BOSTON -- Advocates for better transportation policy say President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan could go a long way toward not only fixing roads and bridges but making streets safer and greener.

The American Jobs Plan would provide more than $2 trillion over eight years for infrastructure, from drinking-water systems to broadband access and the power grid, as well as roads, bridges and public transit systems.

Chris Dempsey, director of the Transportation For Massachusetts Advocacy Coalition, said the Commonwealth has one of the worst-performing transportation systems in the country.

"We have structurally deficient bridges; we have transit systems that break down and don't get people where they need to go," Dempsey outlined. "Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions of any sector of our economy."

Air pollution from transportation leads to public health issues, most often in low-income and Black, Brown and Indigenous communities.

Dempsey pointed out the plan has incentives for electric vehicles and more charging stations, as well as funds to modernize public transit.

Dempsey noted there are many projects the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or regional transit authorities could take up, as well as a potential intercity rail service between Boston, Worcester and Springfield.

And Amtrak revealed a plan to expand and enhance its service throughout the Northeast, from Boston to Albany, New York, to Hartford, Connecticut, as well as up through Vermont to Montreal.

"Those rail projects can be challenging, and they can be expensive," Dempsey acknowledged. "But those types of projects get into the mix and into the conversation when you have the scale of investment, the billions of dollars of investment that President Biden is proposing."

Dempsey noted road safety, such as improving sidewalks and adding bike lanes, is another emphasis of the plan. He added far too many cyclists and pedestrians are killed or injured in automobile accidents, and investments are long overdue.


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Traveling between New York and Washington D.C. takes three hours on Amtrak's Acela, but an upcoming high speed rail concept could reduce the trip to an hour.

Northeast Maglev is a conceptual high speed rail line using magnetic levitation technology, which has less air resistance than typical trains. Bringing high speed rail to the U.S. has been a goal since the mid-1960s, but hasn't come to fruition yet.

Ian Rainey, senior vice president of Northeast Maglev, shed some light on how it happened.

"At the time where a lot of countries were investing in high-speed rail, we were investing in building out our highway system," Rainey explained. "There's kind of been this historic and cultural preference for auto as a mode of travel."

The first phase of the project is to be a short section of the line between Baltimore and Washington, D.C, predominantly underground. Rainey pointed out the project will cost upwards of $10 billion, some from federal maglev deployment grants. He added other funds will come from the government of Japan, which has implemented high speed rail on their own national railway system.

Though the project is in the environmental planning stage, Rainey hopes the system will be up and running in the coming decade. Maglev is an entirely different technology, where the trains run on a guide instead of standard rails. He emphasized educating people has presented a challenge, given people's limited vision of how this can revolutionize rail travel.

"Americans, in general, have a very limited exposure to high speed rail," Rainey acknowledged. "We have the Acela, but it's quite different, just in terms of the speeds it can achieve, compared to any European and Asian high speed rail system. So I think that a lot of people in the United States don't fully appreciate the transformational potential."

Winding curves and competing freight and commuter traffic have made high speed rail hard to fully implement in the Northeast Corridor. But Rainey said eventually travelers will see the payoff in a fast glide from New York to Washington D.C.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Numerous community advocates are calling on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to build a long-proposed subway station at 10th Avenue and 41st Street.

Construction of the station is being reconsidered as part of the MTA's 20-year needs assessment. Since the station was originally proposed, the community has grown significantly with the 2020 New York City census data showing an additional 13,640 residents living in the area.

Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director with the Rider's Alliance, said this project will face stiff competition from other priorities in MTA's future plan.

"The MTA has a lot of different priorities and a lot of funding priorities and not enough money to go around," said Pearlstein. "So, this project will be in some kind of competition with other potential uses of funds in the next capital program. The Interborough Express is something the governor is already committed to, and that's going to be a major project."

Other proposed projects include West Side Access, which would bring Metro North's Hudson Line to Penn Station. Pearlstein said he feels if the station was built during the extension's original construction, it would be more cost efficient.

Construction could interrupt 7 train service to Hudson Yards as well as street traffic, similar to when construction occurred on the Second Avenue Subway's first phase.

The station's necessity could be called into question, though, since Hell's Kitchen isn't a transit desert.

For the most part, residents have easy access to the 42nd Street stations in Times Square and at Port Authority, which provide access to 11 subway lines. This doesn't include the seven additional lines that are easily accessible via the 42nd Street shuttle.

Pearlstein said he feels the true need for this station comes down to how the subway is a heavily utilized means of transportation for Hell's Kitchen residents.

"Folks in this community are particularly transit dependent," said Pearlstein. "There are probably many fewer people, many fewer households that have cars in the sort of Hell's Kitchen area than, for example, in Flatlands, in Brooklyn, which is a heavily car-dependent area where some people take buses but many more households have cars, garages, have driveways. The car infrastructure is built out."

Flatlands would be one of several communities to be served by the new Interborough Express.

He said he feels getting people out of cars is a necessity as well, but says the competition between projects shouldn't exist. Instead, he said there should be enough money for all projects without it being an "either-or" decision.

President Joe Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law will disburse up to $239 million to help Georgia improve the resilience of transportation infrastructure. Environmental groups are urging state leaders to focus on rural communities, beyond Atlanta.

Severe weather events in recent years, such as flooding in the southeastern part of the state and Hurricane Zeta, are evidence enough that infrastructure funding should include climate preparedness, said Marsha Gosier, a Georgia organizer for the EDF Action Fund, part of the Environmental Defense Fund. She said she's most concerned about rural and coastal areas.

"Our submerging lowlands throughout Georgia, the coastal flooding that could occur in particular areas like Hudson Hill and Savannah, Georgia," she said, "money should definitely be placed for that in preparation, making sure that those communities are prepared."

Before the federal dollars were released, Republicans bristled over restrictions. They wanted more flexibility for using the funding, instead of the Biden administration's focus on improving existing infrastructure over creating new.

The Atlanta Regional Commission is set to host the Connect ATL summit on Aug. 23 at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center. The topic will be making the city's transportation network smarter, better connected and electric.

Gosier said she'd like to see the kind of focus happening in Atlanta in more rural areas, and is calling on state leaders to support local towns and counties to be just as innovative. But, she quipped, many rural Georgians also need the basics - such as clean running water - as well as electric-vehicle charging stations.

"When we think about lead pipes needing to be replaced in communities, it's not just impacting Flint, Michigan," she said. "This is something that is an issue all throughout the state of Georgia, and especially in rural areas."

The new PROTECT Formula program funding - short for Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation - is available to states over five years. The Atlanta Regional Commission plans to use its $45 million to pay for electric buses and charging stations, upgrades to transit infrastructure in Cobb and Clayton counties, and road improvements.