A big part of the issue is that federal funding drives probably the majority of significant projects at all levels. We have a completely broken system where every project is a targeted towards winning a grant as much as if not more than the actual local need.

Milwaukee WI has had several (awarded!) street reconstruction grants killed by this admin because they included bike lanes. They weren't bike lane _projects_, they are to primarily to rebuild crumbling unsafe streets, but they included bike lanes so the Fed's rescinded the grants and now most of the projects are dead. There's no local money to do it without the grants.

The real fix for this is to fix the stupid system we have, but for now it's what we're stuck with and this has a real impact you can't overcome locally.

What a mess. Condolences, and good luck down there.