A Trail Connecting Ohio and West Virginia, Backed by Both Parties
NPR reports that the Trump administration has been hostile to federal spending on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and that there is nonetheless bipartisan support for a multiuse trail that would connect Ohio and West Virginia.
The tension here isn't really partisan, it's about scale. A trail is exactly the sort of project that lives or dies on a line in a federal budget, yet its appeal is stubbornly local — a path a voter can picture, in districts where "bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure" is an abstraction. A category of spending can be unpopular in Washington and popular at the other end of it at the same time.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
Trails are an easy bipartisan sell because the payoff is visible. You can walk the finished argument.
Then the argument isn't about whether to build it, it's about who pays. The same path looks like an amenity from the county seat and like a line item from the capital.