Above: Citizens of Indianapolis, Indiana wait for their streetcar, ca. 1938. Around this time, the following was reported: "Co-operation of it's 1,000 employees, the citizens of Indianapolis and the Public Works Administration has enabled the Indianapolis Railways, Inc., to give the city one of the best streetcar transportation systems in the country" ("President of Local Streetcar System Attributes Success to Co-Operation," The Indianapolis Star, September 14, 1938). Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
By Bus...
Above: The description for this photograph, taken ca. 1938, reads, "A battery of buses ready for service - PWA funds provided this public utility service." This was part of a massive public transportation initiative in Indianapolis ("World Watches Improvement of Local Company: Ten-year rehabilitation project for system is finished 4 years ahead of schedule with expenditure $1,000,000 below estimate... 323 modern cars, trolleys, and buses purchased - public patronage increases," The Indianapolis Star, July 17, 1938). Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
By subway...
Above: The description for this photograph, taken ca. 1936-1939, reads, "Eight Avenue express leaves the Hoyt Street station in New York's modern subway - constructed by PWA." Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
By Sea...
Above: "Huge ocean liners dwarf enormous docks at New York City - [docks] constructed by PWA." Photo taken ca. 1935-1939, provided courtesy of the National Archives.
By Air...
Above: An airplane at Baltimore Municipal Airport, 1941. The airport was one of 900 built or improved by the WPA. Photo courtesy of the University of Maryland College Park Archives.
By Car...
Above: "The new Kanawha River Boulevard [West Virginia], constructed with PWA funds." Between 1933 and 1943, well over a million miles of roads were built or improved by various New Deal work programs. Photo taken in July 1940, provided courtesy of the National Archives.
By Train...
Above: The New Deal provided funds for new trains, like "The Comet," and also for new and improved tracks. Photo courtesy of the National Archives.
In his 2015 book, Great Again: How To Fix Our Crippled America, Donald Trump wrote: "If we do what we have to do correctly, we can create the biggest economic boom in this country since the New Deal when our vast infrastructure was first put into place..." Unfortunately, the Trump Administration is turning its back on that statement. For example, they are proposing to cut funding for rural infrastructure, cut funding for Amtrak, and sell off public infrastructure to greedy and careless private investors. This is the exact opposite of the New Deal's approach to infrastructure - an approach which provided federal funds, and federally-paid labor, to build and modernize hundreds of thousands of infrastructure systems all across the nation: roads, sidewalks, tunnels, dams, bridges, airports, piers & docks, trains, buses, water mains, reservoirs, sewer lines, utility plants, parks, and more.
New Deal policymakers understood that infrastructure is a common good and should be controlled by "we the people," not big financial institutions. Donald Trump seems to have understood this too, just as he also understood how single-payer health care is superior to the mess of a health care system that we have now. For some reason, he has abandoned these positions and caved to right-wing extremists who fervently believe that billionaires, i.e., the holy "JOB CREATORS" (who love shipping our jobs overseas) should be in control of every aspect of our lives. This doesn't bode well for our infrastructure.
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