How romantic! What better way to get her to say ‘I do’ than knowing your marriage will result in more funding for new culverts?
Yes, that’s right: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, the administration said it will give more transportation funding to places with higher marriage and fertility rates .
Do you want a fully funded highway system? Adequate resources for the T? Well, here’s what you can do to help, according to the Trump administration: Get married and have lots of children.
And certainly the T-riding public will want to have more babies now. As women were supposedly told in Victorian Britain, just close your eyes and think of JFK/UMass.
As a transportation policy, this makes no sense for reasons that hopefully don’t need explaining: While there’s a clear logic in distributing government funds based on population, population is not the same thing as fertility rates.
People born in one place aren’t necessarily still living there by the time they need the things transportation funding pays for, like roads. Places with low fertility rates can still have growing populations if they attract enough domestic or foreign immigrants.
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But as a way to spur procreation — or to advance a “pro-natalist” agenda, in MAGA speak — the idea is even dumber. It’s almost like it was cooked up by a bunch of male weirdos.
In reality, the promise of fresher asphalt is just about the last thing that’s going to induce people to have more children. (It seems to me that subsidizing childcare or lowering the cost of housing might – but what do I know?)
Of course, maybe the Trump administration isn’t as dense as it seems. Maybe it’s actually trying to send a message not to individuals but to states – that Massachusetts, for instance, needs to figure out ways to drive up marriage and birth rates if it wants new Cape bridges.
Luckily, Massachusetts transportation agencies are well suited to that task. At minimum, I’d suggest making the Forest Hills station available for weddings, and turning the lights down at the state’s highway rest stops.
Maybe they also need an inspiring slogan: “Ask not what the T can do for you, ask who you can do for the T.” (The Globe’s standards prohibit me from repeating some other relatively obvious possibilities, so you’re just going to have to use your imagination.)
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And if the whole idea seems creepy – well, yeah. It is. If the Trump administration wants to make communities more family-friendly in hopes of boosting birth rates, then they should go ahead and do that. But this policy is way too transactional to be anything other than icky.
This is an excerpt from Are we there yet?, a Globe Opinion newsletter about the future of transportation in the region. Sign up to get it in your inbox early.
Alan Wirzbicki is Globe deputy editor for editorials. He can be reached at alan.wirzbicki@globe.com.