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Los Angeles’s “No Car” Olympic Games are important beyond 2028

The opening of LAX/Metro Transit Center Station on the Los Angeles Metro is a major milestone in the city’s history and is vital for the 2028 Summer Olympics, but there are far more reasons to invest in alternative transportation options beyond major sporting events.

A Los Angeles Metro Rail C Line Train at LAX/Metro Transit Center during the testing phase (Source: LACMTA)

The grand opening of a long awaited station

(Source: LACMTA)

This year, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LACMTA) plans to open the LAX/Metro Transit Center Station on the Los Angeles Metro Rail C and K Lines to serve Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). Despite having the second highest population of any city in the United States behind New York, Los Angeles did not provide rail transit service to LAX (the 8th busiest airport in the world) until 2025. While there is still work to be done on the LAX Automated People Mover (expected to open in 2026) to connect the transit center to the terminals at LAX without the need for a shuttle bus, the opening of LAX/Metro Transit Center is still a major milestone. LA has proven that it is committed to investing in the rest of its transportation system by heavily expanding the LA Metro Rail system and improving frequency and reliability on the LA Metro Bus network.

The LAX/Metro Transit Center Station is part of a larger set of projects known as the Twenty Eight by ‘28 plan in order to ensure Los Angeles and its transportation network are ready for the upcoming Olympic Games in the summer of 2028. Other upcoming notable projects part of the plan include the three phases of the D Line Extension along Wilshire Boulevard to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), an extension of the A Line to Pomona, bike lane and pedestrian path improvements along the Los Angeles River, and more. Many of these projects are important initiatives to incentivize other methods of transportation beyond driving and will greatly benefit the local residents beyond the Olympics and the influx of people it will bring.

Competing Priorities for “Car-Free Games”

Los Angeles is a city well known for its car culture and particularly for its traffic. However, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has stated that the 2028 Olympics will be a “no-car games. This is a tall order for LA, and such an investment will require cooperation from the federal, state, and local levels. However, this mission statement by Mayor Bass aims to avoid congestion by making transit and active transportation the primary focus of the city for the Olympics.

These Olympic Games are a prime time to build transit better in LA, and show the world that a car-free Olympics is possible, even in a city famous for its traffic. In addition, these policy decisions to prioritize alternative transportation for the Olympics will have broad implications beyond the games themselves, as the transit improvements such as the A and D Line Extensions will permeate far beyond the Olympics in 2028, and greatly enhance how Angelenos move throughout the region.

However, it is important that Mayor Bass and the LA Metro follow through with their vision for a car-free games. The need to focus on traffic alleviation and unsafe freeway interchange has prompted LA Metro to shift their focus to freeway expansions, including Express Lanes in I-105, increasing capacity at the interchange of State Routes 57 and 60, and expanding capacity for I-5. These projects run counter to the notion of a car-free games and should be re-examined in favor of other, smaller multimodal improvements which emit less carbon and cause less congestion.

Beyond the Olympics

By focusing on other methods of transportation such as cycling, walking, and many modes of public transit from buses to light rail and heavy rail, LA is creating options for moving around the city beyond driving that will last far beyond the 2028 Olympics. Oftentimes, after the Olympics, many of the facilities built and used for the events end up being underutilized and expensive to maintain (also known as a white elephant facility). By primarily investing in mobility options and reusing existing facilities, LA is creating a lasting mobility legacy beyond the Olympic Games.

A local coalition started by Move LA (the only countywide organization dedicated to public transportation funding that passed transformative initiatives like Measures R and M), FASTLinkDTLA, Agency Artifact, LA Commons, LA Neighborhood Initiative, and the California Community Foundation have come together to create the “Festival Trail” as a legacy project. This 28-mile-long zero-emissions, non-vehicular corridor connects the major venues currently proposed for the 2028 Games in the greater LA region. The Festival Trail is a linkage to current and planned Caltrans, LA Metro, and LA city projects with new public spaces celebrating each community and unlocking up to 20,000 units of new affordable housing in the most under-resourced communities of south LA and downtown.

Ideally, it should not take a major sporting event such as the Olympics to see the benefits of public transit, cycling, and other alternative transportation improvements. Building more public transit, both bus and rail, and investing in cycling and pedestrian pathways should be principles that cities across the United States implement regardless. But these mega-events do provide a deadline to move these projects along at a much faster pace. If a city so famous for its car culture such as Los Angeles can understand the value of alternative transportation, any city can.

Unflooding the zone: What do the Trump administration’s latest actions signal for transportation?

Federal funding recipients across the country are dealing with uncertainty, delays, and outright cuts to obligated funding. Our updated analysis of disbursements at risk finds that over $20 billion for projects currently underway across the country might be eliminated, according to new memos introduced by Secretary Duffy’s DOT. But don’t feel overwhelmed. We’ve got the information you need.

*THE LATEST: USDOT is expected to move forward with transportation funding freezes as soon as this week*

It’s been a frenetic start to President Trump’s second term in office, and transportation funding and policy has already played a much more significant role than it did during his first. While we covered much of this in our last blog on the impact of the new administration’s Executive Orders, let’s recap all that has occurred to bring you up to speed. 

Three things you need to know:

  1. A sweeping rollback of electrification, climate resilience, and equity-focused infrastructure policies – The Trump administration’s executive orders have set out to dismantle DEI and equity-related initiatives, environmental justice efforts, and climate programs established during previous administrations. This includes firing staff and removing resources, freezing funds from key infrastructure programs like the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program, and even halting technical assistance programs like the USDOT Reconnecting Communities Institute. Over $20 billion in project funding is at risk.

  2. Funding freeze confusion continues unabated despite rescissions – The broad and haphazard language in President Trump’s executive orders and memos from the OMB has led to widespread uncertainty among federal agencies, states, and grant recipients. Despite a temporary restraining order from a federal judge, the administration has continued to push its policy objectives, and we expect their funding freezes to continue without judicial authorization or legal justification.

  3. Time is running out for billions of dollars in project funding – USDOT Secretary Sean Duffy’s two recent memos outline a dramatic shift in how Trump’s USDOT will prioritize funding, with plans to eliminate programs related “in any way” to “climate change, ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions, racial equity, gender identity, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” goals, environmental justice, or the Justice 40 Initiative.” Other policy objectives to prioritize families, user-pay models, and benefit-cost analysis remain ill-defined and murky. Crucially, USDOT’s new memos set a timeline for the elimination of all agency policies, funding agreements, and programs by February 18, 2025.

For the full timeline and impact of President Trump’s executive orders, take a look at our Trump Transportation Timeline found at the end of this post>>

Why is this serious? How much is at stake?

Despite the two standing court orders to halt the funding freeze, the Trump administration’s federal agencies are still refusing to disburse funding for obligated awards. Violating a judge’s order is clearly illegal, but that has not stopped the administration as of yet.

The Trump administration and USDOT are ignoring a temporary restraining order from a federal judge and continuing to assert their authority to pause disbursements and new obligations at their discretion. 

Instead of evaluating actual waste, of which there is a great deal in the transportation sector, staff are systematically evaluating individual grants, not according to their performance and ability to move the nation toward its measures of success, but if keywords in their titles and descriptions might trigger reviewers.

As the administration’s intentions to undo progress on policies, programs, and projects come into focus, we took a look at the billions of dollars in funding at stake in congressional districts across the country. 

Our analysis has found that more than $20 billion could be at risk, based on what “references or relates in any way”  to concepts anathema to the new administration. 

The administration is indicating that they could take this action even if a grant agreement (which is basically a contract) has been signed and even where a project sponsor has spent money assuming they would be reimbursed under that grant agreement.

What kind of projects would fit the bill? 

Who knows? While all of the administration’s actions have been dramatic, none has been clear or specific. It could mean all projects funded under the “Carbon Reduction Program,” including road work in Indiana and modernized lighting in Arizona, have funding halted. It could mean an end to rural transit operating assistance for tribal communities in Idaho. It could mean senior transit projects focused on equitably serving their communities get cut. It could mean that states that voted for President Trump lose out on nearly $7 billion in owed funding disbursements that were approved on a bipartisan basis. It could mean projects under the National Highway Performance Program that have an element of something that USDOT finds offensive.

In addition to spending analysis by state, we also mapped congressional-level spending data based on our analysis of funding that could be at risk of cancellation due to new memos implementing President Trump's executive orders. Explore this map and see how funding could be affected across the country.

What you can do: 

Congress’ constitutional power to make decisions over funding is at stake. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, though flawed, passed on a bipartisan basis and is distributing benefits across the country that may be undone by the new administration. 

  • Ask your state and local officials what they plan to do without certain streams of federal funding. Share the data about the project and program funding at risk with them. We split funding information down to the state, county, and congressional district levels in our analysis of funding at risk.
  • Make sure your Congressional delegation is aware of the risk to your project and ask what they can do.  If you meet with them in person or by phone, that is better than a letter. If you want to also write a letter, see below. 

Can’t find your district? Funding might be coming to your community through statewide awards, which are labeled as a congressional district ending in 90.

Make your representative aware of the risk to the project in your community.
Send a letter to your representatives

 

Trump Transportation Timeline

What’s in USDOT Secretary Duffy’s day-one memos?

1) The “Woke Rescission” Memo

  • Orders, in accordance with the EOs outlined above, “to identify and eliminate all orders, directives, rules, regulations, notices, guidance documents, funding agreements, programs, and policy statements, or portions thereof, which were authorized, adopted, or approved between noon on January 20, 2021 and noon on January 20, 2025, and which reference or relate in any way to climate change, "greenhouse gas" emissions, racial equity, gender identity, "diversity, equity, and inclusion" goals, environmental justice, or the Justice 40 Initiative.”
  • Within 10 days, all DOT Operating Administrations (such as FHWA, FTA, NHTSA, FRA, etc.) and the Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST) must identify and develop a report on all DOT “orders, directives, rules, regulations, notices, guidance documents, funding agreements, programs, and policy statements” relevant to the EOs.
  • Within 10 days of the report (20 days after the January 29 memo), all operating agencies and the OST shall “initiate all lawful actions necessary to rescind, cancel, revoke, and terminate all DOT orders, directives, rules, regulations, notices, guidance documents, funding agreements, programs, policy statements, or portions thereof, which are subject to the relevant executive orders and which are not required by clear and express statutory language.

Considering the Trump administration’s current broad interpretation of its legal authority to control funding obligations, we found that billions in federal funding for existing projects could be at risk based on their relationship with the previous administration's priorities under the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Nearly $7 billion for existing projects would be at risk in states that voted for President Trump in the 2024 elections.

2) Lowering Costs Through Smarter Policies, Not Political Ideologies Memo

This new policy memo updates standards for policies, programs, and activities to “maintain reliance on rigorous economic analysis and positive cost-benefit calculations,” setting forth the following policy principles:

  • USDOT grantmaking, lending, policymaking, and rulemaking shall be “based on sound economic principles and analysis supported by rigorous cost-benefit requirements and data-driven decisions.”
  • Grants, loans, policies, and rules must have benefits that outweigh costs. While the EPA updates estimates of the social cost of carbon, the methods used to estimate the value of changes in greenhouse gas emissions from agency actions are reverted to guidance issued in 2003.
  • Focus on minimizing costs and maximizing benefits to families and communities.
  • Asserts that DOT-supported programs or activities (including grants and loans) shall not be used to further local political objectives or projects that “are purely local in nature and unrelated to a proper Federal interest.” [“Local in nature” or a “proper Federal interest” is undefined.)
  • USDOT should support projects and goals that:
    • Utilize user-pay models. [This is not defined but could refer to anything from congestion pricing, road tolling, to having EVs pay into the Highway Trust Fund. This was mentioned in the Mandate for Leadership’s Department of Transportation section. However, President Trump has voiced opposition to congestion pricing.
    • Direct funding to local opportunity zones.
    • Mitigate impacts on families and family-specific difficulties, and give preference to communities with “marriage and birth rates higher than the national average, (including in administering the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program).
    • Recipients of DOT support or assistance are prohibited from imposing vaccine and mask mandates. [It is unclear if this applies to past, existing, or future mandates. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have one form of vaccine mandate or another, particularly for public school students. In terms of mask mandates, there are no statewide mandates currently.]
    • Require local compliance and cooperation with Federal immigration enforcement and “other goals and objectives” specified by the President and Secretary.
    • Finally, this memo directs USDOT to update all Notices of Funding Opportunities, grant agreements, loan agreements, and program documents, etc. to comply with this memo. [Updating open funding opportunities at the beginning of a new administration is common.] 

What's happened so far and, when?

January 20, 2025: 

January 21, 2025:

  • OMB released a new memo, M-25-11, to “clarify” the scope of EO 14154: Unleashing American Energy. However, the memo references a section in the EO that was unclear about which specific programs or policies the administration meant to cut.
  • This memo effectively paused all new obligations to existing, appropriated programs, including the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program, the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI), and even technical assistance provided under the Thriving Communities Program and Reconnecting Communities Institute was halted.
  • This has led to uncertainty among existing federal funding recipients and announced discretionary grant awardees. As a result, some states, such as Alabama and Oklahoma, have paused work on the NEVI program.

January 27, 2025:

  • Late in the evening, OMB circulated the M-25-13 memo to all agencies, calling for a pause in all federal disbursements, profoundly confusing federal employees, Members of Congress, and recipients of federal funds and services from the federal government.

January 28, 2025:

  • OMB sent agencies an expansive spreadsheet in a PDF to grade every federal assistance listing (including defunct ones), requiring unspecified employees in the federal bureaucracy to justify the work conducted under specific programs and ensure they were not advancing equity, climate mitigation, or anything amongst a list of policies the Trump administration objects to.
  • Harvard’s Environmental & Energy Law Program wrote a great summary of the legal mechanisms available to the administration and the risks different kinds of program funds may face due to the memo.

January 29, 2025:

  • Amidst significant confusion about the implications, objections from Congress’s majority, and one looming court-ordered pause out of two parallel legal cases (in the federal courts of the District of Columbia and Rhode Island), the Trump administration’s OMB pulled the funding rescission memo.
  • However, comments from White House Press Secretary Leavitt and other actions from the administration demonstrated that they would continue to pursue the end goals of the memo through agency actions.
  • These actions included a stop-work order for the Road to Zero Coalition, which funds safety efforts from seat belt use and truck safety to police enforcement and safety education. It was launched under the Obama Administration and continued through the first Trump Administration and the Biden Administration.
  • USDOT Memos: Following Secretary Sean Duffy’s confirmation to lead USDOT, the agency released two policy memos with potentially far-reaching implications for projects underway today and how the agency will approach projects during the administration.

January 31, 2025:

  • The Rhode Island federal judges overseeing a suit brought forward by 22 states and DC issued a temporary restraining order to force an end to the administration’s funding freeze.
  • However, agency-issued stop orders were not lifted and new ones were put in place.

February 3, 2025: 

  • The Department of Justice responds to the Rhode Island Judge’s Temporary Restraining Order and asserts that the executive branch has the authority to continue implementing the Executive Orders outlined above. The Trump administration continues to direct agencies to halt disbursements and the obligation of funding that goes against the administration’s new policy objectives.

What might happen next?

Based on the memos and timelines set forth by inaugural executive orders, the following dates may be of importance going forward.

February 6, 2025:

  • New unelected and unappointed political operatives in USDOT are expected to begin identifying specific programs, policies, and projects for elimination following the memos issued by Sec. Duffy on his first day in office.

February 8, 2025:

  • USDOT will submit a written report identifying all policies, funding agreements, programs, etc., that conflict with the President’s broad executive orders. This deadline was set by the “Woke Rescission” memo.
  • Within 10 days of the submission of this report, the USDOT will initiate all lawful actions necessary to rescind, cancel, revoke, and terminate all USDOT funding agreements, policies, guidances, etc, out of line with Trump administration policies and executive orders.
  • Considering the administration’s interpretation of what is lawful, it is unclear to what extent active projects with obligated funding and authorized programs are at risk.

February 18, 2025:

  • February 18 marks the deadline for the elimination of USDOT funding agreements, policies, guidances, etc., that are out of line with Trump administration policies and executive orders, per the “Woke Rescission” memo.

April 20, 2025:

  • This date marks 90 days of the temporary freeze initially announced on January 20. This date was not referenced in OMB memo M-25-13 or in policy memos released by USDOT. There is no indication that this would be the end of any planned pause for funding disbursement or obligation.

Steven G. Bradbury, transit and Vision Zero opponent, named Deputy DOT Secretary nominee

Though transportation has often bridged party divides, just two weeks into President Trump’s second term there are numerous signs that this trend may shift. As General Counsel for USDOT during Trump’s first term and a current Distinguished Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Steven Bradbury has made clear his dislike of public transportation, clean energy reform, and pedestrian safety efforts. His key role in authoring Project 2025’s Chapter 19 on transportation helps clarify his views on American transportation.

President Trump’s choice for Deputy DOT Secretary authored the transportation section of Project 2025, which calls for ending federal support for transit projects, Vision Zero, and fuel economy standards. Photo courtesy of Transport Topics.

Hostile towards transit

While DOT’s mission is to connect communities, increase accessibility, safety, and promote mobility choice, Bradbury has called for the opposite. In Project 2025, he proposed completely abolishing all federal funds for new transit and major improvements or expansions. Abolishing transit Capital Investment Grants (CIG) would cut billions from major transit agencies across the U.S. and hobble efforts to build new transit, expand transit, or make substantial core improvements to existing transit. It is interesting, however, that he has not called for the end of federal transit formula funding. Still, the demand for expansions and improvements is likely to grow, as transit usage is finally growing post-pandemic.

Transit is already severely underfunded, particularly compared to highways, yet Bradbury wants to “move away from using the Highway Trust Fund to prop up mass transit.” Never mind that the Highway Trust Fund has been subsidized by all taxpayers with general fund dollars to the tune of more than $275 billion since 2008. While motorists benefit every day from subsidized roads, he seems to think transit riders should not receive the same treatment.

Electric vehicles are in his crosshairs, too

Bradbury has attacked all things emissions-regulating, launching an attack against electric vehicles. He criticized the Biden-Harris administration’s “radical EV goals,” claiming Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which aim to lower emissions harmful to health and the environment for new cars, will only force lower-income families to drive older, unsafe cars.

The claim that older cars are dangerous is an old argument that was more true before safety regulations put into place 15 years ago requiring backup cameras and high crashworthy standards. It also seems to ignore the danger caused by brand new SUVs and trucks with huge front blind zones and hood heights so tall that crashes hit pedestrians in the head and chest making them 45 percent more likely to kill.

He seems to think speed is more important than safety

Despite the number of people killed while walking increasing 75 percent since 2010, he wants to abolish Vision Zero as a federal policy, calling it an approach “actively seeking congestion for automobiles to reduce speeds.” T4America’s top priority is Safety over Speed, whereas Bradbury wants to “refocus the FHWA on maintaining and improving the highway system.” Apparently, “improving” does not include safety improvements. (We wonder what his position would be on creating a requirement for states to spend formula dollars on repairing their roads and bridges before making costly expansions?)

USDOT has already shut down the National Safety Council’s Road to Zero program on the grounds that it violates one of President Trump’s executive orders, though it is unclear which one. This administration has been focused on ending vehicle efficiency, diversity, climate and environmental justice programs, but this is the first piece of evidence that USDOT may view saving lives as a partisan cause. 1

While Bradbury won’t be running USDOT, his appointment to this top post is a decent signal that we should expect to see USDOT either slow down or completely halt all grants for new transit projects (ramping up what we saw in the first Trump administration), an assault on electrification overall, and every effort made to roll back any modest improvements on prioritizing safety.

Transit Equity Day highlights the need for transit in rural communities

Transit Equity Day—which honors Civil Rights Leader Rosa Parks—is on February 4th. As we celebrate the importance of ensuring people of all backgrounds and abilities are able to use transportation, it is imperative to highlight communities that are often left out of the public transit conversation: rural communities.

Source: AARP.

All communities and people deserve transit options to ensure their greatest well-being. Access to high-quality and reliable public transportation is foundational to ensure everyone can access essential destinations like schools, healthcare facilities, and jobs. Traditionally, transportation advocacy is seen in urban and metropolitan areas where density is plentiful, and the demand for transit is loud. However, rural communities are lost in the conversation, perceived as areas that do not need access to transit due to the sprawling nature of the communities and assumed access to private vehicles.

A Complete Streets approach is needed—and can be made possible—in rural communities. Learn more about how to create safe and inclusive small towns in this video.

In reality, more than one million households in rural areas do not have access to a car. In fact, the majority of counties with zero-car households are in rural communities, highlighting the brazen need to invest in public transit. The lack of transportation access leads to a decreased quality of life with barriers to access community amenitites, healthcare resources, and schools. However, studies have repeatedly shown that people in rural areas are equally as likely to walk and bike as those in urban areas if they have access to safe and reliable options to do so. In spite of this, investments in transportation networks that support walking, biking, and public transit are largely limited to urban communities. There are a lot of affordable, attainable solutions to encourage active and multimodal transportation in rural America. Implementing Complete Streets, more effective and multimodal-oriented land-use approaches, and strategic transit planning would all result in more mobility options for residents, as well as significant benefits, including healthier and more economically prosperous places.

A critical part of the strategic planning process includes developing a vision for a community that is tailored to its unique needs and features building partnerships with community groups, agencies, and individuals that will help realize this vision. Having land development policies and guidelines in place is also key to producing strong economic outcomes and vitality in the long term.

Strategic innovation also ensures the availability of viable and affordable transit for underserved regions. A study in rural New Mexico examined the feasibility of microtransit implementation in the area, finding that community engagement accompanied with diverse funding strategies was key to achieving success. Other examples of such efforts include the Blackfeet Indian Reservation’s micro-transit service in northwest Montana or the City of Wilson’s RIDE service. Innovative, shared mobility options that go beyond traditional buses, like bikeshare systems or vans, can offer flexible options that serve the unique needs of rural communities.

Transit Equity Day serves as a reminder for local leaders and planners to prioritize transit investments in rural communities. By fostering equitable access to transportation options in rural communities, we can build more resilient areas where everyone can thrive.

Confused about the chaos? Make Congress and the administration clarify the transportation funding freeze

Bird's eye view of construction on a wide road in Los Angeles.

The federal government owes communities upwards of $125.6 billion dollars in federal contract obligations from the infrastructure law but President Trump is threatening to renege on the government’s legally binding commitments. Here’s how much they owe for transportation.

UPDATE 1/29/25 1:15 p.m. ET – The OMB guidance is being rescinded but calls and emails with questions should absolutely continue. See update in red below.

Contact your federal representatives, the administration and the press to ask for clarification on your project’s status, and tell them about the impact.

How much transportation money is being threatened in your community and state?  Check out this spreadsheet of all infrastructure law funding currently at risk.

The promised “Golden Age” of travel is already in need of some roadside assistance. 

The funding freeze affecting all IIJA funding could leave construction projects looking half-finished like this for the foreseeable future.

Amidst a wave of day-one actions by the new administration, President Trump signed the Unleashing American Energy executive order on January 20, 2025, targeting the previous administration’s top priorities. While the rhetoric was focused on stopping spending on diversity and inclusion, and climate and electric vehicles programs, the language was unclear and indiscriminately paused all spending for all programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act. This set the administration up to violate binding, legal contracts paying for everything from train tracks to traffic lights. 

Nearly everyone was shocked and confused, including groups like AASHTO which represents state departments of transportation.

The next day, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released guidance (M-25-11) attempting to walk back the scope of the previous day’s order. While still leaving things muddied, the administration was able to articulate its intended action to officials: there would be a halt on new obligations for a group of electric vehicle and community-focused programs, but legally required disbursements to obligated projects would continue.

On Monday of this week, in apparent disregard of the events of the previous week, the OMB issued a new memo (M-25-13) issuing an undefined “temporary pause”  on “all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance,” expanding the scope of the Unleashing American Energy executive order from the previous administration’s signature programs to nearly every single federally funded project and program in the country. A slew of new documents circulated by the admin has done little to illuminate the administration’s intentions, with documents calling for individual agency staff to figure out if individual programs, including those that are defunct, happen to conflict with the new administration’s priorities. 

While a federal judge put a temporary pause on this funding freeze before it was to go into effect late Tuesday, it is not clear if the Trump administration will pause. Therefore, with all federal funding frozen, everything from federally subsidized lunches to efforts that fight avian flu is in limbo. Admittedly, transportation projects are nowhere near as urgent, but that is our field and where we will focus. 

UPDATE 1/29/25 1:15 p.m. ET

The New York Times is reporting that the OMB guidance to freeze all federal spending has been rescinded. “In a memo dated Wednesday and distributed to federal agencies, Matthew J. Vaeth, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, states that OMB memorandum M-25-13 ‘is rescinded.’” This marks the second time in a week that guidance affecting vast swaths of transportation spending has been issued and then rescinded or clarified. They backed off last week but then went broader and bigger with the now-rescinded OMB guidance. But the story does not end here. The original Executive Order required that all spending be reviewed to see if it supports issues the Trump administration opposes, like climate change, DEI and a transition from fossil fuels. Will your project or priority be rejected on that basis, and who is making that decision and by when? You should absolutely continue to call and email your Senators and Representatives, your USDOT contacts and others in the administration as well as the media to clarify where your projects stand.

[End update]

Federal transportation funding is always flowing to all levels of government. Everything on a spectrum from small grant programs (like Safe Streets and Roads for All grants), to the Federal Highway Administration’s largest formula program to states (the National Highway Performance Program) are affected without sufficient clarification about the impacts on active projects.

Assume this pause will directly affect projects in your community. To get answers on what this might mean for your project and how long this pause will last, we strongly encourage you to let people know about the impact a pause or cancellation of your project will have.

  • Reach out to your contact at USDOT (or elsewhere in the administration) and ask them to clarify if your project is stopped and for how long. Let them know the impact of even a pause. Knowing that there is an upcoming deadline before furloughs or events that have to be canceled might help them to make decisions more quickly.
  • Contact your federal representatives in the House and the Senate to let them know about your project and get their help to speed a determination about your project and get the funds flowing again. Ask them to clarify the status of your project and explain why it is or is not moving forward. If your member of Congress attended an event or put out a press release announcing your grant, suggest they take a similar action to explain the status of the project under this order.
  • Make sure your state, county, and local elected officials know about your project and the impact this order will have. They may be able to help you get answers. (Plus, they may be trying to get a handle on everything within their jurisdiction that is impacted and identify ways to help.) Here’s an online tool that may help you find your local and state-level officials.
  • Call reporters to let them know about your project so that they can get a sense of the impact to your regions. Ask them the same questions you are asking USDOT and your elected leaders—does this order affect our project and why? See if they can write about this and help you get information about what’s happening.

This order could have immense implications for states’ economies and local-level priorities. In 2022, federal funding made up over a third of states’ revenues. On the other hand, it is clear that this action was not thought out. The last 7 days have been chaotic, and we can be sure that the next 7 days will be too.

Don’t make any assumptions about where things are heading. Rather than issuing declarations and statements, involve those who made these decisions and those who have oversight powers over the administration in these questions and challenges. They need to own this mess and figure it out.

Fill their phone lines and inboxes up with so many “do you all know what this means?” questions that they’ll think twice about doing this kind of thing again. 

Click the image below to view a spreadsheet of all IIJA funding currently at risk.

Three opportunities to work with incoming USDOT Secretary Duffy

Last Wednesday (Jan. 15), former Congressman Sean Duffy faced questions from the Senate Commerce Committee, tasked to vet the next Transportation Secretary. Here are three things T4America gleaned from the hearing as opportunities for working with Secretary-designate Duffy.

Image Source: CSPAN (37:13)

While it’s difficult with almost any eventual USDOT Secretary to try and anticipate precisely how they’ll choose to run the department, these confirmation hearings (and the nominee’s record to some degree) can help give a rough sense of what they care about before they are confirmed. And the limited amount of time to prepare in this specific case might mean that this hearing is more of a look at Duffy’s priorities and interests rather than revealing what he may be directed to prioritize by the president and the executive branch.

As one example of how these differences are already emerging, Duffy responded to questions about future spending under the infrastructure law (the IIJA) by pledging to follow that law and see those funds spent. Yet, on day one of the Trump presidency, President Trump issued an executive order aimed at suspending all IIJA funding for 90 days. (This could be challenged in the courts, as those spending decisions are determined by Congress and existing law.)

It won’t be clear for quite some time what the Trump administration wants to accomplish in transportation—which appears to be farther down their list of priorities. But with that in mind, here are three areas where some doors could be opened to collaborate or work with USDOT over the next four years.

1) Safety

Mr. Duffy strongly affirmed his desire to leave a legacy at USDOT on safety. We suspected this could be an area where he brings a strong interest due to his personal connection to the issue: His wife Rachel was critically injured in a traffic crash years before they were married, he was on an Amtrak train that crashed in West Virginia that killed a truck driver, and has frequently spoken about safety issues.

Questions from the committee touched on various safety issues, from autonomous vehicles, to passenger and freight rail (including the issue of blocked railroad grade crossings impeding traffic and emergency response), and briefly on active transportation safety. On that note, Duffy said he would be willing to explore and engage in advancing and eventually implementing the Sarah Langenkamp Active Transportation Safety Act, which would make changes to the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program to help spur states to build and complete protected bike and pedestrian networks. Mr. Duffy even spoke about the need for proactive federal rules on autonomous vehicles that would focus on safety, which is not the direction Congress has tried to go in over the past few years. With roadway fatalities continuing to rise, despite advances in vehicle safety technology and innovation that the committee spent extensive time on, this area could be an opportunity to work with the incoming USDOT Secretary. Automated vehicles should not be tested without greater transparency and safeguards. With a legacy emphasis on safety, Secretary-nominee Duffy also provides an opening to focus on addressing existing standards for the nation’s roadways that are inherently Dangerous by Design and need to be fundamentally reworked.

2) Multimodal transportation investments

Members from both parties of the committee raised issues that touch on a wide spectrum of different modes of travel, including passenger rail, the resilience of public transit operations, and rural community connectivity.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) reminded Mr. Duffy that he is up to “be the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, not just the Department of Cars.” Mr. Duffy expressed support for a multimodal transportation point of view, in addition to supporting a robust and innovative automotive market that is inclusive of electric vehicles. (This is another area where differences with the President are already emerging: the President is trying to reverse incentives and mandates for electric vehicle adoption.)

Senators Baldwin (D-WI) and Duckworth (D-IL) also highlighted the need for Mr. Duffy to not forget and integrate the mobility needs of 70 million Americans with disabilities, who may be mobility, cognitive, vision, or hearing impaired. Light on details, Mr. Duffy did repeat on multiple occasions the need to support a transportation network that facilitates consumer choice. This leaves room for advocates and others to help USDOT understand their charge to promote safe and efficient movement of all Americans, regardless of ability and the community they live in.

3) Transparency and streamlining

This could be one of the areas of common ground for making much-needed reforms to the (arduous) process of how transportation projects get approved and built—especially transit projects—and how much they cost. Nearly every Senator touched upon implementing the 2021 infrastructure law and other related congressional mandates, project delivery, the NEPA process, and how to speed up efficient and cost-effective transportation projects. Over and over we find transportation projects held up over onerous permitting and review processes, which rightfully slow down highway boondoggles, but also hold up solid public transit and zero-emission mobility projects. There’s a dire need to shake up the status quo to streamline beneficial community-led projects and hold back projects that divide by design.

Senator Fischer (R-NE) requested that Duffy tackle the issue of guidance consistency, when USDOT headquarters says and interprets a policy or guideline, then FHWA division offices use unique, creative interpretations of the same policy or guideline. Senators Cruz (R-TX), Capito (R-WV), and Cantwell (D-WA) requested firm commitment for transparent delivery of information to the committee, especially on how USDOT is evaluating projects for discretionary programs and program effectiveness.

A constant concern from transportation stakeholders has been if existing infrastructure laws would be undercut by the incoming administration. Mr. Duffy has indicated he intends to abide by congressional mandates and laws if confirmed as USDOT Secretary. There is an opening to engage Secretary nominee Duffy on the standardized reporting, oversight, and efficient use of federal transportation dollars.

Looking ahead

Mr. Duffy is likely to enjoy a relatively smooth confirmation process. With the next surface transportation reauthorization looming, Duffy’s USDOT will be charged with helping Congress understand what can or should be changed with the overall transportation program to produce better outcomes. While it will take some time for their agenda to emerge, these openings in safety, multimodal transportation investments, and transparency revealed in Mr. Duffy’s confirmation hearing could provide some possible pathways to make a substantial impact on U.S. transportation.

Time’s up! What wins has Biden notched and what has he left incomplete on transportation?

In November 2020, we sent the incoming Biden administration a memo outlining immediate and longer-term actions we urged the new president to initiate. Four years later, while modest progress has been made on some, it’s hard to say that the transportation system or the most important outcomes by which we should evaluate it are significantly better or different than four years ago.

Image Source: The White House

As the Biden administration comes to a close, it’s time to take stock of what President Biden and his team accomplished. (You can read our recaps of the Biden administration’s progress after their first, second, and third years.) There are certainly some tangible wins and progress to point to, like new programs focused on climate change and electrification, USDOT advancing smarter projects with their discretionary programs compared to the previous four years, and some positive administrative changes. There was also a massive infrastructure bill that did have some notable but small wins, though they all came alongside the IIJA’s historic amount of funding. Overall, the status quo on transportation that was in place when the Biden administration arrived is largely unchanged, though it is far better funded.

Before we get into the good and the incomplete, let’s look at the table of specific requests we made in November 2020.

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In truth, our hope was that many of these requests could be tackled in the first hundred days or over the first year. We were hoping to be able to check things off this list and add more ambitious tasks for the intervening years as time went by. But as you can see, four years later, most of the initial list is either undone or incomplete.

Beyond this list, it’s hard to say that the most important measurable outcomes for transportation overall—safety, state of repair, emissions, access to destinations, delay or congestion—are significantly better today than four years ago or are on track to improve significantly in another four or eight years, even after the IIJA’s $643 billion is completely exhausted. The IIJA overall is advancing projects that will increase emissions. Many of the new grant programs could either go dormant, be defunded by Congress, or be used by Trump’s USDOT to fund radically different kinds of projects—like when President Obama turned grant programs like TIGER over to the Trump admin eight years ago.

While Congress writes the laws that determine where most transportation dollars go, USDOT did not take full advantage of the tools at its disposal to make the kind of binding, institutional, structural changes that will move the needle and can’t be easily undone by a future administration.

The good:

Greenhouse gas rule

Resurrected from the Obama administration, a measure to assess the greenhouse gases coming from transportation projects was introduced in 2022 and finalized in 2023 (only to be ultimately overturned after challenges in the courts and Congress). While the administration certainly deserves credit for this attempt, they did slow-walk the development and implementation of the rule primarily due to fear that the opposition would block it versus swiftly developing and implementing the program and navigating opposition along the way.

Small steps for safety

Steps were taken to elevate the conversation on roadway safety as a national crisis and the need to fundamentally change the trajectory of the United States. This included the development of a National Roadway Safety Strategy, an overhaul of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, and new vehicle safety rules aimed at addressing the safety of all users of our streets. However, those changes are modest and unlikely to be enough to overcome the entrenched auto-dominated culture.

Important though limited steps on reconnecting communities

One of the biggest highlights of the IIJA was the new Reconnecting Communities program, which funds projects that seek to repair past damage from infrastructure projects, such as divisive highways.2 While USDOT can only choose from the projects that do apply, it’s fair to say that their track record has been mixed at best. As America Walks noted in 2024, more than $1 billion of the 2024 awards is going toward a) accommodating people while preserving damaging roads or b) mitigating some of the damage of actively expanding highways. Trying to mitigate brand new damage to Portland from expanding Interstate 5 is not what this small program focused on repairing past damage should be for.3 USDOT should prioritize more inspirational, best-in-class examples for other states and cities to see what’s possible, like Syracuse removing I-81 and replacing it with a street grid.

Ample offerings for technical assistance

The administration did create numerous enhanced technical support offerings, such as the Thriving Communities program, which helps local communities and stakeholders access and navigate federal funding programs, and the (long-delayed) Reconnecting Communities Institute, designed to help communities plan and advance Reconnecting Communities projects. These new programs (and others like them) have been a smart way to help communities navigate the sea of new competitive grant programs created in IIJA.

Incomplete at best, bad at worst

The IIJA will increase emissions overall and fail to move the needle on other measurable outcomes. It should not be viewed as a major accomplishment.

The Biden administration will be leaving office continuing to hail the 2021 infrastructure law (IIJA) as “once in a generation,” “climate-friendly” legislation that will transform the status quo on transportation. Unfortunately, both the IIJA as written and the Biden administration’s implementation of it have been a boulevard of broken dreams. It was always unwise for this administration to sell the IIJA’s massive climate, equity, or state of repair benefits when those benefits have to be delivered by states that don’t share the administration’s goals or preferred outcomes.

Equity investment outcomes muddled

Equity was a core component for the Biden administration, which introduced the Justice40 executive order aimed at ensuring 40 percent of federal funds flowed to and benefited historically marginalized communities. However, it has yet to be seen whether this policy initiative truly targeted benefits towards marginalized communities or just directed funding to areas and projects that just happen to also have a notable marginalized population. The future of such initiatives is in doubt due both to the challenges they’ve had in implementing Justice40 during their time and the fact that Justice 40 can be easily undone by future executive orders.

All-in on electrification only

The Biden administration put all their eggs in the single basket of electrification to tackle transportation emissions. The flaws in that strategy are becoming more obvious by the day, with President Trump and Speaker Johnson signaling their intent to claw back money for new charging infrastructure and repeal mandates requiring more electric vehicles in the future. Transportation electrification is important for decarbonizing transportation, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. The administration’s emphasis on climate change was far out of sync with the reality of how IIJA funding was being used: many states using their formula funds to expand highways and spur more vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Even discretionary grants that USDOT had control over were also still contributing to more VMT. Meanwhile, under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, onerous requirements directed funds toward highway-oriented development and away from communities, helping to undercut the economic development benefits and potential rural support for a program almost certainly to be targeted for cuts or elimination by President Trump.

Failure to modernize street design guidelines

After more than a decade of waiting for a promised update, the release of the most recent edition of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices promised to shake up roadway design standards. But as we noted upon release, the cautious and overall incremental update “falls short of the kind of major paradigm shift required to protect vulnerable users at a time when the United States leads the developed world in roadway fatalities.” Future updates may still happen, but this administration failed to take advantage of the potential of long-term, structural changes like these, perhaps not grasping the long-term impacts.

No changes to traffic models and measures

While Congress sets the policy and states have enormous flexibility for spending transportation dollars, USDOT and FHWA determine what models and measures states can use in conceiving and advancing new roadway projects. On day one, we hoped that USDOT would make moves to require the measurement of “induced demand” and use their bully pulpit to kickstart a long overdue conversation about the inaccuracies of current traffic models, perhaps starting to compare past projections with actual outcomes. USDOT could have delivered guidance on measuring time savings benefits, emissions reductions, and transit access to ensure that projects meant to achieve these goals are set up to succeed. Unfortunately, there was no real movement on the small but powerful changes that would outlast this administration.

Amtrak oversight and staffing

Appointing a full Amtrak board that’s representative of the people the passenger rail system serves would have been a notable, easy win for the administration. But rather puzzlingly, “Amtrak Joe” took a year to nominate anyone to the board. The administration and Congress have only recently finally filled all board slots, but as composed, it still doesn’t fully represent the full network that Amtrak serves. The overall lack of oversight has led to declining service reliability and customer satisfaction, further hurting Amtrak’s reputation with the public and Congress. Further, at a time when there is historic funding for passenger rail, the funding is not being spent due to slow movement in the program and a failure to get sufficient staff in place at the Federal Railroad Administration quickly after the IIJA’s passage to create and implement these new programs.

Closing reflections

The question for an incoming administration hoping to have an impact should not just be “How can we steer the money we control toward good projects?” but instead, “What changes can we institutionalize to disrupt the status quo and produce better results for years to come after we’re gone?” Modest progress has undoubtedly been made during Biden’s time in office, but so much of it is of the first variety—temporary and potentially undone by any future administration. This administration also spent an inordinate amount of time soliciting feedback and research before taking any action on rulemakings that help interpret laws like the IIJA—and, in many cases, never acted on the comments at all. And if the cost of creating valuable but small new climate-focused programs (a la the IIJA) is doubling the size of the blank check programs that are damaging the climate, that’s a bad deal for everyone except concrete and asphalt contractors.

For the incoming Trump administration, we’re working on a to-do list for their first 100 days and the following years to reduce wasting limited resources and ensure that every dollar works towards advancing safety, economic opportunities, and better state of repair.

Another milestone: Major funding announced for Gulf Coast passenger rail

Map showing the stops of the restored route from New Orleans to Mobile, making stops in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, Biloxi, and Pascagoula along the way.

Earlier this week, the Federal Railroad Administration announced a significant investment of $21,117,115 in Restoration and Enhancement (R&E) grant funding to Amtrak. This funding will support the restoration of intercity passenger rail service with two daily roundtrips along the Gulf Coast, connecting New Orleans, LA, to Mobile, AL.

We want to share special thanks to Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker and his dedicated staff, who have championed the establishment of the R&E program and the return of passenger rail in the Gulf Coast for more than a decade. This milestone would not be possible without their continued commitment to passenger rail service restoration and expansion along the Gulf Coast.

In recognition of recent progress for passenger service in the Coastal South, we released a four-part series exploring how unified regional and national approaches, supported by local advocacy and sound policy, can help create a successful passenger rail network. Read part one on the history of passenger rail, part two on building momentum for change, part three on converting support into action, and part four on next steps for a national network.

Transportation for America supports the Southern Rail Commission to champion the efforts to return service in the Gulf Coast and across the Deep South.

Helping communities at every stage

Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s technical assistance services help communities at all different stages of their efforts to improve transportation in their communities. In a suite of projects funded by AARP this year in communities across the country, we helped partners work on policy, planning, advocacy education and relationship building.

Smart Growth America technical assistance in Rhode Island, provided in partnership with AARP Rhode Island

Transportation for America does its work through technical assistance, thought leadership and advocacy. As part of our technical assistance work, for the past seven years, we’ve been supported by AARP to do small technical assistance projects helping partners improve transportation in their communities, whatever stage they may be in. This year was no exception. Projects in six different communities: Vermont; Albuquerque, NM; Fort Wayne, IN; San Diego, CA; Georgia; and Hawai’i; showcased the many different ways we can help.

Policy and funding in Vermont

The green mountain state is rural, and has snowy winters, as well as state highways running through hundreds of special, walkable small towns with unique character. AARP Vermont, in partnership with the Vermont Agency on Transportation and the Vermont League of Cities and Towns is exploring options to address state highways that pass through cities and towns throughout the state. These highways may have originally been built for higher speed car and truck traffic which is incompatible with more walkable environments that many communities wish to foster in their downtowns.

Vermont’s “Class 1 Town Highway” (C1TH) program has been in place for years to help cities take over management of state highways within town limits in order to implement more walkable designs, but challenges around maintenance costs, particularly for snow removal, have held the program up. To help address this T4America conducted research on policy and funding solutions that other northern states and Canadian provinces have used to address this challenge. Recommendations include state legislative action to address funding challenges, greater flexibility for localities to raise funding, VTRans support for design changes as part of the highway reclassification process, and quick-build demonstration projects to help communities envision the possibilities. AARP Vermont plans to use our research to inform conversations in Vermont’s next legislative session on how to address this challenge.

Policy and planning for an age-friendly Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico is motivated to become a more age-friendly city. They have dedicated staff working on an Age-Friendly Action Plan (AFAP) with domains in public engagement, housing and transportation, and annual progress reports. For two years, T4America has provided analysis of this plan in relation to other city plans, and helped Albuquerque to focus its efforts on near-term wins that can build a foundation for longer term change and a paradigm shift.

T4America’s recommendations included updating the cities Complete Streets policy, integrating housing and public transit plannings, and looking for opportunities to encourage public transit ridership and awareness.

Getting folks on the same page in San Diego

In T4A’s work with the San Diego region, AARP asked us to help with more general education on Complete Streets. With many engaged advocates ready to work on this issue, AARP planned an educational series of workshops to activate local partners and agencies to advance strong Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies in more jurisdictions in the region. Staff from our Thriving Communities team were able to provide level-setting information on what makes for a strong Complete Streets policy, while encouraging local jurisdictions to develop policies or improve the ones they already have.

Full blown advocacy in Fort Wayne

Last year, we worked with Fort Wayne, Indiana, doing something very similar to what we did this year with San Diego. Having provided an analysis of Fort Wayne’s Complete Streets resolution, which doesn’t carry the force of law, advocates in Fort Wayne were ready this year to work with their council and a new mayor to get a strong Complete Streets policy adopted. They already had the technical tools to develop a strong policy, but needed help with how to win the political support of the mayor and council, and how best to work with city staff with mixed views about a policy change.

In this case T4America developed an advocacy framework to help local advocates identify the steps toward building power and support for the policy change they sought. This included plans for building relationships with decision-makers, powermapping to identify channels of influence, and recommendations for developing effective messages and communications to undergird the advocacy effort.

Relationships, commitment and power in Georgia

Our project in Georgia this year was a little different than the rest. Our Associate VP for Transportation Steve Davis moderated a panel of leaders convened by AARP Georgia. Getting major leaders talking publicly about the improvements they plan to make in their communities can build their commitment to follow through with their plans and build closer relationships with the advocates who convened them. AARP Georgia has been using this approach to grow the number of cities in the peach state committed to age-friendly policies like Complete Streets, better public transit and housing options.

Beyond transportation

Our parent organization, Smart Growth America, uses transportation and land use strategies to support thriving, healthy communities. As part of our technical assistance projects supported by AARP, our Land Use and Development Director of Research Michael Rodriguez analyzed the affordable housing supply in Hawai’i. The work culminated in direct testimony to the Hawai’i Senate Committee on Housing. Learn more here.

Transportation for America and Smart Growth America’s technical assistance offerings include work similar to that described above and much more. If you think we can be of assistance in your community in a way that fits with our mission and yours, and you have a source of funding to support the work, get in touch!

Five for ’25: What to expect on transportation in the new year

January will bring in a new presidential administration and a new Congress for the run-up to the reauthorization of the country’s transportation law in 2026. Though uncertainty prevails as power and leadership shifts in Washington, there are a few things we’re expecting to see in 2025. Here are five:

  1. The status quo trade groups will start producing their (typical) wish lists for the next five-year reauthorization
  2. The trust fund that pays for transportation will inch closer to bankruptcy
  3. Expect policy moves like ending federal funding for transit, or slowing down transit capital spending
  4. Discretionary grant programs will fund different winners
  5. Existing or pending regulations will be repealed or shelved

1. Trade groups will assemble their (typical) wish lists for the 2026 reauthorization

If you can believe it, we’re already nearing the end of the “infrastructure law” passed by Congress in November 2021. The five-year Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) will expire on September 30, 2026, so the incoming Congress will hold hearings and develop a proposal for the bill to replace it. That means that the big-monied machine of trade groups and interest groups, which count on perpetually increasing federal infrastructure dollars, are already spinning up their efforts.

You can already see some of their letters calling for more funding for the same programs and same results. In the new year, the transportation policy/funding “wish lists” will start to emerge from groups spanning the spectrum from old-guard trade groups like the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which represents the interests of state DOTs, to groups like the American Highway Users Alliance (founded by GM!), which are primarily interested in building more highways in all places. (Your grandkids can worry about the maintenance.)

AASHTO is already halfway through their timeline for the next reauthorization though one can already predict what they’ll be asking for in the next five year authorization, as it’s changed very little:

  1. More money distributed to state DOTs through guaranteed formula programs
  2. More flexibility to states in how those funds are spent
  3. No requirement to produce any particular outcome — no reward for performing well and certainly no punishment for doing poorly

To be fair, our platform is pretty simple too, but instead of focusing on money, ours is focused on common-sense outcomes that have broad and significant support from the people who depend on our transportation network: Stop expanding at the expense of repair, make safety the actual top priority, and prioritize investing in the transportation we’ve neglected for over 50 years.

Unlike a platform of “give state agencies more taxpayer money without any accountability,” our priorities have broad support with the taxpayers who cover the full cost of this program…which brings us to #2.

2. Without further giveaways from taxpayers, the transportation trust fund will inch closer to insolvency

The most important thing to understand about funding for transportation is that the bedrock idea of “the user pays” for the transportation system through fuel or gasoline taxes has been dead for a long, long time. The federal program currently spends ~$20 billion more per year than the gas tax brings in. Because the gas tax has not changed for more than three decades as the fuel efficiency of vehicles has improved and inflation has reduced purchasing power, the highway “trust fund” has stayed solvent only because we have taken more than $280 billion in extra tax dollars from all Americans since 2008—whether they drive or buy gas or not.

This is why the Congressional Budget Office currently projects that in 2028 the federal government will only bring in enough funding for the Highway Trust Fund to cover a fraction of the transportation program authorized in the IIJA. And it’s why the first thing you’ll hear Congress (and most transportation industry groups) talking about in 2025 won’t be policy, or outcomes, or accomplishing anything specific with this $500B program. Instead, the reverberating refrain will be the need to “find more money.” (We’ll have more on the trust fund in a future post but this short explainer by the Peterson Foundation is a great place to understand the history and where things currently stand. But notice that the cities they list as the most congested are some of the best places.)

The two bookend options for addressing this structural imbalance are:

Take billions more from all taxpayers or rack up debt to prop up a federal program that is failing to move the needle on repairing our crumbling infrastructure, reducing congestion, reducing emissions, and improving safety,

OR

Scale the program down to the size of what the gas tax brings. This second option has been suggested before, including a 2014 proposal by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and 28 Senate Republicans to defund the nation’s transportation system—except for a small interstate maintenance fund—and leave it to states to make up for the lost funding.

3. Transit could face significant cuts (only partially because of the looming insolvency)

About 20 percent of the federal highway trust fund goes to transit each year. This 80/20 split was conceived during the Reagan Administration in the 1980s as part of a compromise to raise the gas tax. To get support, a deal was made to devote a portion of the increase to transit and provide stable support. (Imagine a day when members of Congress and advocates would demand bold change in policy and approach before they supported more funding for the existing program.) This funding split has become the historical practice, supported in a bipartisan fashion over the years. But not always.

When the Republicans controlled the House during the Obama administration in 2012, they proposed addressing a funding shortfall for highways by kicking transit out of the trust fund for what eventually became the MAP-21 two-year authorization law in 2012. T4America organized opposition from an enormous spectrum of more than 600 groups, from chambers of commerce to labor, and the proposal was abandoned in the face of bipartisan opposition when it was clear it would fail on the House floor. (However, MAP-21 was only two years long instead of the usual five because there wasn’t enough support for the additional deficit spending needed to cover a longer bill.)

There certainly could be a similar proposal in the next year, though it’s worth noting that this idea did not resurface during the last Trump administration.

Another possible development is a repeat from the first Trump administration: using their authority to call for needless and repetitive studies or analysis to slow down the process of awarding transit funds, costing local communities millions in delays (all while calling for relaxation of federal community protection regulations to speed highway projects). A different Congress could also certainly decide to cut the funding for expanding or building new transit, which is almost entirely discretionary rather than protected like formula programs.

(This was our progress report on awarded transit funding a year and a half into Trump’s first term—less than a third sent to projects in the pipeline.)

4. Changes to competitive grant programs

Every administration puts their own stamp on discretionary programs by choosing who/where to award them within the criteria created by Congress. For example, during the last Trump admin, the RAISE program shifted toward projects that states could fund but had deprioritized (largely rural road projects and fewer multimodal projects) rather than encouraging more innovative and multimodal projects. This will almost certainly be the case once again.

There has also been some chatter about de-funding some competitive programs in the next Congress, many notable ones are likely to survive as T4America Director Beth Osborne notes in this Q&A with David Zipper from November:

Switching toward highways, Project 2025 proposes terminating competitive grant programs like RAISE that allocate billions of dollars to state and local governments for high-priority projects. How realistic is that?

I don’t think Congress will let the Trump administration get rid of competitive programs, because legislators get so much credit for that spending. Federal formula programs just go to the states, and the states do what they want. But for the competitive grant programs, Congress gets a notification about new awards, and they have three days to do whatever event around them that they wish. Basically, Project 2025 was suggesting that Congress never get credit for federal spending in infrastructure again. Maybe that sounded good to the Heritage Foundation, but there’s a lot of Project 2025 that is divorced from the reality of how anything happens in the real world.

Some are also concerned that grants announced but not locked in by a grant agreement or obligated (meaning legally committed) could be revoked. The Trump Administration might try to do that for grants to projects they don’t support. But to do that, they would have to let the Congressional delegation know that a project they likely announced is now being taken away.

Congress could also look to unobligated funds to pay for the next transportation bill or a tax bill, and this has happened in the past with unspent earmarks. But generally this has occurred only after communities have had many, many years to spend their funding and it has become clear that they are unlikely to get their projects into the ground. One risk is that a Republican Congress decides to defund a program, like the passenger rail program, by saying the funding isn’t moving and needs to be put to a different priority that can use that money now.

5. Administrative actions will stop and change

USDOT has a lot of latitude to create and enforce rules and regulations to improve the effectiveness and safety of the transportation system, so it’s reasonable to expect that many good existing or pending rules will be shelved or reversed.

First, NHTSA’s proposal to create new requirements to finally consider the safety impacts of larger vehicles on people outside of the vehicles is almost certainly not going to be finalized. It will either be pulled completely or weakened. Second, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards which require more efficient vehicles will likely be frozen or even rolled back. (There are already a number of loopholes which allow automakers to trend toward larger, fuel-inefficient trucks and SUVs.)

And third, while companies are currently testing autonomous vehicles with almost no oversight in several states, we could see a resuscitation of the AV Start Act (read our archives here), the industry-led move to codify that practice into law nationwide. That would usher in widespread testing of autonomous vehicles across the country with almost no guardrails to ensure their safety, no requirement to collect and report data on their performance, no notifications to the public about when and where those tests are happening, and no oversight other than the voluntary oversight of the manufacturers and testers.

There will certainly be some negative developments over the next two to four years that we will need to organize and fight. And some hoped for actions that will not come to pass. But anyone who thinks that Republicans seizing control of the presidency and Congress means only a destructive reauthorization in 2026 fails to understand that past few reauthorizations—including the IIJA—that caused plenty of damage were fully supported by the majority of Democrats and how programmatic changes were put in place by the Biden administration over the last 4 years (check out Fueling the Crisis; additional analysis that will be out in the next few weeks). As we said during negotiations over the IIJA, Democrats and Republicans regularly join forces “to undermine their own goals for the sake of ‘bipartisanship,’ consistently passing bills that make U.S. transportation inefficient, expensive, unsafe, unsustainable and in poor condition. They both favor flexibility and deference over accountability for good outcomes and guaranteeing the taxpayer a good return for their investment.”

There will almost certainly be some negative developments ahead but on the whole, expect the same status quo to prevail. Which is not good news either.

Meeting the moment after the 2024 elections

We are heading towards a budgetary cliff on a transportation program that has failed to deliver on every one of its promises, from congestion and emissions reduction to improved safety and access to work. Strong leadership is needed to ensure our transportation system is able to meet the needs of average Americans.

The Biden Administration championed and delivered to us the 2021 surface transportation reauthorization, a massive investment in U.S. transportation that the administration claimed would modernize our infrastructure and address environmental concerns. As we wrote in our report Fueling the Crisis, this law failed to achieve its goals.

Traffic, emissions, and safety for people walking all worsened over the first half of this federal investment, and the next reauthorization will likely face the biggest budgetary cliff the program has ever seen. Before we discuss how to fill the coffers, we need a totally new approach to transportation investment and strong, visionary leadership to help turn these trends around.

The 47th president, Donald J. Trump, fashions himself as a disruptor. The transportation system is in need of disruption, as the current approach has failed the American people for decades. Taxpayers are driving further to accomplish less, and if they are unable to drive, they have few (if any) alternate options for travel.

However, if the president’s idea of disruption is to return us to the 1950s and 60s, his efforts will not be useful or effective. Stripping our transportation system down to the 1956 highway bill is no strategy to modernize our system to meet the needs of the day. Instead, this wasteful approach would only further entrench a system that is already failing to deliver for the American people.

The success of local ballot measures confirms what we have always known: everyday Americans need and desire a transportation system that safely and conveniently gets them where they need to go. Across the nation, voters made their voices heard on traffic safety, state of good repair, and above all, the need for more transportation options. Now, as always, we stand ready to support their goals, and we hope that Congress and the Trump Administration will be ready to do the same.

Voters across America show support for more transportation options

Throughout the United States, various measures for funding transportation improvements were approved, advancing efforts to invest in the rest at the local level.

An electric Central Ohio bus arrives at a stop with a nearby bikeshare station
Columbus, Ohio voters supported funding for improved bus service in the recent election. (Central Ohio Transit Authority)

In addition to the presidential, Senate, and House races that occurred during this tumultuous election cycle, American voters recently decided on a variety of transportation and housing measures for their communities. (See our recent post on success for transit in Nashville here.) No matter the outcome of the federal elections, these measures represent a desire to invest in the rest of our transportation system and secure more travel options. Here are four major highlights from the many measures that were voted for around the country.

Columbus, Ohio

Issue 47 raises the sales tax for the Central Ohio Transportation Authority (COTA) from 0.5% to 1% in order to fund LinkUs. The plan calls for 45% more bus service, the creation of five bus rapid transit (BRT) lines to create faster and more efficient bus service. This includes dedicated lanes, priority at signals, and 14 new bus routes. The plan would also provide eight new COTA//Plus zones, which provide subsidized rideshare in neighborhoods of Columbus without bus service.

Money from the new sales tax will also be used for pedestrian infrastructure to support walkable neighborhoods near the new transit lines. LinkUs will create opportunity and access for Columbus, which is expected to grow to over three million residents by 2050.

Durham, North Carolina

The Durham Streets and Sidewalk Measure authorizes the city to issue $115 million in bonds for street and sidewalk projects. This money will be used in a variety of projects, such as adding 12.4 miles of sidewalk, repaving an estimated 100 miles of streetscape, and continuing an ongoing project to pave the remaining 10.5 miles of unpaved streets in Durham. The success of this measure shows that voters in cities like Durham understand that fixing it first is vital to support a well-functioning transportation network.

A yellow line metro train arrives at an underground station
WMATA Yellow Line at L’Enfant Plaza Station. (Photo by author: Maxwell Reinisch, Transportation for America)

Fairfax County and Arlington County, Virginia

Both the Fairfax County and Arlington County transportation bond measures provide millions of dollars of bonds for public transit. Fairfax County provided $180 million in bonds for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) to assist with capital costs of acquiring land for transportation facilities, new train cars, and more. Arlington County also provided $72 million in bonds, including $44.3 million in funds for WMATA capital improvements, $22 million for improving local streets, and $1.5 million for sidewalk and curb maintenance, and $1.3 million for street lighting and miscellaneous transportation projects.

WMATA has made great strides in recovering ridership since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and these funds will allow WMATA to keep providing frequent, reliable service throughout DC and its surrounding counties.

Denver, Colorado and surrounding counties

Measure 7A allows the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) to collect and reinvest revenue from sales tax above the originally approved levels in 1999. Removing the limits from decades prior allows the RTD to continue to improve service for the Denver Metropolitan Area for the three million residents in Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, and Jefferson Counties as well as portions of Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas, and Weld Counties, which rely on RTD’s bus, light rail, and regional rail lines.

Why it matters

Municipalities around the country voted to invest in the rest in this last election, including funding for a more balanced transportation system that designs streets for safety over the speed of private automobiles.

While not every transit or transportation investment measure was passed, the majority were approved by voters. And where transportation measures failed, like in Charleston County’s Special Sales and Use Tax ballot measure, voters rejected funding for projects that would have gone to a highway expansion and negatively impacted the local environment.

It is important to acknowledge the progress that forward thinking communities in the country have made towards making our transportation system more equitable and sustainable for everyone. When determining how to support our nation’s transportation system, we hope that the incoming administration takes note of these trends.

Three transportation policy recommendations for state legislators and governors

As new and returning governors and legislators prepare to take office, Transportation for America urges them to consider key transportation policy recommendations in this transition memo.

Come January, thousands of new and returning elected officials across the country will return to legislative and executive offices, with a task to represent their constituents and make responsible decisions. If they want to ensure they get transportation right, we have three major recommendations to help newly elected and returning governors and state legislators ensure that communities have access to a safe, sustainable, and well-connected transportation system.

Fix it first

Despite major infusions of federal funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, states are still not prioritizing responsible management of their transportation assets. We are falling behind when it comes to maintaining the condition of our roadways, perpetuating an expensive backlog of roads in poor condition that will cost significantly more to repair in the future. As a result, drivers are forced to travel over miles of deteriorating bridges and highways, which can decrease fuel efficiency, damage their vehicles, and expose them to increased safety hazards. 

To prevent this problem from worsening, states need to assess whether they have sufficient funding to maintain any new infrastructure they plan to build while simultaneously being able to make progress on existing infrastructure. Setting and implementing aggressive repair goals, as well as publicly tracking them, creates visibility for constituents and bolsters the case for increasing funding for repair. The pressure to build more highways is strong and may sound more glamorous than maintenance, but an approach that values fixing what we have will deliver on high standards of repair, and key social, environmental, and economic outcomes.

Build more transit and more housing near it

Public transportation offers numerous benefits to communities, from saving hundreds of dollars a month by not having to maintain a private vehicle, to expanding economic growth for localities. Proper investments in transit can reap these benefits and more through creating more livable and efficient communities. However, states have often left the responsibility of managing transit services to local governments, creating an imbalanced approach to transit planning and spending. State-level funding for transit services is just as imperative as it is to building out highway systems, and should be treated as such.

The benefits of public transit can be further enhanced when housing access for all incomes is built near transit hubs. This allows individuals the opportunity to live in well-connected communities without the burden of owning a car. Current approaches to zoning encourage building single-family homes rather than allowing developers to respond to the market demand. States can address this by updating zoning codes to allow cities and developers to respond to market demand and build more housing near transit, rather than according to a decades-old zoning ordinance.

Build Complete Streets in all communities

We are in the midst of an alarming increase in pedestrian fatalities, with the number of people who are struck and killed or injured while driving reaching record highs in 2022. This epidemic continues to worsen because our nation’s streets are designed to move cars quickly, which comes at the expense of keeping people safe. Complete Streets offers an alternative approach to planning, building, and maintaining streets that provides safe access for all users, including pedestrians, motorists, bicyclists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities. This approach enables greater access for communities and increases economic activity, all while avoiding the costs associated with traumatic roadway crashes.

State DOTs can create and adopt Complete Streets policies that are designed to respond to your community’s unique needs and dedicate funding, staff resources, and accountability measures for its implementation. Historically, states have considered active transportation initiatives as local issues. Yet some of the most dangerous roads for walking and biking are owned and managed by state DOTs. State leadership in designing, funding, and maintaining active transportation infrastructure can make a big difference for improved safety and mobility outcomes.

While these recommendations stand on their own as common sense policy, it’s important that your politicians know that these policies are supported by you, their constituents. That’s why we strongly encourage you to share our transition memo yourself with your newly elected and re-elected officials. Doing so helps ensure that they know what matters most and how they could make sure their offices’ transportation policy would have the greatest impact for your community.

If you’re a new or returning legislator, we encourage you to review and share our recommendations to guide state transportation efforts memo.

 

A pause for TransportationCamp DC

backs of people at tcamp sticking sheets of paper with session proposals on the board

After careful consideration, Transportation for America is announcing that we have decided to pause TransportationCamp DC this coming January. For years, we’ve enjoyed hosting the event and particularly enjoyed bringing together all of the dedicated transportation leaders and advocates to share ideas, shape the future of mobility, and tackle pressing challenges like emissions reduction and street safety.

While it was a hard decision, it ultimately came down to two things: timing and resources. With the New Year’s Holiday falling on the Wednesday before TCamp, there’s not sufficient time for our staff to conduct the intense preparations that make this event so successful. Additionally, hosting the event requires significant funding and venue flexibility, which have been harder to secure in recent years, and this year in particular.

We understand that this year’s pause may be disappointing, but it offers a chance to reimagine how we can sustain the “unconference” in Washington, DC. If you or your organization would like to support future TransportationCamps through sponsorship or other contributions, we’d love to hear from you.

Thank you for being part of the TransportationCamp community. We look forward to working together to advance the conversations and new ideas that make this event so special.

We’ll see you soon!
Transportation for America

New tool to visualize transportation emissions—and how much we have left

A screenshot of a tool looking at the budgeted amount of GHG emissions through the lens of Business as Usual, Vehicle miles traveled reduction, and EV adoption Percentiles

Transportation’s role in emissions

According to the EPA, transportation was responsible for more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than any other sector of the economy in 2022—more than the agriculture, commercial, and residential sectors combined. Light-duty vehicles, such as the cars we use for daily trips, are responsible for 57 percent of these emissions—over 660 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent annually.

We have a finite amount of CO2 to emit to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and if the transportation sector continues to produce emissions at our current rate, even as we push for electric vehicle adoption, the damage will have already been done. 

Where we stand: The carbon countdown

When looking exclusively at the transportation sector, a conservative estimate suggests that as of 2020, only 26,000 million tonnes of CO2 emissions remain if we are to stay within 1.5°C of warming. Our new tool illustrates that if we continue to proceed with a business-as-usual (BAU) approach, we will exceed our budgeted transportation emissions by 2041—or by 2044, even with 50 percent EV adoption.

CO2 emissions from transportation must not exceed available limits. If we exceed our carbon budget at any point—even if the US ultimately achieves net-zero emissions—we will lock in global warming beyond 1.5°C, making future mitigation efforts moot. The consequences of delay will be felt for generations.

We can only realistically avert the worst effects by achieving the lofty goals of 1) achieving 100 percent EV adoption by 2040 or 2) getting halfway to 100% EV adoption while cutting people’s vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in half per capita, which will we reduce emissions enough to prevent catastrophic warming.

Check out the tool

This tool looks at scenarios exploring expected emissions and when the transportation sector will meet and surpass no-turning-back levels for 1.5°C of warming, even with different levels of VMT-reduction and electric vehicle adoption. 

Our tool uses a business-as-usual model to evaluate when we’ll run out of emissions. Our new report, Fueling the Crisis, finds that transportation projects funded by the 2021 infrastructure law are expected to increase emissions by an additional 77 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions over what would have occurred without these investments due to VMT-increasing projects—further locking us into a trajectory that exceeds out carbon budget. 

Transportation is responsible for more GHG emissions than any other sector of the economy. Why don’t we start acting like it? 

For many, the only answer to reducing transportation emissions has been to transition to electric vehicles—but continue to invest in a system that requires more driving and more vehicles to reach essential needs. The US government set aside $7.5 billion of funds from the IIJA to develop EV charging infrastructure (a fraction of what has already been spent on emissions-increasing projects), and the Inflation Reduction Act has created dozens of tax credits and programs to help support the creation of a competitive electric automotive industry to compete with Chinese manufacturers who have already mastered cheap EVs at scale. 

Electrifying the vehicle fleet is essential to decarbonizing the transportation system. But it is insufficient. Even as we have seen support from governments and an industry committed to the change, the average vehicle on the road today is over a decade old and increasing in age. Many combustion engine vehicles, which made up 84 percent of vehicles sold in 2023, will, by all indications, be on the road well into the 2040s.

If we electrify on time, but in the meantime, people continue to drive further, our transportation emissions will rise too quickly, and we will still exceed our carbon budget. And we’re far from on track currently: the EV transition appears to be taking longer than hoped and the transportation system we are building will force people to drive more often and for longer trips than ever before.

The way forward

To decarbonize transportation, we need aggressive EV adoption and investments in walking, biking, and transit infrastructure.

The main barrier to solving this issue is not fiscal but political, driven by leaders and bureaucrats whose imaginations have been limited by unrealistic models, unscientific standards, and outdated assumptions about people. With the IIJA set to expire in 2026 and the next transportation reauthorization facing a funding crisis, it is essential that our nation’s leaders modernize the approach to funding transportation projects.

Thank you to the Rocky Mountain Institute for their support of the tool, which pulls assumptions from RMI’s Smarter MODES calculator. Their calculator’s methodology can be found here.

Perseverance pays off for Nashville

A purple WeGo Nashville bus travels down a city street

After well over a decade of effort, fast-growing Nashville finally passed a transit funding referendum, proving that patience, perseverance and learning from mistakes leads to success.

A public bus in Nashville, TN (WeGo Transit)

The November 2024 elections will leave a lot to unpack in the coming weeks and months. So it’s understandable that you might have missed that Nashville’s $3.1 billion “Choose How You Move” transit referendum passed resoundingly on Tuesday with 66 percent support. This half-cent sales tax increase for consolidated Nashville-Davidson County will fund bus rapid transit expansion, transit service and the construction of 86 miles of sidewalk, as well as safety improvements and Nashville’s first opportunity to meaningfully invest in smart traffic signals.

Nashville’s success comes after many years of work and a previous loss at the ballot box.

Back in 2015, Transportation for America (alongside TransitCenter) led a Transportation Innovation Academy with leaders from Indianapolis, Raleigh and Nashville to share knowledge, visit cities with inspiring success stories, and help develop the local leadership to advance their transportation and transit plans. Key business leaders from each region participated, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

Both Indianapolis and Raleigh went on to pass transit funding measures in 2016. But Nashville’s first attempt—the “Let’s Move Nashville” referendum—failed hard in May of 2018, with 64 percent opposition. TransitCenter’s in-depth analysis of the ballot measure’s failure identified several key factors: The measure was developed in an insular fashion within the mayor’s office without broad community input, rushed forward without solid plans or robust public engagement, took African American support for granted, and failed to prioritize improving the city’s limited bus service.

This time was different!

Strong leadership and a good plan

Mayor Freddie O’Connell took ownership and took the lead, developing a plan that distributes benefits across the county. This included an emphasis on bus service that could deliver more transit to more neighborhoods, and synergistic improvements such as sidewalk infill, traffic signal upgrades and safety improvements that directly benefit non-transit riders.

Passengers in a shaded bus stop board the bus in Nashville, which is driving in a designated lane
Passengers make use of public transit in Nashville (Choose How You Move)

A large, diverse coalition of support

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, a Transportation for America member, was a leading supporter just as they were in 2018. “This significant vote represents decades of work and is a triumph for Nashville’s future,” said Ralph Schulz, President and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. “Mayor Freddie O’Connell deserves a great deal of credit for building a broad coalition of partners and developing a plan that people could get behind. With this investment, the Nashville region is now prepared to better capitalize on the opportunities it can provide its residents.”

The Chamber was joined by leading community groups. Supporters included the Urban League of Middle Tennessee, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH), and Shift Nashville, a coalition of three leading voices on racial justice, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Equity Alliance and Stand Up Nashville, announced their strong support for the measure in August.

In the campaign to win the ballot measure, the only substantive opposition was from a small anti-tax group “Committee to Stop an UnFair Tax.” This was in contrast to the 2018 measure, which had significant opposition from local and national conservative groups, as well as the Black faith community, who weren’t engaged on the substance of the plan nor brought into the process early enough. The campaign’s catchy but simple core message of “sidewalks, signals, service and safety” helped convey the broad benefits of the measure.

“For the first time in our city’s history, we will have dedicated revenue for transportation improvements, and that’s going to allow us to finally chip away at our traffic and cost of living issues,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “We all deserve more time with our friends and family and less time just trying to get to them. Throughout this process, Nashvillians have been clear. They want to be able to get around the city we all love more easily and more conveniently.”

More good news

The money that will result from this successful ballot measure is paired with some encouraging policy developments in the city. Mayor O’Connell issued an executive order on Complete Streets and the city has adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan that will guide investments. T4America’s sister program at Smart Growth America, the National Complete Streets Coalition, has been working with Nashville’s department of transportation to train their staff and others on Complete Streets and Vision Zero implementation. Earlier this year, Nashville and the Tennessee Department of Transportation participated in Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academy, during which they developed quick-build demonstration projects to improve street safety while strengthening their approach to community partnerships.

Nashville is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, but with infrequent and unreliable transit service and scores of city streets lacking sidewalks entirely, their approach to transportation has been stuck in the past. Voters were ready to do something. And on Tuesday, patience, perseverance and learning from past mistakes paid off.

Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

People add art to sidewalks along a quick build demonstration project complete with a flex post delineated bike lane and clearly marked crosswalk

It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

People add art to sidewalks along a quick build demonstration project complete with a flex post delineated bike lane and clearly marked crosswalk
A quick-build demonstration project in Chattanooga, TN, completed as part of Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academies.

Quick-build demonstration projects are temporary installations to test new street design improvements that improve safety and accessibility. Here are three reasons why you, your elected leaders, and your transportation agency should have them as a tool in your arsenal:

1. Improve safety quickly in the most dangerous places

If elected leaders or transportation agencies are truly committed to safety, they must consider ways to improve immediately.

Transportation in this country often moves at a snail’s pace. Between planning, community engagement, and construction, adding safe infrastructure can take years. But that can leave dangerous conditions unchanged for far too long. If the number one goal is safety, and we know where the most dangerous places are, then we should be doing everything possible to fix them as quickly as possible.

As opposed to the years required for many capital projects, quick builds can go up in a matter of a week, addressing pressing issues immediately. While we should plan long-term safety projects, making safety the number one priority means doing everything we can to implement change in the meantime.

2. Cheaply test specific designs, interventions, and materials

Transportation departments are rightfully worried about building things that will be in place for the next 30 years. It’s hard to move concrete once it’s poured. That is precisely why quick builds need to be used more.

While permanent changes to infrastructure may need years to plan, temporary measures that use paint and plastic don’t require the same level of deliberation. A quick build can test out possible designs using building materials that transportation departments already have on hand. The beauty of this is that it allows you to test a concept in real life (at very low cost), get feedback, and make it better. Quick builds can be iterated upon and provide data inputs for future, permanent projects.

Quick builds can also help foster vital partnerships between local transportation departments and state DOTs. The deadliest roads are owned by the states, with 54 percent of pedestrian deaths taking place on these roads. If localities want to design roads for safety and economic activity while a state DOT wants to move cars as quickly as possible, this can lead to friction. Quick builds allow these stakeholders to learn how to work with each other. Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academies put this idea into action in multiple states.

3. Build needed trust for stronger permanent projects

Building highways through neighborhoods and continually ignoring communities has led to a situation in which low-income and minority groups are disproportionately harmed by traffic violence. It takes years to build up trust in places that have been disregarded. Quick builds can help the process of restoring relationships by demonstrating the responsiveness of local agencies, showing that change is possible. If someone is killed in an intersection, swiftly changing the intersection means much more in comparison to filing a potential improvement away in a list of projects years from implementation.

How federal leaders can help

State DOTs look to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for guidance. FHWA has communicated that quick builds are allowed on state-owned roads, but that’s about as far as it goes—leaving state DOTs to do the heavy lifting on figuring out how to implement one in their state. This piecemeal approach means progress can be slow as each state works alone to discover best practices. To help make more quick builds a reality, the FHWA can provide a proactive guide to quick builds on state-owned roads and run training sessions for state DOT employees and FHWA regional offices.

So much of our transportation policy is based on a reactive response to issues. We wait for someone to get killed on a road, the community speaks out, and then the department of transportation (sometimes) acts. Quick-build demonstration projects are excellent ways to change road design today and are an important tool to finally prioritize speed over safety, but the work can’t end there. Quick builds are just the first step in building a safe transportation system. They are templates for a permanent, future change where safety is prioritized over speed.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

    It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

  • Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

    Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

  • Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

    Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

A young man and woman attempt to cross the street on a worn out crosswalk while two cars approach

Ask anyone at a state department of transportation, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

7,522 people were struck and killed while walking in 2022, an average of more than 20 deaths per day. These numbers represent the harsh reality many Americans see on a day-to-day basis: in most places across the U.S., there are few options to travel safely and comfortably outside of a vehicle. When that’s the case, a simple walk to school, work, or the grocery store can mean risking injury or death.

Some of the deadliest roads in the nation are state-owned—often wide, high-speed roadways that place an emphasis on vehicle travel, even as they cut through places where people frequently walk, bike, or roll. However, design changes on these deadly roadways often face pushback from state DOTs—even when those same DOTs claim that safety is their number one priority.

There is a logical disconnect between the way our leaders describe the goals of our roadways and the way our roadways are designed. Despite the stated goal of safety, engineers’ actual top priority is moving cars quickly—as evidenced by measures and models like value of time and level of service.

Years of research have shown that when roads are designed for vehicles to drive as quickly as possible, there are serious consequences for the safety of all other travelers. Yet the same design changes that would improve safety also come up against barrier after barrier to progress.

The change we need from state DOTs

The unfortunate reality is that our traffic engineers have been taught for decades that most problems can be solved with wide, high-speed lanes. Changing that thinking requires a real culture shift, starting at the very top. State DOTs require strong leadership and support to tailor projects to a well-defined problem and evaluate the outcomes of their decisions.

A willingness to rethink old models and reckon with the fact that the go-to solution hasn’t solved many of our transportation problems can go a long way in bringing about a safer travel environment. The good news is that alternative solutions are out there—if state DOTs are willing to give them a try. A select number of state DOTs have already started to implement change by, for example, navigating opportunities to utilize a Complete Streets approach on rural highways or trying out a quick-build demonstration project to boost engagement.

The typical approach to designing our roadways has left safety behind. We can’t curb the danger with more of the same. Going forward, state DOTs will need to think outside of the box to protect everyone traveling on their roads.

Our federal leaders have to be part of the solution

Guidance and regulations from USDOT often set standards that prioritize high-speed vehicle travel, but these same regulations also allow state DOTs to make safer choices if they wish. Unfortunately, practitioners at state DOTs don’t always seem to know they have this flexibility, and even if they are aware, they face additional barriers if they want to use it.

When state DOTs use extra time and effort to overcome these barriers and test out a new safety feature, this gets no notice from the federal government—even if it results in improved safety. In fact, if a state DOT does nothing and allows more people to die on their roadways, that DOT receives the same level of funding and attention as those making effective safety improvements. This creates a system where it is far more practical to maintain the deadly status quo than it is to implement proven safety methods.

Recently, our colleagues at Smart Growth America wrapped up a series of technical assistance projects to build partnerships between local communities and state DOTs and advance safety on state-owned roadways. T4A Director and VP of Transportation and Thriving Communities Beth Osborne reflected on the experience:

We’ve heard through our years of work, including most recently with participants in this program, that state DOT staff often feel left on their own to determine whether a non-traditional safety treatment they may like to try out is permitted by USDOT…even if it has a proven track record of improving safety. There is a great opportunity for federal leaders to work with states, local leaders, and safety and public health partners to foster and support more learning through demonstration projects with proactive new guidance.

For state DOTs to truly prioritize safety over speed, system-wide change is necessary—and they can’t do it alone. USDOT can help by providing affirmative guidance that promotes safety strategies that actually achieve results. Future legislation must also hold states accountable for choosing safety over speed.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

    It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

  • Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

    Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

  • Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

    Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

Principle #1: Safety over speed. Any serious effort to reduce deaths on our streets and roads requires slower speeds. Federal funding should require approaches and street designs that put safety first. Cartoon of the grim reaper tipping the scales towards pedestrian deaths while holding a speed limit: 55 sign.

Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.

Transportation in this country is fundamentally broken, creating a dangerous environment for everyone who uses it but especially for those outside of vehicles. The way we’ve built our roadways has transformed what should be easy trips into potentially deadly journeys. Though our cars have more safety features than ever—cameras, lane keep assist, automatic braking—those advancements have only served to protect people within vehicles. They didn’t save any of the 7,522 people killed while walking in 2022. In fact, as cars become safer for people inside the vehicle, they have gotten even larger and more deadly for people outside of them.

The fact of the matter is that fast-moving vehicles present a danger to people walking. We can’t address this danger if we are unwilling to commit to safer speeds.

We can’t do it all

The policies and practices that inform the design of our roadways often serve one primary goal: to move as many cars as possible, as quickly as possible. That negates the experience of everyone walking, biking, and rolling. Yet, if you asked the same people designing our roadways and dictating these policies whether safety is their top priority, they would absolutely say yes. Our approach to road design, reinforced by federal guidance and manuals, continually tries to juggle both speed and safety, when these two goals are fundamentally opposed.

When we try to prioritize both safety and speed, drivers end up receiving competing messages. Current roadway design requires people to drive perfectly while creating an environment that incentivizes risky behavior such as speeding. Safe roadways don’t ask people to slow down. They are designed so that safe speeds are the most intuitive option.

Less talk, more action

USDOT and other agencies have called for safer streets, but federal funding and policies haven’t led to results. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, including the relatively small amount of money set aside to specifically address safety compared to the much larger amount of money going to build even more dangerous roads.

State departments of transportation are allowed to set safety goals where more people die every year, knowing they will get more funding regardless. Meaningless “safety” targets allow governments to point their fingers and say they’re working on it while building even more deadly roads. The danger is often not addressed until multiple people get hurt. It’s no surprise that the majority of pedestrian deaths occur on federally funded, high-speed state roads.

There are not enough policies to support environments where safe mobility is available for all modes. The Surgeon General called to promote walking and walkable communities and to create a built environment that allows for human connection. The USDOT’s supposed top priority is safety and the Federal Highway Administration has a long-term goal of zero roadway deaths. But there’s no follow through on these statements. We want people to go on walks, and kids to play outside, and for there to be less deaths on the road, but our policies and tax dollars continue to primarily support projects that overlook non-vehicular traffic—at the expense of everyone else. Our transportation system is built on a series of hypocrisies.

If we want a system that moves people without killing them, we need to start putting our money where our mouths are. We need policies that put safety first, placing everyone’s well-being at the center of our roadway design.

It’s Safety Over Speed Week

Click below to access more content related to our first principle for infrastructure investment, Design for safety over speed. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Three ways quick builds can speed up safety

    It will take years to unwind decades of dangerous street designs that have helped contribute to a 40-year high in pedestrian deaths, but quick-build demonstration projects can make a concrete difference overnight. Every state, county, and city that wants to prioritize safety first should be deploying them.

  • Why do most pedestrian deaths happen on state-owned roads?

    Ask anyone at a state DOT, and they’ll tell you that safety is their top priority. Despite these good intentions, our streets keep getting more deadly. To reverse a decades-long trend of steadily increasing pedestrian deaths, state DOTs and federal leaders will need to fundamentally shift their approach away from speed.

  • Why we need to prioritize safety over speed

    Our roads have never been deadlier for people walking, biking, and rolling and the federal government and state DOTs are not doing enough. If we want to fix this, we have to acknowledge the fact that our roads are dangerous and finally make safety a real priority for road design, not just a sound bite.