Evaluating the Transportation Plans of Each Presidential Candidate (Including the Incumbent)

Transportation for American recently published an evaluation of the campaign platforms of President Donald Trump as well as the remaining Democratic field for the nomination, using three guiding principles: prioritizing maintenance, safety over speed, and access to jobs and services.

More specifically for each of those guiding principles, does each candidate's transportation plan cut the maintenance backlog in half, does it address speed as the major cause of roadway crashes, and is the plan organized around connecting people to jobs and services.

The president fails all three principles of the organization's evaluations: "Both President Trump’s proposed infrastructure package and the Senate bill that POTUS endorsed during the most recent State of the Union—America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act—fails to achieve our three principles." Moreover, according to the article, "Our 45th president is under the false impression that the private sector will “gift” government money to fix our infrastructure. But it will never happen."

As for the Democratic candidates, the current frontrunner, Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont), fails all three principles. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) also fail on all three principles, as does former Vice President Joe Biden. Former mayors Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg, however, pass all three principles.