The same transit advocates who cheered Joe Biden's victory are now facing down an uncertain future as the president-elect considers a controversial appointment.
For those in the transportation policy sector, “Amtrak” Biden, who famously took the train from Delaware to Washington when he was in the Senate, was an obvious champion. Soon after his victory, many retained that optimism, especially concerning the incoming administration’s focus on the environmental aspects of transit.
“It is very positive that the Biden-Harris transition plans to address climate change, recognizes the importance of supporting bicycle and pedestrian transportation, as well as supporting zero-emissions public transportation,” Audrey Winnick, the transportation director of Chicago’s Metropolitan Planning Council, told Chicago’s Streetsblog.
Such rosy thoughts, however, were soon dashed when on December 1, news broke that former Chicago mayor and Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was in the running to be Biden’s transportation czar.
“Rahm Emanuel would be a nightmare. And a betrayal,” John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union of America— which endorsed Biden in May—told The Intercept.
“We didn’t work our asses off to have Rahm Emanuel as the secretary of transportation,” Samuelsen expounded. “He’s anti-trade union, he’s anti-worker.”
Samuelsen and other labor leaders, like Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson, whose union also endorsed Biden, pointed to Emanuel’s history of clashes with unions as the source of their ire. Others still, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) cite the former Chicago mayor’s alleged role in covering up the 2014 police killing of Black teenager Laquan McDonald until after he secured his reelection.
"Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership," the progressive congresswoman tweeted.
Ray LaHood, who served as President Barack Obama’s DOT secretary from 2009 until 2013, has been Emanuel’s biggest supporter for the position. In a Politico interview, LaHood dismissed the criticisms from progressives and labor leaders by saying that “every major mayor in every major city” has dealt with similar accusations.
Given Emanuel’s track record on both unions and racial equality, it stands to reason that he might be a threat to other priorities that transit advocates want from the incoming Biden administration.
In Chicago’s Streetsblog, Oboi Reed of Equicity, a mobility justice nonprofit, put race at the center of his group’s demands, which include an infrastructure bill with “concrete requirements for hiring Black-owned contractors and sub-contractors,” the prioritization of Black, brown and Indigenous communities and neighborhoods in the construction of new transit hubs, and federal funding for workforce development programs that would be “embedded in Black and brown neighborhoods to support emerging transportation technologies.”
Meanwhile, two major issues facing transit in major cities—the potential weekend closure of the Washington, D.C., area’s Metro subway system and the Trump administration’s slow-walking of congestion pricing for New York City’s driver tolls—are presenting themselves just as Biden prepares to take office.
These problems, either created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, are representative of the bleak situation that Biden will soon inherit as trust in public transit remains at an all-time low.
“Almost everyone expects the next administration to be more supportive of sustainable transportation options than the current one, but the federal budget situation is bleak,” Joe Schwieterman, the director of DePaul’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, told Chicago’s Streetsblog. “We may have to wait another three or four months so see how it all sorts out.”
Nevertheless, Schwieterman added, “hopes are high for back-to-back benefits: a second stimulus package followed by more funds for major transit initiatives.”
And with Biden in office, he noted, the nation’s only long-distance rail service “may finally catch a break.”
