Skip to main content

Author Archives: Corrigan Salerno

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.

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.

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.

Four ways our federal leaders can invest in the rest

Photograph of a street facing the U.S. Capitol with bike lanes down the middle and pedestrians utilizing a crosswalk

While we might have the most extensive highway infrastructure in the world, the U.S. is delivering pitifully poor results compared to our peers when it comes to cost, efficiency, emissions, and safety. What can Congress and USDOT do to invest in the rest?

Under federal transportation policy, funding for highways greatly outpaces transit. Worse, it is hard to overstate how little of total funding has been allocated to building sidewalks and bike routes. For Americans who are unable to drive or lack regular access to a car, the lack of alternative options has very real consequences. In addition, when we fail to invest in opportunities to walk, bike, and take public transit, communities lose out on the wide-scale benefits these options provide. Multimodal transportation investments that make transit and walking more practical options for people promote ecologically and fiscally sustainable options for economic development.

Our system today costs us much more than we think, with poor outcomes for all users, including public health and climate outcomes, which have a disproportionate impact on Black and low-income communities historically marginalized from transportation decision-making. We continue to invest in road capacity expansions as our go-to strategy to alleviate congestion or drive economic growth, despite proof that this strategy does not work. As a result, cities remain locked in a Sisyphean strategy that continues to leave us stuck in traffic, even after COVID-19, with more remote work options than ever.

A bar chart compares transit funding with highway funding in federal investments from 1991 to 2021. In every bill except the 2021 ARP that only funded transit ($31B), highway spending dwarfs transit spending, with the largest discrepancy appearing in the IIJA ($432B for highways and $109B for transit). Cumulative spending since 1991 is also significantly higher for highways than transit, with cumulative spending by 2021 reaching $1413B for highways and $359B for transit.
Across recent major bills, federal investment in highway programs has vastly outpaced investments in transit.

Instead of continuing oversized investments in the bloated federal highway program that fail to deliver results, the next transportation reauthorization bill needs to invest in the rest to build a world-class, multimodal transportation system. Here are some steps Congress and USDOT can take to get started.

1. Fix the data

We need quality data to make quality decisions. Transportation generates plenty of opportunities to collect data, from vehicular speed and throughput to how many miles of bike lane are being built. However, ensuring data quality matters much more than raw quantity of measures alone. While we have plenty of data-oriented solutions and measures to advance and plan specific transportation projects, the data underlying our system is full of holes.

Right now, it’s difficult for policymakers and advocates to determine how we are spending our money and to identify the actual effects of spending trends. Critical performance measure data tracked by the Federal Highway Administration can take years to update or be presented incomplete, missing data entirely. But even quality data is insufficient when we interpret it through the same old flawed processes that take us to the same old conclusions that lead us to the same bad outcomes.

We need better information to make better decisions at the federal, state, and local levels. Practitioners should have access to tools that effectively model and account for induced demand, land use changes, greenhouse gasses, and access to jobs and services in ways that can inform investment decisions away from strategies that have not worked in the past. Current and planned transportation investments should be reported on a more standardized basis in order for state advocates to understand where their funds are actually going.

2. Better utilize federal programs

The transformative investment levels required to provide a world class transportation system won’t be met with small, individual discretionary grant programs alone. The real workhorses of the federal transportation program—the Surface Transportation Block Grant and National Highway Performance Program—often provide a significant portion of federal funds for states to invest how they see fit, which almost always means building more roads. Spending on new road capacity is delivering diminishing returns and should be rededicated to opportunities to take public transit or walk, bike, and roll.

Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), there are many programs available to create more transportation options. However, finding and applying for these funds can be a strain on communities. Congress should consider consolidating the number of programs and expanding the size of smaller programs that provide funding access for local communities to address local safety, access, and resilience priorities. In implementing these federal programs, USDOT should streamline grant applications for smaller localities and jurisdictions while continuing to provide specialized assistance and relevant application information for lower resourced communities.

3. Fund transit operations, and use funding to boost frequency

When properly supported, transit provides immense value to communities and users from all walks of life. Unfortunately, transit has received significantly less support over the years compared to highway projects.

In order to unlock the transformative economic, climate, and equity benefits that transit can bring to a region, transit service needs to be frequent and provide access to jobs and services. We can do this by helping to fund transit operations and structuring federal grant programs to provide a pathway for transit agencies to reliably increase service and frequency to get people where they need to go.

Pairing the above with walkable, denser development around transit and a method to raise revenues that captures the value transit brings to a region could help advance investments in building out our transit systems, making them even more valuable resources.

4. Build out the passenger rail network

The IIJA is proving to be a launchpad for a passenger rail revival in the United States. There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way. However, as projects develop, there’s still much more work to be done and it takes a long time to bring a train up to top speed. If we want to build off our successes, reauthorization should ensure that we don’t stop building our rail network commitments now. Continuing our investments in national connectivity, and service is the best path forward to a strong national rail system. Learn more about how federal leaders can help advance passenger rail here.

The stakes

Congress and USDOT can play a major role in supporting a multimodal, world-class transportation system. Providing a floor for consistent investment in transit and active transportation infrastructure will be vital in ensuring that every American can reach their destinations safely, conveniently, and efficiently.

It’s Invest in the Rest Week

Click below to access more content related to our third principle for infrastructure investment, Invest in the Rest. Find all three of our principles here.

  • Four ways our federal leaders can invest in the rest

    While we might have the most extensive highway infrastructure in the world, our system is delivering pitifully poor results compared to our peers when it comes to cost, efficiency, emissions, and safety. What can Congress and USDOT do to invest in the rest?

  • Week Without Driving showcases the need to invest in the rest

    Last week, Transportation for America joined organizations and advocates nationwide in the Week Without Driving challenge. During this week, all Americans, including transportation practitioners and policymakers, are encouraged to travel without a car, allowing them to experience local barriers to walking, biking, and taking public transit firsthand.

  • Time to tip the scales in favor of more transportation options

    For decades, federal highway funding and funding for all other types of transportation (public transit, opportunities to walk and bike) have been severely unbalanced. In order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, pedestrian deaths, and traffic, the Department of Transportation must invest in more transportation alternatives.

Maximizing the benefits of EV charging with the RECHARGE EV Act

Two EV charging plugs rest on either side of a retrofitted gas pump bearing a faded label

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is rolling out billions in funding for high-powered electric vehicle chargers along highways, but the main beneficiary of these funds has been gas stations—meaning we’re missing out on prime opportunities to support other local businesses. A new bill introduced to Congress last week could enable electrification funds to drive economic development opportunities in small towns.

Two EV charging plugs rest on either side of a retrofitted gas pump bearing a faded label
In a public parking lot in downtown Chico, California, an EV charging station housed in an historic gas pump. (Flickr, Don Barrett)

Across the country, states have begun the rollout of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program. NEVI is designed to eliminate anxiety over EV range by supporting longer trips with an interstate-centered network of EV chargers.

Under this $5 billion federal program, states have been tasked with deploying high-powered EV fast-charging sites, eventually accommodating all Americans with public charging opportunities at least once every 50 miles along designated highways. Over 500 new high-power electric vehicle charging sites have been announced so far (with sites being announced at an accelerating pace), and the IIJA is beginning to deliver on its promise to bring unprecedented support for electric vehicles.

As we explained in our first blog on NEVI, FHWA-issued guidance requiring states to plan their NEVI charger sites within one mile of designated highway exits has strongly influenced the types of sites that receive federal funding. This leaves only a narrow band of land eligible for NEVI funding, restricting the potentially transformative impact that the $5 billion program could achieve, especially for rural communities.

Under the one-mile guidance, states’ programs have shown heavy biases towards awarding hundreds of millions in funds to gas stations and truck stops—in fact, these locations make up about 70 percent of all awards so far. While the IIJA called for NEVI to consider existing fuel retailers, the law also called for the program to prioritize small businesses.

When fully built out, the national network of NEVI-funded public chargers will extend through hundreds of miles of rural areas. While a rural town’s borders’ could stretch up to a highway, it is often the case that the core of communities, where federal investments could make the biggest impact, are close, but down a road less traveled compared to major interstates, too far away to receive federal funding under NEVI. This means that many rural towns, located slightly more than a mile from an interstate, could be missing out on federal transportation electrification funds, even if it could represent a major opportunity to support local business and enhance the traveler experience with more service options while waiting for the vehicle to charge.

Win-win-win strategies for the EV transition

Thankfully, Congress is now making an effort to seize this opportunity, with the recent introduction of Representative Trone’s RECHARGE EV Act (which stands for Revitalizing Economic Competitiveness of Highway Adjacent Areas with Reliable Green Energy for Electric Vehicles—because Congress loves acronyms). Instead of only allowing exceptions to the NEVI program’s one-mile rule for technical reasons, the bill would allow states to turn electrification into even more of a win-win-win: a boost for small-town local businesses and their customers, greater distribution of benefits to rural communities, and increased flexibility for NEVI deployment.

Small business boosts

To understand the value of local EV charging stations, keep in mind that NEVI-funded Level 3 Direct Current Fast Chargers can take between 20 minutes to an hour to recharge a depleted EV. That’s time that vehicle owners could be spending sight-seeing and popping into nearby shops.

A recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that EV charging stations boost spending at nearby businesses, an effect we described previously as Charger Oriented Development. According to their research, businesses with EV chargers within walking distance received thousands of dollars more revenue annually, and the effect was even greater in disadvantaged communities. Instead of gas stations, siting NEVI chargers in rural towns could provide an economic boost to small businesses, rural towns, and historically disadvantaged communities, if guided by a smart growth lens. As an added bonus, the increased access to varied amenities could enhance the traveler experience and provide opportunities to get needed items and services at one stop, potentially reducing overall miles traveled.

Equitable electric upgrades in a constrained supply chain

Beyond the Level 3 EV chargers themselves, NEVI funding helps subsidize the electric infrastructure work required to get those stations powered up and running, such as installing transformers, or wiring to chargers. A major hang-up for swift deployment of the NEVI program today (and likely in all types of future electrification programs) is a national shortage of electrical equipment and infrastructure. This shortage leads to long waitlists for key electrical components necessary to install before powering up EV charging stations.

One way to stretch these vital resources is to deploy new electric infrastructure in ways that benefit the most people in a given community. While upgrades at remote gas stations could enable charging at just one lot, installations centered on small towns could help jumpstart a community’s access to future electrification opportunities they might otherwise miss out on.

Increased flexibility and options to build towards national goals

We need both transportation electrification and more opportunities to travel outside of a car in order to achieve emissions reduction that averts the worst consequences of climate change. The RECHARGE EV Act would give states greater flexibility and discretion to pursue electrification in ways that more efficiently distribute benefits to communities. Besides adding to the national network, placing these chargers in communities can show how rural stakeholders that they, too, can participate in the electrification transition.

The RECHARGE EV Act is a small but meaningful step towards more inclusive and effective EV infrastructure that prioritizes rural small businesses and the experience of everyday travelers. While NEVI is part of our essential efforts to reduce transportation emissions through electrification, the program still has a long way to go to maximize its potential. By thinking beyond the one-mile rule, this legislation not only enhances national access to electric vehicle charging but also stimulates local economies and fosters greater access to EV charging and future electrified opportunities.

Powering up communities: New grant to accelerate electrification & smart growth

electric bikes line up at a docking station on a wide sidewalk in madison, wisconsin

Across the country, municipalities and transit agencies are beginning to embrace electrification in local transportation. They’re showing that the future of transportation does not have to be just electrified cars. And thanks to the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, there’s a new funding opportunity to help local communities go electric.

electric bikes line up at a docking station on a wide sidewalk in madison, wisconsin
Electric bikeshare docking station in Madison, Wisconsin. (WORT News)

In our Smart Growth and EVs series, we outlined some of the electrifying strategies that work hand-in-hand with the existing benefits of smart growth development. Among them, we singled out e-bikes/e-micromobility, carshare, multifamily housing, curbside charging challenges, and charger-oriented development. While projects are ramping up across the country to build out the NEVI program’s new network of interstate charging stations, programs that support opportunities to walk, bike, and take public transit have often started not at the national level, but in our own backyards.

Thanks to flexible provisions in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a new grant program from the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation will put $54 million in funding in communities’ hands to help pilot and expand electric mobility options through smart growth strategies. The grant will support expanded access for people who can’t charge at home (like apartment dwellers), electric fleets, and managed charging to help fill in the gaps that larger programs might be missing.

Supporting electric fleets

Fleets of all sizes move forward under this grant—and for good reason. Electrified fleets can offer big bonuses for operators. Over the last few months, transit agencies and states have had the opportunity to apply for funding to expand clean bus fleets under the Low or No Emission Bus Program. However, they’re not the only entities that could use electric fleets to decarbonize mobility. Work to innovate and expand micromobility, light duty, and medium duty fleets are all eligible for this grant—and there’s been no shortage of innovative deployments in cities and localities already.

The Washington, DC region’s Capital Bikeshare system has seen ridership explode as of late. The DC region itself is full of hills, and when it comes to protective, modern bike infrastructure, DC is falling behind its peer cities. Despite that, ridership continues to grow. In March 2024, the bikeshare system saw over 430,000 trips, up over 50 percent from the previous year and continuing a trend of record use. There’s a culprit powering the trend—of all rides, about 50 percent were on the system’s newer e-bikes. And these big ridership boosts didn’t take much; only 1 in 7 bikes in the fleet are actually electrified. As a force for equitable mobility and transportation decarbonization, e-bike shares continue to stand out as a key strategy. (And this only scratches the surface once you consider the huge potential to reduce emissions from new e-bike subsidies, like those in Colorado and other states have).

Advancing EV carshare

Some localities have partnered with nonprofits to offer electric carshare that offers low-emission mobility to those who need it most. Evie Carshare in Minneapolis-St.Paul region, and Colorado Carshare in Denver metro help undercut costly car ownership by allowing people to use EVs only when they need them. Under this grant, non-profit organizations (like Evie Carshare and Colorado Carshare) and for-profits alike would be eligible for funding to plan, pilot and deploy fleets with awards up to $4 million.

Strengthening smarter charging infrastructure

Looking forward to a future powered by renewable energy and zero-emission fleets, one challenge will be balancing energy needs against generation capacity. Even today, increased demand for electricity from both EVs and development can be too much for existing utilities in certain areas. How municipalities and utilities will coordinate to increase capacity remains an open question. Managed charging helps alleviate these issues before they happen by leveraging software and systems to ensure that vehicles get charged at times most optimal for the grid and the vehicle. This program seeks to get ahead of these issues that dense, in-demand locations are very likely to face. And for many of those people who live in multifamily housing, new projects for charging models that minimize frustrating charger queues and enable curbside charging near essential destinations could make all the difference to electrify trips. Introducing mobility wallets that hold funds people could use for any mode (from transit, e-bikeshare time or EV carshare) could streamline charging even further.

Going beyond the main funding programs for electrification (like the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, Charging and Fueling Infrastructure, and Low or No Emission programs) it’s a great sign that the Joint Office is still looking for ways to deliver funding where it’s still needed and could offer scalable decarbonization benefits with improvements. This is especially true when the funding opportunities play so well with smart growth strategies.

FTA helps deliver more buses for less

The Federal Transit Administration is working hard to ensure that the next rounds of the Low or No Emissions Grant Program and Buses and Bus Facilities Program do the most for riders—and the climate. Here’s how.

Read our original letter and our thank you to the FTA.

A bus rolls to a stop on a bustling city street as pedestrians walk down a wide sidewalk in the background

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA)’s Low or No Emissions Grant Program (Low No) and Buses and Bus Facilities Program have been delivering new transit vehicles to communities across the country since 2016. But when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, or the 2021 infrastructure law) passed, the bill supercharged the program. Funding for the Low No program increased over five times the previous levels, growing from $182 million for 49 awardees in fiscal year 2021 to $1.22 billion across 130 grant winners in fiscal year 2023. With all that money flowing into communities, the transition to zero emission transit systems should be accelerating at scale.

However, funding isn’t everything. Without proper policy in place, the way that funding is spent could mean less transit service per dollar, not more. According to the Eno Center for Transportation, zero emission buses purchased with federal funding cost more per bus than buses purchased without federal dollars.

Under the previous structure for the Low No program, transit agencies had flexibility to use federal dollars to customize their purchases nearly as much as they wanted, without sharing costs for extra features or preferences. And this doesn’t just create a nuisance—combined with other economic forces, this cost has worked to outweigh the benefits of historic funding increases. In battery electric bus manufacturer Proterra’s 2023 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, they claimed that excessive customization and long lead times for payments from transit agency customers played a role in their fall.

While some customization to meet performance needs is warranted, at the end of the day, a bus is a bus—frequency and network coverage matters above all for riders. So CHARGE, supported by the National Campaign for Transit Justice, sent a letter to the FTA urging for reforms to ensure that the IIJA’s historic funding is used more effectively to deploy clean buses in communities across the country.

In line with the administration’s equity and domestic industry goals, the FTA responded to our letter and updated the Low No and Buses and Bus Facility program to help ensure riders will get more buses, for less money, faster, while also making sure local manufacturing can work at scale. Along with new guidance, the FTA has made new changes to this year’s notice of funding, incentivizing applicants to minimize vehicle customization and reform procurement processes, helping more clean buses get out to communities faster than ever.

We thank the FTA for their responsiveness and willingness to pivot in its implementation of the IIJA to maximize the benefits it can provide, getting more buses to more people for fewer dollars.

Transportation for America co-leads the Coalition Helping America Rebuild and Go Electric (CHARGE). Learn more about the coalition here.

It’s nearly impossible to understand how our tax dollars are spent on transportation

Highways overlap over a desert landscape in Arizona

T4America used artificial intelligence to find out how states are spending money from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Two findings are clear: More money alone will still fail to produce change, and it’s far too complicated to figure out where our transportation dollars are going.

Highways overlap over a desert landscape in Arizona
Photo by Jared Murray on Unsplash

In negotiations over the 2021 infrastructure law, the Senate discarded most of the ambitious policy improvements in the House’s INVEST in America Act, instead opting to create scores of new good but small discretionary grant programs for lowering emissions or investing in transportation options while increasing funding overall for the same flexible pots of money that states can spend with few restrictions. Still, the White House and many senators assured us that this bill would lead to a climate victory—often pointing to the small pots of money set aside for emissions reduction efforts.

As the infrastructure law continues to fund thousands of projects, we’ve developed new tools using artificial intelligence to individually categorize project descriptions to categorize how that funding is being spent. And while our methods for analyzing federal transportation spending have evolved into the 21st century, state spending is firmly stuck in the last one, devoting more than $33 billion from the IIJA (so far) to highway expansion. It turns out that giving state DOTs more money with few strings attached results in even more of the same: emissions-increasing highway widenings.

According to recent news coverage, our analysis has struck a chord:





While new discretionary grant programs have been able to offset some of these emissions, relying on cities, transit agencies, and localities to pursue small amounts of funding to offset this massive influx of emissions has produced limited results.

It shouldn’t take dedicated national nonprofits to sort out this information

The simple truth is that it’s incredibly complex to find out where the money from IIJA is being spent by states, and even then, results in a relatively limited view. How can the public have a chance to decide if the $1.2 trillion in new infrastructure money in the IIJA was a smart decision when it’s so difficult to find out where that money is being spent?

While this analysis shines a light on more than 57,000 projects, it’s only the tip of the iceberg. While federal dollars are eventually tracked on USASpending.gov, state-funded projects are not tracked in any central location. There are billions of dollars that this analysis cannot account for, programmed away in over 50 different formats within their State Transportation Improvement Programs (STIPs) that spell out state spending plans across the country.

Federal sources could be improved as well. Of the projects we looked into, 56,106 were from the FHWA, which does a much better job of reporting and obligating funds to states compared to the FTA. And this dataset is changing every month. Already, over 2,000 new projects have been added to our initial USAspending.gov query since our first analysis—and we plan to revisit it in the future.

As a taxpayer, these federal dollars are coming out of your pockets. Yet the lack of transparency on how this money gets spent leaves much to be desired. Even more alarming than the lack of transparency is where the money is going. The new and widened roads that states built with the funding will not lead to freedom from congestion, but instead, might have just consumed dollars that could have been invested in alternatives to road congestion and the existing network of roads and sidewalks. Next time, if we want better outcomes for climate, connectivity, and the economy at large, our leaders need to be clear about how they’re spending our money. That means stronger policy in the next reauthorization, and better reporting as soon as possible.

Our analysis on state transportation spending isn’t over. Stay tuned for additional updates.

The IIJA is a climate time bomb. Will states defuse it?

A highway dotted with cars cuts through the natural landscape, creating a scar that mirrors the environmental harm of ever-increasing highway expansions

Despite the transportation sector being the biggest emitter of U.S. greenhouse gasses, our AI-powered analysis of over 57,000 infrastructure law-funded state projects shows that over a quarter of the law’s formula dollars are funding highway expansion projects that will drastically increase emissions. Will states reverse course with the last two fiscal years of funding? 

A highway dotted with cars cuts through the natural landscape, creating a scar that mirrors the environmental harm of ever-increasing highway expansions
Photo by Graham Ruttan on Unsplash

In a recent briefing with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in Washington, DC, Delaware Senator Tom Carper took to the stage and reflected on the 2021 infrastructure law (also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA), and its importance in the fight against climate change. While several Democratic senators have touted the IIJA as important for reducing emissions, as it currently stands, the landmark legislation has not made a positive impact.

While it is true that the IIJA gave states an unprecedented opportunity to use formula program dollars towards emissions-reducing projects, state DOTs also retained the flexibility and authority to invest in traditional, unsustainable road-building projects. Climate researchers found that states are key in determining if the infrastructure law would reduce emissions or use the new funding to make the current problem that much worse.

Keeping these two potential outcomes in mind, we set out to determine how states are actually using the IIJA’s historic funding. With the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI), we categorized thousands of infrastructure law federal award project descriptions (here’s an example) in line with the Georgetown Climate Center’s Transportation Investment Strategy Tool. We now have a picture of how states are using their federal program funding.

Through the analysis, we categorized over $130 billion in funding that has been reported as obligated (or designated to be spent) using IIJA funding from over 56,000 Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) projects, over 1,200 Federal Transit Administration (FTA) grants, and dozens of grants from the Office of the Secretary and Federal Railroad Administration.

While we’re still just scratching the surface of this massive data set, what we found does not paint a pretty picture.

Our findings

Pie chart with the follow title Analysis of reported obligated IIJA funding $ by investment categories: Data from AI-assisted analysis of 57,443 FTA, FRA, OST, and FHWA award obligations reported to USAspending.gov Data include: Highway expansion $33,506,244,027.20 Highway Resurfacing $36,377,911,153.17 LDV Electrification $138,625,649.44 Truck & Bus Electrification $211,959,511.00 Freight & Operations $1,740,979,406.89 Land Use, Active Modes, TDM $4,252,078,389.04 Transit and Passenger Rail $25,561,955,692.49 Other $28,615,727,527.86

Instead of using the historic funding levels to give people alternatives to congestion, pollution, and car dependency, our analysis finds that states have designated over $33 billion in federal dollars (over 25 percent of analyzed funds) toward projects that expand road capacity, doubling down on a strategy that has failed time and time again. Worse still, states and authorities are slow to designate funds for transit and other emissions-reducing projects and even slower to outlay (actually spend) funds relative to FHWA dollar spending, even as we’re running out of time to reduce emissions in the face of climate change. Only about 20% of FTA formula apportionments from fiscal year 2022 to 2024 are reported as obligated in this dataset, while 64% of FHWA formula apportionments are reported obligated, in line with reporting from USDOT. There is also concern that if IIJA funds are not obligated/designated to be spent within a specified period of time, they could expire (or lapse) and become unavailable for use.

To maintain just the literal surface of the nation’s massive inventory of roads, nearly 28% of analyzed funding has gone to highway resurfacing, a strategy that the Georgetown Climate Center’s Transportation Investment Strategy Tool found to help reduce emissions. Considering other infrastructural work unrelated to on-road emissions, we found that road maintenance accounts for more than half of all FHWA formula spending.

Bar Chart with the following title: Analysis of obligated FTA and FHWA formula funds: Data from project funding reported as obligated to USASpending.gov. Data include: FHWA Formula Total Obligations (reported) $103,198,290,931 Total FY22-FY26 Apportionment Estimates $273,132,500,000 FTA Formula Total Obligations (reported)$7,937,328,555 Total FY22-FY26 Apportionment Estimates $69,155,896,561

Our analysis includes only the information provided by the federal government on USAspending.gov. State DOTs and federal agencies are slow to update project spending data, and many discretionary awards are not yet uploaded to USAspending.gov, so this analysis does not reflect all of the IIJA’s spending. Instead, we intend this analysis to shine a light on how states are using the largest, most flexible, and often least understood chunk of federal funding—federal highway formula funds. Without federal guardrails on states or a drastic change in spending priorities, our analysis predicts a substantial increase in GHG emissions if current trends persist.

We’re only just approaching the midway point for the IIJA, which is set to expire on September 30, 2026. If states continue to fund and advance projects in the same way that they’ve done so far, the IIJA will have an alarming impact on the climate. If states do not change course, the IIJA is on track to produce an additional 178.5 million tonnes of CO2e GHG over baseline emissions by 2040. According to the EPA, this is the emissions equivalent of running 48 coal-fired power plants for a full year.

Bar chart with the following title: National Net Emissions Production by Transportation Investment Strategy showing emissions (of CO2e GHG) created by highway expansion, emissions reduced by other programs, and the subtotal cumulative emissions. Results show the IIJA is on track to produce 178.5 million tonnes of CO2e GHG over baseline by 2040.

While the IIJA could have been a win for the environment, across the country, states have instead used this once-in-a-generation level of funding to expand roadways the same way they’ve been doing for years. Considering the billions of federal dollars already spent on highway expansion projects, it’s going to take more than self-congratulation over the bill’s historic funding to undo the environmental harms. In light of our findings that state spending continues to undermine climate goals, the administration cannot compromise on reducing transportation emissions and must explore every means available. Congress needs to get real—the largest and most growing sector of emissions is transportation. If we want to tackle congestion and the climate crisis, instead of offering platitudes, the next transportation bill needs to offer clean mobility options, like transit, car share, active modes, and electrification—not just the same strategies that got us in this position in the first place.

United States Reported Obligation Strategy Breakdown

AI-assisted analysis based on data reported to USAspending.gov, updated 2/15/24. 

StrategyTotal $Total CO2 Saved
Other Non-Reducing$28,615,727,5280
System operations$1,490,802,9237,290,026
Electric transit buses$202,807,446979,560
Travel demand management$499,844,9502,214,313
Light duty EV’s: vehicles$106,276460
Light duty EV’s: infrastructure$138,519,373469,581
Land use/smart growth$47,297,073118,716
Electric trucks – MDT/urban$00
Electric trucks – HDT/short-haul$5,985,06510,653
Electric school buses$00
Hydrogen trucks – long-haul$3,167,0003,927
Freight/intermodal$250,176,484297,710
Passenger rail electrification$00
Micromobility: e-bike ownership subsidies$00
SGR: Bus$5,185,233,9992,385,208
Bicycle investment$1,879,072,466770,420
Bus service: efficiency$906,794,442299,242
highway resurfacing$36,377,911,15311,277,152
SGR: Urban rail$5,113,561,1671,278,390
Electric microtransit$30,785,4466,465
Intercity rail$8,751,313,5731,662,750
Transit fare reduction$00
Pedestrian investment$1,822,206,721236,887
Urban rail$1,513,168,610196,712
SGR: Commuter/intercity rail$2,737,602,045328,512
Micromobility: shared e-scooters & e-bikes$3,657,179219
Commuter rail$317,520,07315,876
Bus rapid transit$533,558,47821,342
Shared ride incentives$35,431,1881,063
Bus service: expansion$436,986,673-43,699
Highway expansion$33,506,244,027-69,022,863

Takeaways from the Smart Growth Electrification Roundtable

A group of people in formal business attire sits in a conference room listening to a member of the roundtable speak

On January 23, 2024, Transportation for America, in partnership with the Bicameral Electrification Caucus, organized a roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill on the vital connection between smart growth and transportation electrification, and the strategies that need to be prioritized to achieve transportation equity and decarbonization goals in the next transportation reauthorization. When it comes to decarbonizing transportation it’s not about either-or. We need both electrification and more mobility choices to meet our emissions targets.

A group of people in formal business attire sits in a conference room listening to a member of the roundtable speak

Roundtable recap

In our EVs and Smart Growth series, we discussed many of the opportunities, strategies and challenges that could be deployed to maximize the emissions-reducing benefits of electrification and smart growth strategies. The top takeaway? We need to implement both policies that give people more mobility options and transportation electrification policies. Otherwise, we will not hit our climate targets. Last month, we brought together experts from the CHARGE Coalition to amplify the many different ways to implement transportation electrification while achieving sustainable, smart growth goals.

At the roundtable, we were joined by the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, the federal agency at the forefront of transportation electrification. Created as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Joint Office is leading the push to electrify, providing technical assistance to communities, developing reports, convening stakeholders, and recently, awarding funds for charger repair and innovative projects.

Forth, a nonprofit focused on expanding equitable access to electric transportation, was recently awarded funds by the Joint Office to help support an equitable electric transition. At the roundtable, Forth amplified their work building shared electric mobility programs through carshare and increasing access to charging in multifamily housing.

Forth wasn’t the only one touting the benefits of electric carshare programs. East Metro Strong has been working on carshare hubs centering multifamily and affordable housing from their base in Minneapolis-St. Paul. In areas where transit does not yet work for all trips, carshare can bridge mobility gaps that might otherwise require people to take on the costly prospect of car ownership—and this strategy should have a place in the next reauthorization.

Forth will be hosting a workshop on Equitable Electrification Transportation for Communities in Washington, DC on March 14, 2024.

re:Charge, a company working to build shared electric micromobility charging hubs to decrease downtime and charging costs, joined the roundtable to highlight the success of shared micromobility programs in cities. They also explained how sustained federal support could unlock the mode’s equity-boosting and traffic-reducing benefits. For example, while investor-owned shared-fleet micromobility has seen success in some markets and struggles in others, e-micromobility has helped catapult DC’s Capital Bikeshare to record heights.

As the transition to electrified transit fleets continues, jurisdictions will need support and resources to manage their new assets. At the roundtable, the Center for Transportation and the Environment advocated for increased technical assistance and support to ensure smooth clean fleet deployments. CALSTART, another organization helping lead the transition for buses, trucks, and other medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, outlined the opportunities to draw from state-level transportation electrification programs. Innovative programs are available at the state level, including the Clean Mobility Options program, which provides in-depth technical assistance to communities throughout the implementation process. New transportation reauthorization programs should be designed to clearly allow new approaches that work for cities and provide the support needed to implement them.

The Zero Emission Transportation Association, representing EV and charger manufacturers and other industries in the EV environment, emphasized the growing importance of charger co-location with amenities (or what we call charger-oriented development), and recognition from industry that it’s time to move charging away from the traditional gas station model. Finally, the New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO) uplifted how relatively small but smart charging policies could help make the difference for an urbanized electric transition. In dense contexts, private charging infrastructure can be leveraged to increase charging options for more users with the simple addition of a cable and meter. Policies should take into account ways that private investments can be leveraged to boost charger network coverage for all users.

Two paths forward

Chart showing that, under the business-as-usual (BAU) approach, without changing vehicle fleet composition, cumulative lifecycle emissions reach 150 gigatonnes. Under both the high electrification strategy and high mode shift strategy alone, cumulative lifecycle emissions are curtailed to just above 100 gigatonnes. These previous strategies are all above the shaded area representing 1.5 degrees Celsius warming, and the one strategy that keeps temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius is a combination of both Transportation Electrification and Mode Shift strategies.

A chart from the Institute for Transportation Development Policy showing the different emissions trends that result from three transportation policy strategies, and a shaded area that would describe the threshold for warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Smart growth strategies will need to work hand in hand with transportation electrification to achieve climate goals.

As we approach the midpoint for the current transportation reauthorization, we’re finally starting to see how the infrastructure law’s new electric vehicle infrastructure programs are charting a path toward an electrified future.

Last month, we saw the release of the first set of the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program awards, which put out $622 million in funding for hydrogen fuel stations and over 7,000 EV chargers—and many of these chargers are sited in communities that need them most. Awardees selected would site both level 2 and level 3 fast chargers in disadvantaged communities, near public parks and libraries, small rural towns, and at multifamily housing. These are all places that would benefit greatly from electrification, but typically can’t rely on private investment. In some cases, awarded projects emphasized multimodal connections, including e-micromobility hubs, transit-oriented developments and even EV carshare—all strategies we uplifted in our EVs and Smart Growth series.

Screenshot of a charging site location, pinned on a map in the midst of agricultural fields and empty roads.
A newly awarded NEVI site deployed into a greenfield development. By building out where no infrastructure yet exists, investments like these can take from agricultural land and perpetuate car-dependent sprawl.

These new CFI awards show that when we double-down on integrating EV investments with smart growth strategies, we can invest in a more equitable and community-oriented electrified future, all while reducing emissions even further. However, as the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program continues to roll out across the country, we see a contrast with the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program that illustrates that how we choose to electrify will have implications beyond the quantity of chargers we build.

With the latest announcement of state’s NEVI-funded chargers, there is now a clear pattern to the program, evident among the first dozen states to grant site-level awards. NEVI limits projects to sites closest to highways, without any requirement to invest in communities’ existing infrastructure—continuing a gas station mindset that doesn’t line up with EV needs. While NEVI may alleviate range anxiety, it’s currently functioning as another federal program that incentivizes continued sprawl and greenfield development.

We’ve updated our map of awardee NEVI sites, color coded with Walkscore (red is less than 50, orange is 50-75, and green is anything with a  Walkscore of 75 or greater), which you can find here:

With reauthorization fast approaching, policymakers need a clear model for what transportation electrification should look like. We need to uplift policies, programs, and projects that put communities and equity first while reducing the need for people to rely entirely on cars for their mobility needs. It’s either that, or we continue the same unsustainable development and transportation choices that gave us the very climate crisis electrification is supposed to solve. EVs must be implemented with smart growth strategies, or else we might just miss the whole point of electrification—and miss our climate targets in the process. Future EV programs should prioritize projects that acknowledge this and contribute to the buildout of new e-micromobility and transit infrastructure and support zero-emission, smart growth infrastructure.

Better build another highway: The Legacy Parkway story

A long highway surrounded by grasslands and hills, with a narrow black trail curving to the left

Gently curving through wetlands southeast of the Great Salt Lake, Utah’s Legacy Parkway has been characterized as an example of a state DOT making a principled compromise to craft a transportation solution balancing transport modes and ecological needs. However, the legacy UDOT had truly left behind was a connection for the new West Davis Corridor, an ongoing project continuing the march through the remaining marshes and farmland of the Salt Lake Valley.

A long highway surrounded by grasslands and hills, with a narrow black trail curving to the left
Legacy Parkway and multi-use trail, north of Salt Lake City, Utah. Image source: UDOT.

Background

Over the last thirty years, Utah has seen impressive population growth that has been unmatched by most states, but not all responses to growth balance communities’ needs for equity, environmental preservation, and economic sustainability.

According to projections from transportation planners at UDOT, population and travel demand in the five counties on the east half of the Great Salt Lake were going to increase an astonishing 60 percent and 69 percent, respectively, by 2020. (2020 Census data shows their population estimate was off by about 130,000 people.) Planners warned that at this scale of growth, not building new highway infrastructure would be devastating with travel speeds at peak hours dropping to just seven miles per hour.

To prevent this catastrophe, Utah Governor Michael Leavitt announced long-range plans for Legacy Highway in 1996, a 120-mile highway running parallel to Interstate 15. The first portion of this expansive route would be called Legacy Parkway and double as a “line in the sand” to prevent development west of the highway. Under the Utah DOT’s original preferred plan, that line would cut through 1,568 acres of Utah’s rare wetlands and historic farmsteads.

Advocates push back

Starting in 1997, the Utah Department of Transportation began environmental impact studies for Legacy Parkway as part of the NEPA process, culminating in the release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) in 1998. In the public meetings following the release, advocacy groups like Utahns for Better Transportation highlighted a multitude of flaws in the study and in the plans themselves. Instead of presenting alternatives to highway routes, UDOT presented the public with alternative highway routes, variations in the right of way that differed only in their relative negative impacts on residences, farms, and wetlands. Residents pointed to the Draft Environmental Statement’s incompleteness and contradictions, finding it had failed to calculate the project’s impact on wildlife, paradoxically associated higher air quality with increasing vehicle travel, and neglected to evaluate transit and land use among the alternatives. In an analysis commissioned by the Sierra Club, researchers found the DEIS’s traffic analyses were misleading. The models were applied inconsistently across geographies, allowing UDOT to present the no-build alternative as extremely untenable.

Legacy Highway

Musicians weighed in on the project too. Country music singer and songwriter Brenn Hill wrote the song “Legacy Highway” expressing his frustrations about the plan. The title of this blog post comes from the lyrics of that song. Listen to it here.

After one year of comments and federal reviews, UDOT and the Federal Highway Administration, the lead federal agency of the project, released the Legacy Parkway Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in July 2000. Utah DOT’s new preferred plans would include a multi-use trail, cost only $369 million, fill only 46 acres of wetlands, and impact the second least amount of developable land compared to alternative highway plans.

Screen capture of a chart of Projected Demographic and Traffic Changes in Legacy Parkway’s 2000 Environmental Impact Statement, which includes projections for population, households, employment, vehicles, home-based work trips, total vehicle trips, VMT, and average system peak speed. The chart is available on page 47 of the document linked in the caption of this image.
Legacy Parkway 2000 Final Environmental Impact Statement, including the projected 60% increase in population from 1995 to 2020.

While UDOT’s Final Environmental Impact Study portrayed Legacy Parkway as a principled compromise that could both meet the automotive travel demands of 2020 and preserve wetlands, it still ignored much of the substantive criticism levied against the models in the earlier Draft Environmental Impact Statement. As UDOT forged ahead, awarding construction contracts as early as December 2000 (before they’d received final permits), Utahns for Better Transportation, the Sierra Club, and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson took the only recourse left to them: they filed a lawsuit.

Lawsuit

Construction on the Legacy Parkway began in January 2001, just after the Federal Highway Administration approved the Legacy Parkway FEIS. With no other recourse, Utahns for Better Transportation, the Sierra Club, and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson sued the Utah Department of Transportation and participating federal agencies to stop the construction of Legacy Parkway. The plaintiffs brought their issues against the DEIS and FEIS to the Utah District Court.

Elected leaders make a difference

It should not be too surprising that Anderson, a mayor known for his ardent advocacy for sustainable municipal policies, joined the suit. Since the start of his term in 1999, Mayor Anderson had seen the outsized impact that Salt Lake City’s TRAX light rail system had on the city and presided over network improvements that improved daily ridership vastly beyond initial projections. Local support for transportation alternatives grew to be so strong that voters in the city passed tax increases—on themselves—to support the development of new mass transit infrastructure. Building off of public support for these new systems, Anderson stated that “with the commitment by the community to mass transit comes a commitment by our Administration to transit-oriented development.”

While the first case against Legacy Parkway was dismissed in the Utah District Court, the coalition of advocates appealed the decision in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. In November 2001, the court issued an injunction and forced the Utah Department of Transportation to cease construction. After nearly a year of review, the Court found that the federal agencies’ Environmental Impact Statements were inadequate “to the point of being arbitrary and capricious.”

The court forced the agencies to develop a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that addressed failures to adequately consider harm to wildlife, alternate highway routes, narrower median design (the design included in the 2000 FEIS would have allowed for future expansion to six lanes), and mass transit. UDOT and the FHWA developed a new impact statement to account for the original deficiencies from 2002 to 2004, but by then, the project could not afford any more lawsuits.

Compromise

Advocates might have won the battle, but they lost the war. They negotiated a compromise with UDOT while the Final Environmental Impact Statement was being drafted, winning concessions like $2.5 million for rapid transit studies, an additional $12 million for land preservation, and unique provisions banning semi-trucks and lowering Legacy Parkway’s speed limit (an ineffective solution to dangerous roadway speeds, as we wrote in Dangerous by Design).

Construction resumed in March 2006, Legacy Parkway was completed in 2008, and just 12 years later, the provisions expired, allowing the speed limit to increase and semi-trucks to drive on the parkway. By making a few temporary compromises, UDOT successfully greenwashed the first segment of the 120-mile-long Legacy Highway network that now transports 20,000-30,000 vehicles a day.

When Legacy Parkway opened, it was celebrated by motorists for its scenic routes and tranquil views of sunflower blooms along its meandering path. Ironically, drivers enjoying the views now contribute to emissions in a region with some of the worst air quality in the nation. To build the parkway, over 4 million tons of material had to be used to fill in the wetlands below the road and the concrete and steel used in construction could have produced as much as 40,000 tons of CO2. It cost 685 million dollars.

Better build another highway

Though planners miscalculated how dramatic population growth would be in the past, the counties surrounding the Great Salt Lake will no doubt continue to see major growth. But rather than taking congestion as a sign to innovate new solutions, like a hammer looking for a nail, UDOT uses the all too familiar tool of highway expansion to “solve” congestion. Lane additions and highway expansion every 10 years can’t solve traffic and certainly will not improve ecological outcomes, but it can cost the public their health and hundreds of millions of dollars for a handful of miles.

Now UDOT has new plans for a northern expansion of Legacy Parkway, meant to address still further population growth projections. UDOT and FHWA have familiar words for the project, called the West Davis Corridor:

By 2040, the number of households in this region will increase by 65 percent. This population growth requires a solution that addresses upcoming transportation needs while minimizing impact to the community and environment. After a thorough analysis of fifty-one alternatives, a preferred alternative (West Davis Highway) has been identified. By 2040, this one project would reduce all congestion west of I-15 by one-third.

This new highway will include a land preserve and a recreational trail as part of its environmental impact mitigation strategy. While the interchange to I-15 is being constructed, traffic is being routed over the Legacy Parkway. The budget for the West Davis Corridor project is $800 million.

A satellite image from the Utah Department of Transportation showing a new extension of roadway North of Legacy Parkway, weaving past the Salt Lake and into suburbs north of Salt Lake City.
Project plans showing the interchange between I-15, Legacy Parkway and the West Davis Corridor. Image Source: ArcGIS

State DOTs would have us believe that highways are the solution to population growth and congestion on our nation’s roadways, but history has proven otherwise. Costly highway projects always seem to require a new costly highway project, and the endless cycle only makes conditions worse for the environment and people who live around and drive on these roads. While advocates did succeed in changing the course and character of Legacy Parkway, this compromise failed to make lasting change. To do that, we need more than compromise. We need a fundamental change in our priorities.

Community Connectors: tools for advocates

You may be fighting against a freeway expansion. You may be trying to advance a Reconnecting Communities project to remove an old highway. You might be just trying to make wide, dangerous arterial roads a little safer for people to cross. This Community Connectors portal explains common terms, decodes the processes, clarifies the important actors, and inspires with helpful real-world stories.

Transit’s physical cliff: Climate change

A passenger train crosses a bridge near coastal California cliffs

California and New York State Legislatures voted to save transit from the fiscal cliff in 2023. While a win for transit can be a win for the climate, changing conditions across the country demonstrate the need for transit to find ways to be both fiscally and physically resilient.

A passenger train crosses a bridge near coastal California cliffs

Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner along coastal bluffs. Photo by Glenn Beltz via Flickr.

Between uncertain revenue sources, a sluggish ridership recovery after the pandemic, and increasing inflation-derived capital costs, transit agencies have their work cut out for them over the next few years. However, these crises are not new. Over the course of the 20th century, urban mass transit has had to weather many of the same crises we face today, including dealing with sprawling development, congested commutes, and inevitable budget crises stemming from unsustainable revenue streams. Transit advocates still need to find permanent ways down the fiscal cliff, and the solutions will likely involve brave policy decisions, coordinated advocacy, and innovation from transit authorities. 

But the fiscal cliff is not the only problem on the horizon. As climate change unfolds, transit will need the support to serve as communities’ resilient backbone through subtle, day-to-day challenges and demanding disasters. 

Changing landscapes

Coastal erosion, an issue only exacerbated by climate change, threatens one of the country’s most highly utilized rail transportation corridors. The Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo (LOSSAN) Corridor in Southern California serves millions of riders annually and currently vies for the title of second-busiest intercity passenger rail corridor with Miami and Orlando’s new Brightline rail service. The alignment hosts Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner as well as two commuter rail services, Metrolink in Los Angeles and Coaster in San Diego, connecting people to jobs along the coast and helping travelers bypass the extreme traffic congestion Southern Californians have always struggled with.

Despite the high ridership and significance to the region, the current alignment is literally falling into the sea as the rails on sandstone bluffs erode with rising sea levels and shifting weather patterns.  After two decades of service interruptions from landslides and over $100 million spent on temporary measures to stave off literal collapse, the San Diego Association of Governments has begun preliminary engineering & environmental review work to study a new alignment (with plans to open in 2035), after years of consideration and following months of service interruptions.

Sudden disasters

As adverse weather events like the recent Hurricane Otis and Tropical Storm Hilary become increasingly frequent and intense, the federal government, states, MPOs, and transit authorities will need to find ways to cooperate both proactively and reactively to meet the moment. Failure to prepare for and rebuild in the wake of a disaster can set regions back for years and only increase future chaos. When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast’s rail infrastructure, it eliminated a key resource for the region’s resilience. While freight rail infrastructure was quickly repaired, passenger trains have been out of service for nearly two decades and only recently—after much effort—are due to return. 

Without passenger rail or mass transit, residents are dependent on highway infrastructure for evacuation, which is vulnerable to car crashes and choking congestion during emergencies (check out the congestion on I-45 during an evacuation of Houston in 2005). Transit and passenger rail can provide citizens, especially those who do not have a car, a resilient avenue for evacuation that won’t just clog with a traffic jam.

The need for emergency funding

The stunningly fast 12-day turnaround to patch connections after the Interstate 95 collapse in Philadelphia this year shows just how swiftly critical infrastructure can be restored when properly prioritized. Mere days after the collapse, the Federal Highway Administration released $3 million to Pennsylvania DOT, offsetting the costs of the state’s repairs that started immediately after the incident. The FHWA’s Emergency Relief Program, funded at $100 million annually (in addition to supplemental appropriations), covers 100 percent of the immediate costs to mitigate emergency damage and up to 90 percent of federal highway repairs. This fast-acting program enables critical, day-one work to restore service, as states can work with certainty that they will be quickly reimbursed. 

Transit and passenger rail need emergency funding that is just as responsive (if not more so) than programs for highway infrastructure. Just as repairs are needed for highways to continue functioning after a disaster, they’re needed to keep transit and passenger rail running on time so that people can get where they need to go. And since transit can be a valuable tool for mobility in the wake of disaster, transit systems should be restored as quickly as possible to ensure travel flow can continue. 

Unlike the FHWA’s emergency program, the Federal Transit Administration’s Public Transit Emergency Relief Program receives $0 in annual appropriations. Instead, transit has to rely on Congress to pass legislation (a task that generally requires a Speaker of the House) to respond to disasters. This means that FTA cannot provide funding immediately after emergencies. Worse still, when disaster hits rail infrastructure, FTA’s disaster reserves have been transferred out to the Federal Railroad Administration, which does not have a much-needed emergency relief program of its own. Funds for disasters that occurred as far back as 2017 were only awarded this year as a result of an act that appropriated just $214 million to transit for four calendar years of disasters. Meanwhile, the same bill appropriated an additional $803 million to FHWA’s emergency program, on top of annual appropriations. 

This issue is being recognized by federal legislators in new marker bills leading up to the next transportation reauthorization bill. Earlier this year, Senator Fetterman introduced a bill to inject an additional $50 million annually for the FTA’s Public Transit Emergency Relief Program to expedite the delivery of funds to match I-95’s 12-day recovery.  In response to sudden rain and flooding in New York, Senator Gillibrand put forth legislation that would add funding to help transit agencies conduct proactive resiliency projects to FTA’s State of Good Repair Grants. Long-term resiliency for transit matters more every year, as its riders, many of whom are low-income,  will be the most intensely hit by climate change, which they will face in the form of record-breaking heatwaves, rainstorms, and wildfire-induced air pollution. 

The bottom line

With the IIJA lapsing in 2026 and natural disasters on the rise with climate change, Congress needs to devise new policies to improve how the country restores public transit in the wake of earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, and even the less dramatic, predictable emergencies. New programs must find ways to prioritize transit speed, equitable service, and long-term resiliency, not just infrastructure built the same and built to fail.

Why NEVI needs an upgrade

The $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program is an important investment in the build-out of the nation’s EV charging infrastructure, but decision makers are moving forward with the same old approach. The program’s strict one-mile rule and a preference for gas stations and truck stops are a missed opportunity for investments that should prioritize flexibility, equity, and local communities.

A black sedan charges near a large building

In our EV blog series, we’ve shared strategies in the zero-emission fleet transition which work in concert with smart growth. These strategies can both advance the EV transition and reduce the need to drive so much. They include electric carshare services, charger-oriented development, the NEVI program, equitable access to chargers, integrating smart parking policy with EV-charging, and electric micromobility. To learn more about reducing transportation emissions, check out our report Driving Down Emissions and go here to learn more about CHARGE, the coalition we co-lead on EV issues.

Congress’s and the Biden administration’s down payment on electric vehicle charging 

In a previous post in this series on transportation electrification and smart growth, we talked about the concept of charger-oriented development and argued that electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure should be located in vibrant places that have an abundance of diverse businesses and attractions easily accessible within walking distance. Most EV drivers will be able to charge overnight and rarely need to refuel on a trip. However, when they do need to refuel mid-trip, it takes at least 20 minutes for EV vehicles to recharge, even when using DC Fast Chargers. During that time charging or waiting for a charger, travelers will only have access to their immediate surroundings within a walkable distance. While gas stations have grown efficient at serving cars stopping for 5 minutes or less, their auto-oriented environment will leave electrified travelers, stuck in places with very little to do.

Already, surveyed EV users recognize boredom while charging as an impediment to their experience, potentially slowing their adoption. By locating new EV chargers in existing downtowns, town centers, and main streets, federal policy has the chance to align equity, local economic development, and climate goals. Siting chargers at locations built for cars, like gas stations, not only introduces quality of life concerns but also safety concerns. These sites are often poorly lit and isolated from the public eye, fostering environments that lead many people to feel unsafe.

With $7.5 billion in funding for electric vehicle chargers, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) and Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) programs represent the United States’ down payment toward a national publicly accessible EV charging network. NEVI, a new $5 billion formula program, offers $1 billion per year for states to implement their own EV Charger deployment plans. The CFI program, a smaller $2.5 billion discretionary program, was made for smaller government organizations, such as counties and cities. Half of CFI funding will go to community-based chargers, and half will go to chargers less than one mile from designated Alternative Fuel Corridor (AFC), highway routes designated for chargers.

Problematic requirements

Earlier this year, the federal government published final eligibility requirements for the NEVI and CFI programs, including rules on where NEVI chargers can be located. To be eligible for NEVI formula funding, chargers must be spaced at most 50 miles away from each other, be sited less than one mile away from an AFC, and have a minimum of four charging ports. States do not get flexibility with siting their federally funded EV Chargers until they are certified as “built out” by USDOT, meaning their entire statewide network fulfills these requirements.

Strict adherence to the one-mile rule, which prioritizes minimizing travel time to a charging site, neglects that users will spend relatively little time getting to the charger compared to the time they will spend charging. NEVI’s one-mile rule limits a state’s opportunity to place chargers in areas that could be more comfortable for users, provide sustainable local economic development benefits, and advance climate and equity goals. Unfortunately, due to guidance from the Federal Highway Administration, states are being pushed toward an approach that is highway-oriented rather than driver-oriented, let alone people-oriented.

Missed opportunities

While all states have published their NEVI deployment plans, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Maine are the first to provide specific locations for the initial round of federally funded EV Chargers. Hawaii has also released sites but has not finalized exact locations. Based on what these states have shared, federal requirements are already creating barriers to equitable Charger Oriented Development that supports locally-owned businesses. Approximately three out of four EV charging sites proposed in this first round of awards have gone to truck stops and gas stations.

Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania is one of many communities in the US located just outside of the NEVI program’s maximum range from the highway. Once a major coal mining town, Mahanoy City’s main street starts 2 miles west of Pennsylvania’s I-81 Alternative Fuel Corridor and has a disadvantaged census tract. The city, recognized by the state governor for its recent financial recovery, is home to dozens of small businesses and small parks along its main corridor, a newly refurbished train station, and has been recognized for its growing population.

At just a little over 2 miles away from the highway exit, this vibrant area is reasonably close to the corridor but was ineligible for federally funded chargers under the NEVI program. Instead, PennDOT has so far prioritized awarding gas stations, convenience stores, truck stops, and travel centers, with little access to services other than those provided by the gas stations and convenience stores. Instead of locating the site in an area where EV users could exit their vehicles and contribute to local economies, the site that will serve this 50-mile stretch of I-81 near Mahanoy City will be located in a gas station with an attached fast food chain, at a location that the EPA’s Walkability Index defines as “least walkable,” among the lowest of all of Pennsylvania’s selected NEVI sites. On average, Pennsylvania DOT’s NEVI sites are extremely unfriendly to pedestrians with an average Walkscore of just 35 of 100.

A google maps view of PA-54 in downtown Mahonoy City, PA
Downtown Mahanoy City, PA was passed up as a fast-charging site because, at just 2 miles, it’s too far off the highway. Google Maps
A google map aerial view of roads, trees, parking lots, and large warehouses off I-81 in Pennsylvania
The location of a conditionally awarded NEVI site off of exit 119 off I-81 in Pennsylvania, yet to be photographed, in an area where travelers can access few services while their vehicle is charging. Google maps

Distance from an interstate highway exit is not the only obstacle to the development of federally supported charger-oriented developments. In Ohio DOT’s NEVI plans, charger sites were identified by their proximity to amenities – but those amenities were defined as truck stops, gas stations, and big box stores. Sites near a greater number of local businesses that provide more options for travelers, such as the walkable downtown of Logan, Ohio, will be skipped over in favor of truck stops out by the highway. 

Aerial photo of a five lane road and historic buildings in Logan, Ogio
Aerial photo of Main Street in Logan, Ohio, a vibrant, walkable area with small locally owned businesses. Ohio DOT’s NEVI deployment plans would consider this area as undesirable compared to a separate highway exit with a gas station and big box store. Image: Logan Town Center
Google map satellite image of a large parking lot with a wallmart, fast food, and other businesses
Satellite image of a NEVI Round 2 Candidate site off US-33, with several ‘favorable amenities,’ as identified by ODOT, few of which are locally owned. Image: Google Maps

The two examples above reflect a pattern. Based on Ohio DOT’s selected sites so far, the state is not capitalizing on the unique benefits that electric vehicle chargers could confer to both drivers and local communities. On average, Ohio DOT’s Round 1 sites have a Walkscore of just 27, signaling how isolated users will be. Choices to locate these chargers in areas so dependent on cars neglect the fact that everyone is a pedestrian once they exit their vehicle. With its intense focus on alleviating range anxiety, the NEVI program is recreating a transportation system that leaves the economic benefits that these federal investments could bring to disadvantaged and rural communities off the table.

You can explore our map of states’ initial NEVI sites, along with the Walkscore, Bikescore, and Transitscore of each location below. Pennsylvania DOT, Ohio DOT,  and Colorado DOT have announced a total of $64 million in funding for these sites. $47.5 million has been awarded to sites with a gas station or truck stop at the same address, reflecting a continued preference for the status quo. 

Announced NEVI Sites

We color-coded each announced NEVI site according to each site’s Walkscore. Red means a Walkscore of 0-50, Yellow means 50-69, and scores of 70 and above are Green.

The Biden administration often states that the goal of the NEVI and CFI programs is to electrify the great American road trip, but the current implementation seems to forget that road trips are also about the journey, not just the destination. Providing greater flexibility in the NEVI program to promote Charger Oriented Development would be a powerful way for the administration to meet its equity goals, promote a superior travel experience, and support local economic development while building out a national charging network. 

Recommendations

An image showing do not walk signs with a gas station complex in the background
The state of the sidewalk near a conditionally awarded NEVI site in Washington, Pennsylvania. Google Maps

Congress can better account for the difference between charging an EV and fueling an internal combustion engine vehicle by directing the Federal Highway Administration and US Department of Transportation to loosen the one-mile requirement in the NEVI and CFI programs. This is an important opportunity for members of Congress with rural communities in their districts to make sure the EV revolution benefits their constituents. Meanwhile, the Joint Office on Energy and Transportation (JOET) should develop rules and guidance that encourage state DOTs to practice Charger Oriented Development by siting charging stations in places where travelers can access more opportunities while the car is charging.

Leave the gas station behind: How charger-oriented development can lead to a greener future

Two men stand, chatting, beside a car while it's getting plugged in to charge.

Charging an EV is fundamentally different from fueling a gas-powered car. It’s time to co-locate charging infrastructure with existing communities in an approach we call charger-oriented development.

One man charging his white EV while speaking to another man wearing glasses

In our EV blog series, we’ve shared strategies in the zero-emission fleet transition which work in concert with smart growth. These strategies can both advance the EV transition and reduce the need to drive so much. They include electric carshare services, charger-oriented development, the NEVI program, equitable access to chargers, integrating smart parking policy with EV-charging, and electric micromobility. To learn more about reducing transportation emissions, check out our report Driving Down Emissions and go here to learn more about CHARGE, the coalition we co-lead on EV issues.

With the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and 2021 infrastructure law in full swing, transportation electrification is taking off faster than ever. Congress is pouring billions of federal dollars into states’ National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) programs to electrify American cars, but those dollars are falling into a familiar pattern.

While electric vehicle charging infrastructure has distinct advantages over traditional gas stations, certain restrictions in NEVI standards and plans fail to imagine ways to invest in communities beyond the suburban gas station and sprawl-inducing big box store. The advantages (and even supposed disadvantages) of EV charging offer up opportunities to create vibrant, thriving places, but to unlock these benefits, policymakers need to rethink the pitstop.

Charging an electric vehicle differs significantly from the traditional fueling experience. In an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle, drivers start the day with the same amount of gas that they had the day before. EVs may take more time to charge, but people with home charging options can start with a full battery and charge at destinations. However, on the rare occasions you do need to stop and charge, it’s going to take 20 minutes or more—not the three-to-five minutes it takes to tank up an ICE vehicle. This has big implications for where we put charging stations and what should be around them.

Charger-oriented development (COD) is the strategy of locating charging infrastructure in vibrant places that have an abundance of diverse opportunities easily accessible within walking distance. This could be on a rural town’s Main Street, town square, or a vibrant, walkable, mixed-use urban neighborhood. In these places, the driver can do something worthwhile with their valuable time, and local businesses benefit from new patrons bolstering the local economy.

Flipping the script

Many people are familiar with the concept of transit-oriented development (TOD): build up and densify around stops and corridors as much as possible and reap the benefits of walkability around transit. To implement that same smart growth approach with EV charging, you need to flip the script. Chargers should be oriented in walkable areas, in ways that contribute to local economies.

As we’ve said, most EV owners will charge at home overnight, or at other destinations, so they will only need access to a DC fast charger (DCFC, also called a level 3 charger) on longer trips. Once they plug in, what do they do? Do they sit in their car at the truck stop out by the highway, or are there multiple businesses they can patronize like cafes, restaurants, and stores? Perhaps there is a nearby park where the kids can let off steam. Ideally, the charger is in a place they were going anyway—the museum or the arena, for example.

Charging up local economies

Charger location also has implications for the local economy, particularly in rural communities. Businesses on Main Street are much more likely to be locally owned than the truckstop or the big box store. Public investment that directs travelers’ dollars into local pockets builds local wealth and resilience.

You can see examples of this from Meeker, Colorado and Canton, New York in our Sparking Progress report, where local businesses have benefited directly from travelers stopping to charge up. Strong local businesses on a Main Street tend to support each other by creating a vibrant place that becomes attractive for more people to visit.

Invest in existing infrastructure

Everyone involved in discussions around charger infrastructure quickly learns the importance of utilities. You can’t build chargers without electric power, and level 3 chargers draw a lot of it. Fast charging, especially, takes a lot of juice. In fact, a federally compliant fast charging station with four ports can draw as much electricity as a small town. Bringing that kind of power to an area is expensive, which is why we need to think of ways to use the capacity we already have in the grid more effectively. This is a corollary to the principle we already follow with smart growth: invest in existing communities.

There are a number of strategies we can use to take advantage of existing utilities. For example, Los Angeles installs level 2 chargers where there are already streetlights. The private company ITSElectric has developed a strategy for delivering level 2 charging at the curb using excess capacity in buildings fronting the street. Power hungry level 3 chargers are more likely to require significant utility upgrades, but those upgrades could be easier to deliver in existing communities than in a remote location by the highway. In addition, electric utility upgrades today would be a valuable investment in rural communities’ electrified future.

Utilities aren’t the only essential infrastructure near EV chargers. Just as everyone is a pedestrian when they park their car, the same goes for someone charging their car. Pedestrian infrastructure is essential, and a Main Street or neighborhood is more likely to have sidewalks than the truck stop or big box store. In some cases, it might even be feasible to integrate bikeshare with a charger location, giving the traveler who has stopped to charge up a much wider range of opportunities while they wait.

Reorienting federal investment

Unfortunately, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, Congress’s first stab at building a charging network, is not grounded in charger-oriented development principles. NEVI charging locations, as well as the corridor grants for the Community Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) program, are required to be within one mile of the highway they serve. This pulls opportunity away from countless rural towns a little over a mile or two off the highway. State DOTs are implementing NEVI plans for the first time and there is no guidance or incentive for them to do anything other than place chargers out at the truck stop. The next blog post in this series showcases opportunities for charger-oriented development we are already missing in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The emphasis on the NEVI program itself, with the vast majority of federal charging infrastructure funding going to level 3 chargers placed to serve long-distance travel, comes from a gas-station mindset. American drivers typically drive only 37 miles per day on average, and less than one percent of trips are more than 100 miles. Those distances are easily covered by overnight charging. In many cases those longer trips could also be better served by passenger and high-speed rail as they are in other developed nations.

The bottom line

As we build out America’s charging infrastructure ecosystem, there’s no need to emulate the gas station. Chargers are going to be a major infrastructure investment, but in the end, it really is just an electric cord with a plug and a parking spot. Charging can be delivered in a more diffuse fashion and fit in more dense vibrant neighborhoods. If approached the right way, our charging infrastructure won’t keep people tethered to power outlets on the side of the road, but free them up to accomplish more as they leave their cars to charge.

Puget Sound’s strategy to center equity in the new normal

A Black man begins to board a King County Metro Route 48 bus after waiting at a bus shelter

Spurred on by COVID-19 disruptions, leaders of the Puget Sound Regional Council found a new way to allocate federal transit formula dollars. Their equity-focused distribution could help the most vulnerable communities while also adapting to new travel trends.

A Black man begins to board a King County Metro Route 48 bus after waiting at a bus shelter
Flickr photo by Oran Viriyincy

The COVID-19 pandemic was, and remains, one of the most influential shocks to transit systems across the country. Transit agencies struggled with lost revenue and ridership paired with escalating operating costs. The federal government intervened during the height of the pandemic by investing billions in stimulus and relief through Federal Transit Administration (FTA) formula funding. But when those funds arrived in Puget Sound, it became apparent to some leaders in the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) that this funding was not flowing to disadvantaged communities that needed it most. 

Rather than continuing on as is, members of the PSRC’s Transportation Policy Board (TPB) and local transit agency leadership came together to rethink how the region uses federal formula dollars to prioritize equity and build up service for disadvantaged communities.

Traditional distributions

The FTA apportions formula funds to regions around the country based on the services and operational data provided by transit agencies in the National Transit Database. Using that data, the FTA then applies the titular “formulas” of formula funds, distributing dollars to urbanized areas (UZAs) across the country.

PSRC serves three UZAs: the Bremerton, Marysville, and Seattle-Tacoma-Everett UZAs. As the Bremerton and Marysville UZAs are each served by a single transportation agency, the local UZA apportionment is simply distributed to those agencies. In the case of the Seattle-Tacoma-Everett UZA, the FTA distributes a lump sum of funds for the PSRC to allocate to eleven transit agencies.

In PSRC’s old distribution strategy, 86 to 88 percent of funds are distributed to each local transit agency in line with the FTA’s standard earned share formulas. The remaining percentage of formula funds was then doled out through regional competitions and preservation set-asides. In practice and in line with historical transportation priorities, this method tended to award agencies and services focused on moving commuters from suburbs to downtowns.

Equity first

For people who cannot afford the high cost of car ownership, access to high-quality transit remains a valuable method to access jobs and services. 

Proposing a new, revised distribution policy, several members of the TPB, including Pierce County Councilman Ryan Mello and Tacoma Deputy Mayor Kristina Walker, pushed for a policy that would prioritize funding to equity focus areas, places where disadvantaged groups are concentrated and would benefit from better transit service. This change would allow PSRC to align their funding allocations with the region’s priorities, using a demographic lens to identify communities most in need of transit access. 

Under the new methodology, PSRC would use federal census data to identify where people in equity focus populations are located, with an emphasis on serving people with disabilities, youth, the elderly, people with low incomes, people of color, and people with limited English proficiency. 

After calculating the number of people in equity focus areas within half a mile from bus stops and a mile from rail stops, and with an adjustment to reflect the nuanced service provided by state and county ferries, the PSRC would proportionally distribute funds to the transit agencies that serve the underserved.

Funding for the new distribution formula comes out of what had previously been used for regional competitions and preservation set-asides. It represents about 14 percent of total funding, seriously boosting agencies serving equity focus areas. For Pierce Transit, the formula change resulted in a funding increase of approximately $9.8 million annually.

Preservation Set Aside Funding (in millions)Percentage of Regional Total*Equity Formula Distribution (in millions)**Percentage of Regional Total
Community Transit$2.202.90%$11.7015.00%
Everett Transit$0.200.30%$2.803.60%
King County Metro$15.9021.00%$33.6043.10%
Pierce County Ferries$0.200.30%$0.200.30%
Pierce Transit$1.201.60%$11.0014.10%
City of Seattle$0.100.10%$2.503.20%
Sound Transit$11.2014.80%$12.9016.60%
Washington State Ferries$3.104.10%$3.204.10%
TOTAL$34.10$77.90

* Not including regional competition funding ** Includes preservation set asides and former regional competition funding

Seattle-Tacoma-Everett UZA funding distributions changed significantly under the Equity Formula Distribution. Table developed using data provided by Puget Sound Regional Council.

Because these funding changes came out of a limited budget, the council had to make compromises. Since the new formula distributions came out of what had been money for regional competitions, some agencies and projects received less funding than before. 

“Working through the exercise was of great value for folks to actually see, numerically and through mapping, where the equity focus areas are and where they are or are not being served by transit,” reflected Councilmember Ryan Mello, who helped lead the change. 

In the post-pandemic “new normal,” local-level transit that connects people to everyday services maintains vital access for disadvantaged communities.

“We had the ability to have a conversation with the region. We say racial equity is a value—well, here’s an opportunity to put money into it. I had to rustle feathers to make the effort, but it pushed people hard to put the money where your values are, even at the expense of other things.” 

By reorienting funding to prioritize transit equity, while also remaining adaptive to new travel trends, the PSRC’s Equity Funding Distribution can serve as an example for governments and agencies that claim to hold equity at the core of their mission.

Thanks to Grant DuVall for contributing to this post.

Rising fatalities a sign to modernize federal design framework

A young woman holds onto her bicycle, waiting for the ped signal to cross a crosswalk showing signs of wear.

Despite a binding requirement to release an updated version more than a month ago, the Federal Highway Administration missed the deadline to release a new edition of a federal handbook with national influence on street design. There were many positive changes proposed for this edition, but unless this delay comes because further improvements are underway, this new edition might ultimately be another green light for increasing traffic fatalities.

Edit 6/30: Language in an earlier version of this post overstated the power of the MUTCD in shaping street design. While this manual is influential, other important resources inform street design, including the Green Book. This language has been changed.

A young woman holds onto her bicycle, waiting for the ped signal to cross a crosswalk showing signs of wear.
A cyclist waits to cross as cars zip past. Source: Flickr

As Smart Growth America wrote in their 2022 report Dangerous by Design, the number of people struck and killed while walking reached yet another new high in 2020. More than 6,500 people were struck and killed while walking in 2020, an average of nearly 18 per day, and a 4.5 percent increase over 2019. This epidemic continues growing worse because our nation’s streets are designed primarily to move cars quickly at the expense of keeping everyone safe, but change can be made on every level to reorient toward protecting the most vulnerable rather than prioritizing the speed of a few.

There’s one Dangerous by Design recommendation that the federal government can take action on right away: an update to the little-known but highly influential Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), defines standards for traffic control devices, which includes pedestrian crossings and lane markings like green bike lanes and red bus-only lanes. Though the current MUTCD prioritizes vehicle speed over pedestrian safety, the 11th edition MUTCD is an opportunity for the FHWA to make changes that benefit all road users—if they incorporate advocate feedback. Some proposed changes with potential include an update to the notorious 85th percentile speed standard, a decision on colorful crosswalks, and improvements for pedestrian crossing times. However, although these proposed changes might look good on paper, the revised MUTCD will likely leave most existing road networks as dangerous as ever.

85th percentile standard

While there’s no shortage of examples of the MUTCD placing the high-speed movement of cars at the top of the transportation hierarchy, there’s perhaps no greater example than that of the 85th-percentile speed standard. This standard sets what the National Transportation Safety Board calls a dangerous precedent for determining speeds: out of 100 drivers, the 15th fastest driver sets the speed limit. 

The intent behind this is to lower the difference in speed between the fastest drivers and the slowest, with the idea being that the cause of crashes is the difference in speed, not speed itself. But this flawed logic ignores that as speed increases, the probability of fatalities for vulnerable road users increases exponentially.  Blanket application of the 85th-percentile speed to arterials across the country has helped create the current crisis of pedestrian injuries and deaths—the majority of which now occur on state DOT-owned roads.

In the proposed edits for the new MUTCD, the 85th-percentile standard would be redesignated to a “guidance.” While that sounds better, this does not address the fact that unsafe roads in compliance with the new guidance would still be dangerous by design. Without providing engineers with safe design standards (like standards for road diets, raised crosswalks, chicanes, and narrower lanes), it would be impossible for this minor change to undo the speed status quo. The existence of the 85th-percentile rule is proof we know people will drive as fast as they feel comfortable. By softening the standard to a guidance, the MUTCD still fails to address design. State DOTs would still be responsible for choosing where to implement the rule on their roads, and without a change in standard practice or culture, it’s unclear what effect this change could actually have.

Pedestrian crossings

There are plenty of other standards in the MUTCD that foster dangerous design. Pedestrian volume per hour during “peak hours” is a main determining metric of what warrants a pedestrian signal at an intersection or midblock crossing. But peak hours focus on peak times for vehicular traffic, and what might be peak hours for a driver can be the worst, most uncomfortable time for a person to attempt to cross a busy roadway. Worse still, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s FARS data has consistently shown that the deadliest hours for pedestrians are often well outside of what’s considered “peak.”

FHWA graph shows higher rates of pedestrian deaths after 6 p.m.
A graph from the FHWA describing pedestrian fatalities by hour from 2006-2020. Credit: FHWA

This leads to a deadly feedback loop that works against the most vulnerable—if the road feels unsafe or inconvenient to cross, no one will attempt to use it except for those with the fewest options. Hostile design makes it nearly impossible to safely walk the span of a roadway to reach services when you have to contend with multiple lanes of high-speed traffic. 

Just as people are more likely to drive on a wide, comfortable roadway, they’re more likely to walk on a sidewalk that feels safe. However, some MUTCD-compliant designs are so dangerous that cities feel the need to give their pedestrians bright red flags just for them to cross the road—an ineffective solution to a design problem.

Like with the 85th percentile standard, the 11th edition shifts pedestrian volume per hour warrants from a standard to a guidance, and tinkers with  other technicalities. Some changes are good, and could even result in longer, safer crossing times or more flashing pedestrian crossing beacons. But even if the proposed changes are adopted, they lack teeth. DOTs would be left to their own devices to enact the changes, and they could still point to the guidance as reason to not install a crossing.

MUTCD compliant crossing in Knoxville, Tennessee. Would you feel safe crossing here? Source: Google Maps

Colored crosswalks

Research has shown that bright, colorful crosswalks and intersections make streets safer by drawing drivers’ eyes to the pedestrian crossing with the added benefit of creating more vibrant streets. However, since 2001, the FHWA has officially discouraged communities from using art at crosswalks and has consistently sent letters to cities ordering them to remove their art, or lose federal funding. FHWA justified their requests by claiming colorful crosswalks do not enhance safety, despite the fact that the agency has yet to conclude research on the topic. There is no apparent plan for public access to the research underlying the next edition’s ruling.

A roller skater and bicyclist cross a rainbow-colored crosswalk
Colored crosswalks, like the rainbow crosswalk above, can be an attractive way to signal for drivers to stop and look for pedestrians. The right design can also signify community and belonging. Photo source: Long Beach Public Works

If text in other sections of the proposed changes is any indication, the FHWA has an interest in maintaining total uniformity in crosswalks for the benefit of automated vehicles. Automated vehicles (AVs) see the world through artificial intelligence-based machine vision and have difficulty adapting to the dynamic scenarios common to urban environments, even if these are the same scenarios that are more likely to draw the attention of human drivers. 

AVs benefit from road environments with minimal variety and maximum contrast, and the 11th edition will likely propose prescriptive changes that would require road markings to be wider, brighter, and more frequent, explicitly for AVs. It is unclear why the FHWA seems willing to offer new concessions for vehicles that have so far failed to provide a proven safety benefit, but remain unwilling to allow changes that are proving to make vulnerable road users safer.

The bottom line

With speed and throughput of cars as the leading success metric, the so-called best practices outlined in previous editions of the MUTCD have increased the viability of cars at the expense of all other road users, including public transit, pedestrians, and cyclists. We are glad to see changes that allow for safer street design, but in the face of rising pedestrian fatalities, the 11th edition of the MUTCD doesn’t go far enough.

FHWA has made some progress on prioritizing safety over speed in other recent guidance. However, when it comes to the definitive guide to traffic control, making minor revisions in the midst of a crisis of fatalities that seem to increase year after year is a failure to meet the moment. We hope the extra time spent on the new edition has gone toward creating a safer MUTCD.

Mind the gap: USDOT’s first take on reconnecting communities

A group of people representing a range of ages, genders, and ethnicities walk across a cracked road within a marked crosswalk.
A group of people representing a range of ages, genders, and ethnicities walk across a cracked road within a marked crosswalk.
Residents of Fowler, CA assess current conditions along State Highway 99 and Golden Street Corridor, which did not receive a Reconnecting Communities grant in the first round of funding. Photo credit: CalWalks and safeTREC

In March 2023, USDOT announced the initial 45 awardees for the opening round of the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program. This first-of-its-kind program represents the start of a new series of initiatives that confronts the legacy of inequitable infrastructure projects in the US and will (un)pave the way for the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant program created in the Inflation Reduction Act. But to meet the needs of communities, the USDOT needs to expand its vision and scope of funds available.

An excavator digs a massive hole titled "Dangerous Roads $$$". On the other side of the hole, a man tries to fill the hole with a small pile of dirt (labeled "Safety Improvements $." The comic is labeled "U.S. Approach to Road Safety."
This illustration was produced for T4America by visual artist Jean Wei. IG/@weisanboo

435 communities applied for the first round of the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program (RCP), despite the fact that only $195 million in funding was available. To put this in perspective, the  Multimodal Project Discretionary Grants (MPDG) program received about the same number of applications for nearly 15 times the funding ($2.85 billion). If those numbers are anything to go by, we can see that the demand from communities to fix divisive transportation infrastructure far outstrips what even the largest discretionary grant programs could garner. This is especially true when formula funding, which dwarves discretionary funding, continues to perpetuate the very issues the Reconnecting Communities Pilot seeks to resolve. 

That demand comes from a diverse array of applicants. The Reconnecting Communities Pilot program received applications from 51 states and territories, from smaller communities like Phenix City, Alabama, home to less than 40,000 people, to large cities with millions of residents like Philadelphia and Los Angeles. 

With that variation in size came variations in resources. We know some of these project applicants, like the grant-winning recipient Reconnect Rondo, hosted accompanying websites and social media pages managed by activist community partners, boosting the strength of application narratives. On the other end of the spectrum, two individuals applying to the program accidentally gave their own names instead of the name of the city that the grant would apply for, a sign of the difference in preparedness for the competitiveness of this grant program.

Who were these applicants? USDOT has done great work releasing outcome information in this first year of the program, and we acknowledge their efforts to release the name and state of aspiring applicants. However, we are still missing crucial information to assess how funding has been distributed and lack information on 21 applicants. T4A has requested more data from USDOT, including the individual census tracts used to assess each community as disadvantaged according to the Justice40 initiative.

In the meantime, we conducted an analysis of every applicant at the county level using data from EJScreen, the EPA’s Environmental Justice Screening tool. Though this method has limitations, it allowed us to learn more about the applicants, even those who did not receive awards and a profile from USDOT, across a variety of environmental and social measures. See the below map of applicants, with successful applicants marked in green and unsuccessful ones marked in red:

While it may be difficult to quantify the social costs of divisive infrastructure, the costs to physical health remain apparent. Including those who did not receive an award, RCP applicants had on average lower air quality, higher risk for cancer, lower income, and higher rates of unemployment than the typical American community according to EJScreen data. Many of these communities are severely marginalized, and may only be able to heal if we increase RCP funding to meet demand.

Among these many applicants was Stillwater. Stillwater is a smaller city in Oklahoma, and like many communities in the United States, highway infrastructure has left its mark on the community. Two state highways cut through the city’s downtown, creating dangerous barriers to people walking or biking in the city. In an attempt to undo the damage and support its status as a growing active transportation hub, Stillwater applied for an RCP grant to plan for a new pedestrian bridge over State Highway 51 and create a new active transportation map to connect the city and increase protections for vulnerable road users.

Photo of highway facing Main Street, with right turn lane directly next to sidewalk
Current conditions along State Highway 51 place pedestrians dangerously close to fast car travel. Source: Stillwater, OK Corridor Plan

Further west, Fowler is a small agricultural city in California. CA State Highway 99 and Golden State Boulevard cuts diagonally across Fowler, preventing access to almost half of the city. The community applied for an RCP grant to better connect the community across the highway. Fowler is located in Fresno county, which has some of the worst air quality and pollution in the nation.

Edinburg, Texas applied for a planning grant to convert a high-speed, arterial-style road into a Complete Street. The road, which requires children to walk across a nearly 80-foot-wide unsignalized crossing, runs adjacent to neighborhoods, a playground, and an elementary school. According to EJscreen data, Edinburg’s county has some of the country’s worst cancer-causing air pollution and has a higher proportion of people earning under the federal poverty line than 84 percent of the country. 101 of 113 census tracts in the county were identified as disadvantaged according to Justice40 metrics.

The outsized demand for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot and widespread community interest in the program’s unique mission is a sign that the pilot has been a resounding success. But with current levels of funding, the RCP will not be able to meet the massive scale of community need. Instead, USDOT should increase funding for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot and the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program to meet this historic demand. 

But competitive grant programs cannot be communities’ only recourse to restore community links. Funding for the Reconnecting Communities program would have to expand by an order of magnitude to meet the demand from hundreds of qualified communities. The approach to funding these types of projects needs to change on a system-wide level, and there’s no better way to fund these projects than through formula dollars. Almost 90 percent of Highway Trust Fund funding goes to formula programs, and states have vast flexibility in how formula dollars could be used. Most, if not all, reconnecting communities projects would already be eligible under existing formula programs. States should take the opportunity to use formula dollars to reconcile the legacy of damaging transportation infrastructure, rather than repeat past mistakes.

Eligible communities have an opportunity to apply to Smart Growth America’s Community Connectors program to help prepare for the next round of competitive Reconnecting Communities grants and other funding opportunities.

Learn more

Advocates call for White House council to track and reduce emissions

A man rolls a stroller down a wide sidewalk along a tree-lined street with a painted bike lane and crosswalk

While NEPA exists to protect the environment and communities, it has long fallen short of addressing climate emissions and protecting disadvantaged communities. In response to a call for comments about new guidance on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, Transportation for America joined a nine-member working group to urge the White House to address transportation’s role in climate emissions and historic injustices. Read the full comments here.

A man rolls a stroller down a wide sidewalk along a tree-lined street with a painted bike lane and crosswalk
Streets like this one allow for multiple modes of travel, helping to reduce emissions from personal vehicles. Flickr photo by Billie Grace Ward.

On January 6, 2023, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) released Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change, directing federal agencies to improve the evaluation of climate impacts in environmental reviews as part of the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) process. 

The CEQ, created in 1970 with the passage of NEPA, is a body that oversees federal agencies’ implementation of NEPA-required environmental assessments of federally funded projects. As the lead body for the NEPA process, the CEQ’s Guidance determines the scope of scrutiny that projects must undergo through the NEPA process. However, for decades, the NEPA process and the CEQ have ignored or understated the significant role that federally approved transportation projects play in contributing to climate change emissions and overburdening Black and Brown communities.

The current approach from CEQ allows agencies like the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to sign off on faulty traffic models that fail to account for the role increased highway capacity has in increasing car usage and the associated CO2 and fine particle pollution that follows. Inaccurate models used today often project, paradoxically, that new highways will reduce harmful emissions. But decades of previous experience have consistently shown that these projects worsen the congestion problems they were built to solve, while harming the communities they go through.

New highways, roads, and lanes are proven to induce more driving, a process called “induced demand.” Read more on induced demand and its impact on emissions here.

In response to the White House’s call for public comments on the CEQ interim guidance and in partnership with Coalition for Smarter Growth, Elders Climate Action, Equiticity, Institute for Transportation Development Policy, National Association of City Transportation Officials, Sierra Club, RMI, and the Southern Environmental Law Center, Transportation for America called for the CEQ to improve its Guidance to accurately measure, report, and minimize the production of greenhouse gasses from the transportation sector, one of the nation’s most polluting sectors. To do so, the coalition urged CEQ to take the following actions:

  • Ensure that transportation agencies’ actions and plans reduce emissions in order to meet the country’s international commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions. 
  • Direct FHWA and states to include realistic assessments of how transportation infrastructure investments could contribute to or reduce greenhouse gas emissions
  • Devise criteria in the NEPA process that prioritizes actions to reverse damage to community health from transportation infrastructure projects.

By taking into account these comments and other points included in the working group’s response to the Guidance, the CEQ can align the NEPA process with national climate policy. More detail on why the Council on Environmental Quality should consider these goals and how they would achieve them is included in the full comments document.

Read the full comments