Let's Cut Some Spending: $4.8 million to study environmental impact of Chicago rail system

Remember the absolutely critical Omnibus spending bill Congress muscled through at the end of last year? It was 4,000 pages that no one read and cost taxpayers $1.7 trillion.

In our Let's Cut Some Spending series, ForAmerica will chronicle parts of the 2021 and 2022 spending bills from a variety of sources that you probably don't know about - programs, grants and spending of all kinds that should have never happened in the first place and many that are still happening.

Today’s offering: $4.8 million to study the environmental impact of an expansion of the Chicago rail transit system!

Railway Age reports:

A total of $4.8 million will be awarded under the Regional Infrastructure Accelerators (RIA) program, the U.S. Department of Transportation reported.

The RIA program’s aim is to help accelerate transportation project delivery through project planning, studies and analysis, and preliminary engineering and design work, according to the USDOT, which announced five awards on Aug. 22....

The RIAs assist in 'project planning, evaluating innovative financing, accessing technical assistance and best practices, and developing a pipeline of projects ready for investment,' according to the Build America Bureau, which not only administers the RIA program, but also provides technical assistance and support to grant recipients.

Uh... shouldn't Illinois be paying for this? Chicago too?

Why should all Americans paying for this?

The purpose of our Let's Cut Some Spending series is to show how endlessly Washington wastes our tax dollars on things the federal government has no business being involved in.

Here's yet another.