As the dust settles on President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to critical transportation funding, Bay Area leaders are calling the plan hypocritical in light of the administration’s frequently touted but as yet unseen $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan.

The proposed 13 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Transportation zeros out funding for a capital-investment program that has financed big-ticket infrastructure projects in the past, including the first phases of the BART to Silicon Valley extension and MUNI’s Central Subway project, along with BART’s San Francisco International Airport extension.

But local transportation leaders also cautioned that the fight to save future transportation investments is far from over. Jim Allison, a spokesman for BART, likened the budget process to a baseball game.

“We’re in the top of the first inning,” he said.

Much can change in the interim, and it often does, said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the region’s transportation-planning agency. Trump’s proposed budget cuts funding for rural airports and long-distance Amtrak service, including the California Zephyr and Coastal Starlight, two routes that pass through the Bay Area. Both of those items have been on the chopping block before, and Congress has continued to fund them, he said.

“(These cuts) have been tried since time immemorial, and it doesn’t work,” Rentschler said. “This is just yet another administrative proposal that will be dismissed by Congress.”

But several Bay Area transportation officials said it’s unclear whether the administration will fund public transit projects of any kind. Stuart Cohen, the executive director of TransForm, a transportation advocacy nonprofit, said he was immediately struck by the apparent hypocrisy in the proposed budget.

“Trump has been talking about infrastructure as the one thing that could potentially unite the country and both parties,” he said, “and then he puts out a budget proposal that takes a huge ax to critical infrastructure projects.”

Those cuts would disproportionately impact the Bay Area because the region relies so much on public transportation to ease already-clogged freeways, he said. And motorists who don’t use public transit will also feel the pain.

“As the roads get more congested, we are seeing real growth in rail travel, but that growth has a limit,” Cohen said. “We’ve just started to bump against that limit with BART.”

The proposed budget takes aim at a capital-investment grant program the administration can dole out at its discretion.

BART is in the middle of applying for $900 million to $1 billion for a list of upgrades to increase the number of trains that can travel through the Transbay Tube. And the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) was hoping to secure $1.5 billion to fund the second phase of the BART to Silicon Valley extension.

Congress could fund those projects, saving them from an administrative slash, but that would seem to violate its self-imposed rule prohibiting such earmarks, Rentschler said.

“In this case, the administration actually has quite a bit of say over this,” he said. “Congress could appropriate the money, and the money could just sit there.”

Trump’s proposed budget doesn’t change the status for Caltrain’s electrification project. That $647 million project to electrify and modernize its system was already in limbo after Congressional Republicans urged the Federal Transit Administration to defund the project because it would enable high-speed rail to use the same tracks.

Seamus Murphy, a spokesman for Caltrain, said the agency was hopeful it could secure the federal funding for the electrification project before the end of the fiscal year in September. If Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao signs off before then, Caltrain will still be eligible for the funds.

“All of the signs coming out of the administration say Caltrain electrification is the kind of project they want to fund,” Murphy said. “We are the only (project) eligible to receive funding. And, as soon as we receive funding, we can go into construction immediately. … It doesn’t get any more shovel-ready than this.”

Carl Guardino, the president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, recently traveled to Washington, D.C., with a number of Silicon Valley tech executives and elected officials to meet with members of Congress from both parties. Their commitment to transportation infrastructure is clear, he said.

“One of the many take-aways is that — House or Senate, Republican or Democrat — our leaders in Congress, like us, want to continue to invest in America’s infrastructure,” he said. “This budget is not investing in American infrastructure, but we will have many champions for that investment.”

Guardino said the economy depends on keeping goods, services and people moving, but the infrastructure is crumbling. He was confident Bay Area residents could find creative solutions to continue to fund not only the Caltrain electrification project but other major capital investments — with or without the federal government’s support.

“I’ve been doing public transit policy for 30 years, and we’ve had a lot of doors shut on us, but we always come back and have either found a window to climb through, or we built a new door,” he said. “(These projects) are going to happen because we are going to make them happen.”