Today railroads are certainly exceedingly valuable and may well be a technology that will continue to be of use well into the future, but do we need 1898's 250,000 miles of track, or can we do the job with only 139,887 miles?
With respect to highways, do we really need extra lanes on all the Interstate quality roadway or can we continue developing auto-pilot systems for cars and more than double both the speed we can move the cars down the road, and the number of cars to be moved (a 4 fold improvement)?
Will another tunnel from New Jersey to New York be meaningful?
How about a third airport for Indianapolis Indiana to handle nothing but express freight? Or would it be more useful to pave an additional runway at Kansas City, or maybe Minneapolis?
If central water supply systems are no longer adequate, how about adding extra capacity in the form of local compact recycling units at major places of employment, schools, and large housing developments? Certainly a technological "fix" costing a few tens of millions of bucks can easily displace a steel and concrete "expansion" that costs billions!
I think the man's brain is frozen.
Maybe it’s easier than that:
“So this was a terrible, shortsighted move from New Jersey’s point of view.” ( maybe from NYC point of view)—
“Add in the fact that many residents work in New York,” (lots of wage tax loss if NJ stops being thought of as a bedroom community and people have jobs there as well as sleep there.)
“News reports suggest that his immediate goal was to shift funds to local road projects and existing rail repairs.” (all the better for residents of NJ to get around NJ, spending their money there rather than NYC)
Seems to me this could be adapted very well for taking people from NJ into the city and back.