ATLANTA — U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg visited Atlanta Friday on a trip to tout President Joe Biden’s substantial plan to revitalize the country’s infrastructure.

The American Jobs Plan would dedicate funding to projects ranging from mending old highways and bridges and upgrading transit stations to investing in renewable energy sources and broadband access.

The president has billed the effort a “once-in-a-generation investment in America” but faces an uphill battle of gaining legislative approval by Congress.

Republicans argue the spending measure includes items far outside the purview of infrastructure spending. Supporters push back that boosting the nation’s economy requires extending the definition of infrastructure investment.

During Buttigieg’s Atlanta stop, he promoted the plan as an important step in imagining transit-oriented community developments.

“It’s not just patching up or restoring or improving what we’ve had all along,” he said. “It’s also a vision for the future.”

Included in the spending proposal is $115 billion for bridge, highway and road repairs, $174 billion for electric vehicle manufacturing, $85 billion for transit improvements and $25 billion for airport upgrades.

Although no state-specific projects are earmarked, the White House last month released its take on state infrastructure needs. Projects spread across both metro and rural areas.

“Transit, also, is not only a story for the biggest metros in the world. Often rural transit is a lifeline — especially true for people with disabilities, people trying to get to VA hospitals where sometimes those resources come in, in a very critical way,” Buttigieg said. “So whether we’re talking about roads and bridges or whether we’re talking about the future infrastructure around the internet, we know that it’s often in rural communities that there’s the most on the line.”

Georgia received a low score, according to the Biden administration’s infrastructure rankings. Among the listed areas needing improvement are 364 bridges and more than 2,260 miles of highway in poor condition.

From 2010-20, Georgia suffered $20 billion in damage by natural disasters. Biden’s plan included $50 billion slated to help communities recover from extreme weather.

Broadband access has long plagued both federal and state lawmakers. The spending proposal includes $100 billion to expand broadband access in rural parts of the state.

Both U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock joined Buttigieg during his day in Atlanta. Warnock made the case that without significant transportation investment, low-income and rural Georgians face never-ending obstacles.

“Rural counties, small towns, small cities all have a stake in public transportation investments. We can and we must invest more in public transportation in rural and low-income communities, especially. Lack of economic upward mobility is inextricably connected to a lack of transportation,” he said. “If you can’t move around, it’s difficult to move up.”

Ossoff spotlighted a new micro transit initiative in Valdosta, Valdosta on Demand, as an innovative way to sustain public transit in an area with a smaller population.

“We can use electric vehicle technology and mobile devices to create more modular solutions for parts of the state that don’t have the population or the density or have a tax base for the kind of major construction projects that we typically think of as transit,” he told CNHI. “Rural communities need transit just as much as urban and suburban communities and the solutions are a little bit different.”

While Buttigieg met with Georgia leaders, news broke out of Washington, D.C., that Biden had agreed to cut the spending proposal down to $1.7 trillion from the original $2.25 trillion in an effort to sway Republicans to come to a bipartisan agreement.

Buttigieg was optimistic about winning GOP votes.

Buttigieg, who was delayed at the start of the press conference, said he participated remotely in the conversation with the White House.

“What I’ll say is that we started very far apart and the essence of negotiation is to see if we can come together. Through adjustments both to the size and scope of the President’s vision, we have moved to the tune of about half a trillion dollars,” he said. “I’m hopeful that that will yield more progress in this bipartisan conversation.”