure is crumbling — slowing down journeys, limiting ridership, and making trains less safe. In some cases, crucial infrastructure is more than a century old.  Clinton will invest in creating a world-leading passenger rail system to meet rapidly growing demand and build a more mobile America. 

Connect small businesses, farmers, and manufacturers to their customers and suppliers with a national freight investment program.U.S. transportation networks move nearly $48 billion in goods a day. Yet our insufficient freight infrastructure is preventing  American businesses and farmers from reliably and efficiently moving their products to market, hurting U.S. consumers and damaging America’s ability to compete in the global economy. In fact, every year, U.S. businesses have to spend an extra $27 billion just in transportation costs because of congestion in our freight networks alone.  Cargo trains can reach Chicago from Los Angeles in 48 hours, only to spend 30 hours crawling across Chicago itself. Clinton will make smart, coordinated investments that upgrade our aging rail tunnels and bridges, expand congested highway corridors, eliminate dangerous at-grade railway crossings, and build deeper port channels to accommodate the newest and largest cargo ships. Clinton will also focus on vital “intermodal” transfer points between trucks, rail, and ships—including the “last-mile connectors” between different modes, like the local roads that connect highways to ports. She is committed to initiating upgrades of at least the 25 most costly freight bottlenecks by the end of her first term. 









Donald Trump

Trump: Nation’s infrastructure can be fixed 'only by me'
The Hill By Melanie Zanona - 06/22/16 

Link to Reported Comments Made

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump says he is the only presidential candidate who can restore the nation’s crumbling roads and bridges. 

Trump’s Wednesday comments seem to represent an effort to separate himself from presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on infrastructure issues — one area where the two candidates generally agree.

While delivering a blistering attack on Clinton from his hotel in New York’s SoHo neighborhood earlier in the day, Trump vowed to “build the greatest infrastructure on the planet earth — the roads and railways and airports of tomorrow.”

“When I see the crumbling roads and bridges, or the dilapidated airports or the factories moving overseas to Mexico, or to other countries for that matter, I know these problems can all be fixed, but not by Hillary Clinton,” Trump said. “Only by me.”

The billionaire drew on his experience in the real estate world to argue he is more capable of advancing infrastructure projects than his likely general election opponent.

“Construction is what I know,” Trump said. “Nobody knows it better.”

Trump has offered few clues about how he would tackle an estimated $1.4 trillion infrastructure shortfall in the next decade.

The businessman has previously called for major investments in the transportation system and even acknowledged it would likely cost taxpayer dollars, but he has yet to unveil any infrastructure plan on his campaign website. 

Trump mentioned the issue in his 2015 book, “Crippled America,” citing an estimate from the Senate Budget Committee that rebuilding U.S. infrastructure would create 13 million jobs — a familiar figure circulated by many Democrats. 

Clinton, meanwhile, has proposed a sweeping, five-year proposal that includes $250 billion in direct spending on new and improved infrastructure and $25 billion on a national infrastructure bank to help bring more private capital off the sidelines.

But Clinton has remained vague about how she would pay for the massive plan, only saying on her campaign website that it would be accomplished through business tax reform.















Citizens Taking Action for transit dependent riders
www,CTAriders.org
Candidates' Position on Support for Transportation / Infrastructure
Jill Stein

Green Party
Green New Deal for efficient public transportation 

Source: Green Party response to 2016 State of the Union speech , Jan 12, 2016

The economic and climate crises can be solved together, with a Green New Deal -- an emergency WWII-style mobilization to revive the economy, turn the tide on climate change, and make wars for oil obsolete. It creates 20 million jobs to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030. It creates efficient public transportation and local sustainable food systems, repairs critical infrastructure, and restores ecosystems. It immediately ends all new fossil fuel infrastructure, exploration and extraction-- including fracking, offshore drilling, extraction on public lands and in the Arctic. And it creates a planned, orderly transition to a decentralized, democratically controlled energy system, including public ownership of energy resources and infrastructure. 

The Green New Deal will fund itself through massive health savings by ending pollution and improving food quality, with military savings from making wars for oil obsolete, and with savings from reductions in the cost of energy. 

Gary Johnson

Libertarian Party
National Platform of the Libertarian Party

We support transit competition and deregulation. 

III. Domestic Ills

Transportation
The Issue: Government interference in transportation is characterized by monopolistic restriction, corruption and gross inefficiency. We condemn the re-cartelization of commercial aviation by the Federal Aviation Administration via rationing of take-off and landing rights and controlling scheduling in the name of safety.

The Principle:  The transportation industry should not be treated differently from any other industry, and should be governed by free markets and held to strict liability. 

Solutions:  We call for the dissolution of all government agencies concerned with transportation -- including the Department of Transportation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board, the Coast Guard, and the Federal Maritime Commission -- and the transfer of their legitimate functions to competitive private firms. We demand the return of America's railroad system to private ownership. We call for the privatization of airports, air traffic control systems, public roads and the national highway system. 

Transitional Action:  As interim measures, we advocate an immediate end to government regulation of private transit organizations and to governmental favors to the transportation industry. In particular, we support the immediate repeal of all laws restricting transit competition such as the granting of taxicab and bus monopolies and the prohibition of private jitney services. We urge immediate deregulation of the trucking industry.