Trump plan would give communities with many traditional nuclear families a 10 percent transit funding boost, Vox reports

The department's stated test is growth. In its statement it said "your project needs to align with where communities and families are actually growing" ^[3]. Marriage and fertility rates are its proxy for that growth. Vox, citing an Urban Institute analysis, reports that communities where traditional nuclear families are most common skew whiter and wealthier than the overall population, and that their residents are far likelier to drive than to take a train or bus ^[4]. In our view, a boost keyed to those rates would reach communities that mostly drive.

Vox's writer argues that transit need and family life do not line up with that map. Families often need public transportation most in dense cities, the writer says, and less in already car-centric suburbs ^[8]. The piece leans on a study it calls landmark, which found that access to adequate transportation is the single strongest factor in predicting social mobility in the US, and that every extra minute a child spends commuting to school makes that child less likely to move out of poverty as an adult ^[5].

Chicago is the writer's example. The Red Line extension is a $5.7 billion project, close to 60 years in the making, that broke ground earlier this year and will add 5.5 miles of track and four stations in the city's southernmost neighborhoods ^[6]. Families on the far South Side have long transferred between buses and trains to reach downtown, and Vox says that commute helps explain the area's persistent unemployment and poverty ^[7].

The department's statement, as Vox quotes it, does not say which grant programs the criteria would apply to, how the 10 percent would be calculated or when it would start ^[3]. Timing is therefore open for any agency. In our view, an agency drafting an application this quarter faces a choice with a delayed price. It can lead with household and birth data that may or may not be scored, or with ridership and need. If the criteria take effect as written, that choice shows up next quarter as a 10% edge either claimed or forgone.

The department's position is that transit money should follow growth. Vox's writer disputes the measure and says the plan "might make circumstances even worse for the families that really rely on public transit every day" ^[10].