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Author Archives: Corrigan Salerno

The Trump administration tried to rip out a bike lane in DC. More than bike lanes are at risk nationwide.

Graphic of US Map showing where USDOT grants may be cancelled

The Trump administration’s attempt to rip out a protected cycletrack in the nation’s capital has been temporarily delayed by a lawsuit. For everyone else, the USDOT is hoping to cut off those fights before they even start by cancelling billions for these safety projects before shovels ever hit the ground.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has cancelled or delayed billions in funding for safety, transit, and electrification projects across a list of targeted states. After an examination of thousands of awarded discretionary grants and federal obligation data, T4America has identified billions in projects that were announced as awarded but have not seemingly received “approval” or a grant agreement from USDOT and are likely the next projects at risk of cancellation. USDOT has already moved to cut over a dozen from this list. Is your community’s project next?

While this list may not be fully exhaustive or may have captured some grants that are obligated, we have identified what we believe to be over $3 billion for over 200 grants that may be at risk of cancellation for conflicting with Trump administration priorities– and that’s not even counting the billions in transit grants stuck in federal limbo:

View the list directly

Note: While in the process of creating this list, T&I Ranking Member Rick Larsen announced that USDOT unfroze over 120 transportation grants. These updates are accounted for in this list as best we can, but this only underscores the uncertainty and lack of transparency regarding the handling of competitive grants. USDOT and the Office of Management and Budget should release their list of “unapproved” grants and clear up the confusion.

Know of a local project held up by USDOT? Let us know here.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration’s National Park Service moved to remove a protected bike lane on federal land in Washington, DC that carries 4,000 people per day, has reduced all traffic crashes by 46 percent, and has made biking dramatically safer—all while decreasing overall travel times on the corridor.  Trump officials have cited the potential increased traffic during cherry blossom season and upcoming America 250 celebrations—all despite the fact that a bike lane moves more people than a congested road. While the federal government has limited power over the District’s local streets and can only remove infrastructure on federal land, it is splitting a key connector between the city’s north and south. 

The administration is also having a major impact on local infrastructure in other communities across the country as it continues to hold up billions of dollars in funding for safety, transit, and transportation electrification projects. 

Grant reviews

Amidst a multimillion-dollar wave of cancellations for bicycle, pedestrian, and safety infrastructure projects in September 2025, USDOT Deputy Secretary Steven Bradbury outlined the status of many awarded federal competitive grants that the Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration. According to Bradbury, the Trump administration inherited a list of 3,269 grants that were awarded but had not yet been finalized and needed to pass through a new “approval” stage to move forward. This new federal approval stage comes with no official definition or certainty that projects will proceed as originally intended. 

Despite this, the administration has repeatedly patted itself on the back for quickly following through with the new, unnecessary process it invented. In September, USDOT circulated a list of 2,998 “approved” projects out of the 3,269 awarded grant backlog. Nominally, approval suggests that projects are approved to proceed; in reality, grantees on this approval list have often had to change the scope of projects to ensure they still receive federal funds, whether that means switching from battery electric buses to hybrids that the administration prefers or eliminating safety improvements on streets that would better serve the needs of all users. 

Even if a project is approved, there’s no guarantee it will move forward—already, an approved rail safety grant worth $66.4 million and a $10.7 million grant to a transit hub were cancelled late last year, likely in retaliation for the state’s disagreement with the administration on a presidential pardon, a wholly unrelated issue. 

Nevertheless, with 3,269 grants at the outset and 2,998 of those “approved,” that leaves over 200 projects with funds stuck in limbo. This administration has been opaque about how it is handling these grants, but odds are they are in Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget, awaiting a final decision on whether or not to cancel them. 

A review of reviews

USDOT has followed an internal policy for the review of competitive grants. In March 2025, an anonymous tipster shared a photo of an email of a new policy memo at USDOT, calling for a review of all competitive grants to identify any elements of “equity, climate change, environmental justice, green infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure.” Combined with a grant-focused Executive Order issued in August 2025, federal agencies have asserted more latitude in their power to cancel grants or compel grantees to make changes.

What happens after you trigger USDOT?

Once identified under the review memo, projects seem to have three options:

  1. Allowed to slide and continue as planned
  2. Modified to have offending elements removed
  3. Cancelled outright

Scenario one: Carry on as awarded

It’s not exactly clear what precisely allows a community to slide by DOT’s review system after being flagged for cancellation or changes, but a pattern is emerging. We’ve seen it happen multiple times: when a grantee is having trouble with USDOT, instead of raising a fuss, they contact their members of Congress, who then might be able to negotiate with the Secretary of Transportation directly. As one might guess, different members of Congress have varying levels of credibility with the administration. As one local city manager recognized while under USDOT review of their bike and trail project, having support from the party in the White House doesn’t hurt.

Scenario two: Modifications and safety second

Unexpected federally mandated modifications lead to delays,  increase costs, and can fundamentally undermine a project’s ability to address the problems the community identified in the first place. Many communities are funding projects that prioritize safety by de-prioritizing speed, especially in places where vehicles and people are likely to share space. But local leaders (like these in the city of Detroit) are having those options taken away from them by bureaucrats far away in Washington, DC, even when the measures being removed are actively recognized by the federal government as proven safety countermeasures. 

There is limited reporting on this issue, as grantees are understandably hesitant to stick their necks out against the federal government and potentially face retaliation.

Scenario three: Cancellation

As for examples of outright cancellations, there were plenty. In September,  USDOT sent letters cancelling projects in places from San Diego to Alabama, for being “hostile to motor vehicles.” In December, a batch of cancellations targeting Colorado affected transit, road, electrification, and rail safety programs, rescinding over $100 million in funding. In February, officials from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and USDOT let reporters know about plans to specifically target hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation grants for cancellation on an explicitly partisan basis. 

A secret fourth scenario: limbo

But the seemingly worst fate for grantees is the dreaded review limbo. Cities, towns, and communities trying to pursue important projects are effectively being ghosted by the federal government. Whether these delays are intentional or the result of the massive reduction in staff that took place in the first year of the Trump administration, even in T&I Chair Sam Graves’ district, grantees have seemingly been waiting for federal approval and reimbursement for over a year.

The state of Colorado has reportedly not yet received an official notice from the federal government for the February round of grant cancellations. For certain programs, it may not need to receive one at all. That’s because USDOT and the OMB can simply wait out grantees and let their funding expire. For certain types of federal funds, there is a limit to how long they are available to be obligated. While under an administration acting in good faith, this guards against waste for projects that don’t make progress; in this context, it places grantees in a bind where they can do all the work, receive no communication from USDOT, and then have their funds effectively evaporate. Beyond the simple cost of delay from inflation and permitting, this strategy leaves grantees in limbo about whether or not they can pursue their own priorities at all. Even more to the administration’s benefit, the confusion could be used to discourage litigation to “uncancel” grants. 

The administration is particularly focused on delaying EV infrastructure deployment. There has seemingly been no movement on Charging and Fueling Infrastructure awards made in more recent fiscal years of the program, with grantees seemingly stuck in limbo since the administration explicitly targeted the program in its Unleashing American Energy Executive Order. Evaluating federal obligations made for the program, we identified 60 projects that were awarded $880 million, for which funding agreements or obligations cannot be tracked down. Even for projects with funding agreements, unobligated funds still remain stuck in limbo. 

At risk: Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grants

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We cannot state with certainty which of these projects is at risk or whether they’ll move forward. USDOT has not released an official public list indicating which of the apparently more than 3,000 awarded but unobligated grants it inherited from the previous administration are under review. 

State DOTs should spend their safety money on safety or hand it over to locals

This Congress is focused on how federal dollars go out the door in the next surface transportation reauthorization, and it looks like states might win big time. But with a track record like theirs, why shouldn’t Congress consider who else might use their money better?

If the tone and policy goals uplifted by the current committee chairs authoring the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s sequel have been any indication, the next surface transportation reauthorization bill is likely to be a boon for state DOTs. In the House, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves has stated that the bill will get “back to basics,” ensuring the federal program steps back from bike lanes and pedestrian paths and focuses more on laying asphalt for roads. Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito, Graves’s functional equivalent in the Senate’s committee in charge of drafting authorizing language for highway programs, is of about the same opinion on the direction of the program, with her focus on streamlining the many programs created by the IIJA and increasing states’ flexibility. 

Their priorities overlap well with the wishlist that state DOTs have for this upcoming reauthorization. Other than asking for a huge increase in funding, their primary goals are to reduce accountability wherever possible and increase their already significant flexibility to spend as they see fit. One way they may do the latter is by having the IIJA’s competitive discretionary grants, which were made available to local entities like towns, cities, and counties, absorbed into highway formula programs that they directly control. This (likely) scenario for federal policy would result in a net loss of available funding for localities while also increasing the bottom line for state DOTs.

What the BASICS Act does

It seems that localities see this writing on the wall for competitive grants. Earlier this month, the Bridges and Safety Infrastructure for Community Success (BASICS) Act was introduced in the House on a bipartisan basis by Representatives Bresnahan (R-PA-08) and McDonald-Rivet (D-MI-08). 

The bill is supported by the Local Officials in Transportation (LOT) Coalition (made up of cities, counties, and regional planning organizations), and as such, the BASICS Act seeks to ensure that a greater portion of the massive federal transportation program’s funding and programming authority ends up in their control, rather than just with state DOTs. Contrast this with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which represents state DOTs and  is advocating for an increase in both the total funding that goes to state DOTs and the overall share of funding going to them as well.

How the bill shifts control and adds accountability

In short, the BASICS Act would shift how federal highway formula dollars are suballocated and programmed to make funding more accessible to localities. 

It would do this by moving money and increasing the portion that flows down to localities in existing FHWA programs, increasing the federal share for planning dollars for regional planning organizations, and clarifying local entities’ influence over project selection.

However, what is most interesting about the bill is how it addresses safety issues and accountability. Under current federal transportation policy, states can transfer up to 50% of any federal highway formula program’s funding to other highway programs, including out of safety programs like the Highway Safety Improvement Program. 

The BASICS bill would require that any state DOT intending to transfer safety dollars out to another program must first ensure that localities have a chance to compete for those funds themselves, eliminating a loophole that DOTs have used to siphon literally hundreds of millions of dollars out of the Highway Safety Improvement Program into more flexible programs.

State DOTs want more money and fewer guardrails

AASHTO opposes the BASICS Act. Citing internal analysis, they find the bill would change how funding from the Highway Trust Fund is distributed, shifting the ratio from 85 percent for state DOTs and 15 percent to localities, to a new 75/25 percent state and local split. For reference, AASHTO wants to increase the portion of the HTF that goes to state DOTs to 95 percent. Considering that the discretionary grants from the IIJA that many local entities used may be disappearing, AASHTO’s proposal would likely make federal funding inaccessible to localities.

AASHTO’s article argues against the LOT Coalition’s proposal, highlighting three consequences from the change:

  1. Program delivery would be fragmented.
  2. Obligation rates would slow down. 
  3. State-owned roads and bridges would receive less federal funding

All of these results should be viewed as worthwhile trade-offs for increased accountability or outright benefits. When state DOTs have transferred hundreds of millions of dollars, on net, out of the Highway Safety Improvement Program after record-breaking traffic fatality levels, a small shift in responsibility could be the kind of disruption needed to actually improve outcomes. 

 

It’s also worth interrogating what type of program state DOTs are actually delivering today, especially when AASHTO is calling for the reauthorization bill to “eliminate or reduce all federal regulatory burdens that are not explicitly required in law, including performance measures.” With the vast majority of funding flowing directly to them, State DOTs are, in effect, in charge of the federal highway program. If they are to claim credit for successes, they need to be held accountable for their failures. While local-led planning and project delivery could get things wrong just as much as state DOTs do today, they may also end up being more accountable to the priorities and nuances of communities, based purely on their proximity. When your city or county misspends money or fails to take care of obvious needs, it’s a lot easier to hold them accountable than a faceless, faraway, typically unelected state transportation agency. 

As an indication of just how far away they are from thinking about outcomes, one of AASHTO’s top talking points revolves around how good they are at spending other people’s money quickly.  Obligation rates, meaning simply the speed at which federal dollars are spent by a recipient, do not imply any measurement of success based on outcomes. If anything, the use of obligation rates as a metric should be scrutinized. What are you getting for that spending? Are results improving at unprecedented rates? Or are DOTs just prioritizing funding any investment as fast as possible? 

Further, with the ability to wield multi-billion-dollar, state-supported budgets in addition to federal sources, state DOTs have significantly greater financial resources at their disposal compared to other types of project sponsors. However, despite those resources, it’s not uncommon for state DOTs to spend so much on wasteful projects that they effectively bankrupt themselves and leave billions of dollars of federally supported assets at risk of disrepair. Meanwhile, it is common knowledge that most local budgets have to be balanced. 

Locals may indeed have slower obligation rates for federal funds, but that could just as much be a result of USDOT’s yo-yo approach between administrations in their handling of discretionary grants and the sparse federal dollars they had access to over the past few years. In some cases, it may be that their state DOT itself is the barrier to local-led projects’ obligations.

With challenges swinging between managing an overwhelming number of requirements and funding opportunities under the Biden administration, to dealing with vast uncertainty, a lack of communication, and distrust in federal partners over the past year under the current paradigm, it is easy to attribute external factors to the expediency of locally-led projects’ obligation rates.

Congress shouldn’t put all its eggs in one basket

Finally, it’s hard to overstate how much money state DOTs would likely still receive under this proposal, especially if existing competitive grant programs are cut to provide more money for highway formula programs. 

It’s also hard to see why state DOTs should receive more funding in the first place, especially when they have failed to significantly improve on the real basics over the years, like road maintenance and safety. Besides, even judging this from the user-pays lens currently favored by Congress, recent analyses from the Brookings Institution show that the existing funding flows aren’t all that equitable in the first place, with localities receiving less federal funds than what they necessarily pay into the Highway Trust Fund, considering how much time people spend driving on local roads. 

If Congress is looking to consolidate the number of federal transportation programs, it should not put all its eggs in one basket by entrusting state DOTs with responsibility over nearly all of the federal transportation program’s funding. Giving other local-led entities continued participation in the federal program is a good hedge against state DOTs’ records of perpetually needing increased funding to achieve the same poor results for spending. Congress should ensure that all its recipients of federal funding are held accountable for results. 

Analysis: New CBO projection accounting for Trump administration policies shows Americans will pay billions more in fuel taxes 

New CBO Projections show Americans will be paying more Highway Trust Fund taxes as a result of new policies

According to the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office, Americans are set to pay over $80 billion more in gas taxes thanks to new transportation policies implemented under the Trump administration. The kicker? This won’t fix the Highway Trust Fund’s insolvency problem, and it will cost Americans more to deliver the same terrible outcomes on safety, maintenance, emissions, and access.

Each year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects anticipated tax information for important federal programs, detailing their fiscal status, trust fund balances, and tax revenues. One of those balances the CBO makes projections for is the Highway Trust Fund. 

Early last year, the CBO made projections for the balance of the Highway Trust Fund that took into account assumptions about policies that were put into place during the Biden administration. They assumed that, with strong adoption of more fuel-efficient vehicles in line with that administration’s policy to support EV adoption, gas tax revenues would decline over time as people purchase less gas, peaking in 2026 with $44.2 billion in tax revenue before dipping down to just under $38 billion in 2035. In terms of solvency, they found that the Highway Trust Fund would reach a balance of zero dollars at some point in 2028 (though the Mass Transit Account would hit zero first in 2027). 

However, a lot has changed since that last round of projections. Since day one, the Trump administration has made the rollback of what it considers to be “woke” transportation policy a core part of its agenda. With cancelled grants, delayed programs and projects, and significant rollbacks of market-shaping regulations pushed in both legislation and rulemaking, there isn’t a path the administration hasn’t pursued to enact its agenda. Many of those decisions, such as the recent repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment Finding, were made with the justification that the targeted programs and regulations ultimately constituted expensive bloat that imposed costs on both the government and consumer. 

At USDOT, rollbacks were powerful, effectively eliminating CAFE fuel economy standards. EV programs like NEVI and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program have been frozen, left in limbo, or outright cancelled. Beyond EVs, recurring grant terminations for everything from the nation’s largest public transportation project to projects that build multi-use paths deemed “hostile to motor vehicles” have led to cancellations, uncertainty, and delays nationwide.  Congress has followed the administration’s lead, greenlighting the agenda with its own transportation rescissions made in the annual appropriations process and the budget reconciliation bill. 

These decisions can make a major difference in people’s choices over time, but they’ve already started to have an impact. People are paying more in federal taxes. And the CBO believes that trend will continue.

Comparing newly released data from February 2026 to January 2025 projections, Americans paid over $55 million more in taxes to the Highway Trust Fund than the CBO previously projected for 2025, likely in part due to the aforementioned policies introduced by the Trump administration aimed at decreasing the efficiency of future vehicles, slowing the expansion of other transportation options, and making people drive more.

Now, the CBO projects that those same policies will result in Americans paying more in taxes—over $80 billion more over the next ten years. Instead of revenues declining with the adoption of new, more efficient vehicles, the CBO now projects that revenues for the Highway Trust Fund will actually increase. Highway tax revenues are projected to rise from $44.2 billion in 2025 to nearly $52 billion in 2035, signaling the CBO’s belief that Americans will be driving more and purchasing more gasoline, thus paying more in federal gas taxes. 

In terms of the Highway Trust Fund’s insolvency, little would change. With most of the revenue increases coming in the 2030s, the additional revenue would only delay insolvency by a few weeks before the balance hits zero in 2028, barely making a dent in the looming insolvency problem.

 

Some think tanks and other interest groups are praising the increase in anticipated taxes as a good thing, with the Highway Trust Fund inching marginally closer to solvency without having to address the cost increases for highway projects with diminishing returns. While $80 billion is a lot of money, it is just a drop in the bucket compared to the rampant spending on highway programs out of the trust fund. Even with the new revenue, the Highway Trust Fund would still require hundreds of billions more, likely from general fund dollars, to pay for spending. More importantly, how does that money matter when the Highway Trust Fund itself is directed toward a program that produces such bad outcomes for safety, maintenance, and emissions?

It’s worth considering what the actual result of these new policies from the administration will look like for the average person. Arguably, the result won’t be noticeable, for all the wrong reasons. 

Life will be no different. When you need to get somewhere, people will likely drive, get stuck in traffic, and, in doing so, lose a concerning portion of their time to gridlock and paycheck to gas and insurance bills. The (incredibly expensive) cars most people buy will be less fuel-efficient, causing their transportation costs to increase. 

Thanks to our misplaced transportation safety priorities, thousands will continue to die in crashes annually, and even more will be seriously injured. The existing trends will cruise along, as there has been no structural change to how we approach transportation. Nearly 60% of the Highway Trust Fund’s tax revenue comes from the gasoline taxes that people effectively pay for every time they are at the pump. And gas isn’t getting any cheaper in 2026. When Americans are getting increasingly annoyed with just how expensive daily life is, we are now moving our transportation policy to be even more extractive of Americans, expecting them to pay for literally hundreds of billions more gallons of gas just to get around. But hey, at least you paid for a few extra weeks of solvency for the Highway Trust Fund.

Freedom means actual choices: You won’t get cheaper transportation if there’s a monopoly on mobility.

Building on a year of efforts to deregulate fuel-efficiency standards and cancel grants to build out transportation options, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed a critical finding that helped regulate emissions. While concerning, this is ultimately another uninspired move in a decades-long line of failed attempts to wring more savings out of cars. 

The Trump administration has targeted transportation investments since day one, beginning with the issuance of Executive Order 14154: Unleashing American Energy. With the justification that the targeted projects and regulations are burdensome, ideologically motivated, and expensive, the administration has used this directive to outright cancel or hold up infrastructure funding for transit, walking, and biking projects, delay electrification projects, and, prominently, roll back efficiency standards.

Last week, in the greatest culmination of this effort yet, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed its endangerment finding. The finding, which had stood since 2009, determined that greenhouse gas pollution puts people at risk by worsening the impacts of climate change. As a result, greenhouse gases emitted from vehicles were considered harmful and should be regulated. The endangerment finding led to limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and helped spur technologies that help drivers avoid wasting gas (and gas money). The EPA now argues that repealing those very rules will reduce regulatory burdens on industry and lead to more than a trillion dollars in consumer savings. 

While the EPA administrator is claiming credit for the action as the “Largest Deregulatory Action In US History,” it’s in line with what has happened at other federal agencies over the past year. The Freedom Means Affordable Cars initiative from USDOT, which kicked off in the fall, led to a major reduction of the CAFE fuel economy standards (though these standards have been de facto unenforceable since the penalties for breaking them were reduced to $0 following the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill”). Taking the administration’s headline claims for savings at face value (though their own official analysis says the move will increase consumers’ costs), they say the move could save consumers $1,000 off the price of a new car. Even if that assumption were true, cars still cost, on average, over $50,000 new and $25,000 used. $49k and even $24k still represent a massive amount of money to most households, and costs don’t stop with the sticker price. Insurance, maintenance, and gas all pile up, and unexpected but inevitable car crashes can potentially undo anybody’s best-laid financial plans. Cars are inherently expensive to own and operate, and with car-dependent infrastructure and land use, people do not have real alternatives. 

We’ve spent years and billions chasing all kinds of savings for cars. It’s not working.

While the slogan Freedom Means Affordable Cars might be an apt mantra for this administration, it’s just another example of the United States’ bipartisan tradition of searching for the smallest savings for drivers, even when it does not save actual time or money. 

Here’s an example: you might hear that congestion leads to huge, quantified costs for regional economies and on people’s wallets, and conversely, you might also hear about the enormous benefits assigned to expensive projects that would supposedly relieve that congestion. These costs and benefits are all based on the idea that there’s an opportunity cost to your time commuting. While time is certainly valuable, there’s a point where making public investment decisions based on time savings eventually fails to make sense. People don’t make career choices based on whether or not their job is 25 minutes or 27 minutes away, but engineers greenlight multi-billion-dollar highway projects using that logic.  By assigning economic value to the theoretical seconds in time savings motorists might get from highway projects, and multiplying that across the thousands of commuters each day, every year, engineers come up with financial justifications for projects, all without having to consider how other alternatives might increase travelers’ real access to destinations. 

The last 70 years of U.S. transportation policy have been about spending billions to try to fix traffic by shaving seconds off your commute, but in its singular focus on the mobility of cars, our investments have only served to ultimately waste the public’s time and money with projects that fail to meet their goals. Even if those time savings could result in economic productivity as it is sold, it remains impossible to improve congestion by expanding highway networks. In fact, despite using the latest, largest federal transportation bill to invest billions more into highway expansion, traffic congestion has continued to grow unabated to the worst it has ever been. 

Thankfully, however, congestion is not everything. According to the University of Minnesota’s latest Access Across America study, access to jobs via all means of transportation actually increased in 2024, “despite the fact that congestion worsened in 47 of the top 50 largest urban areas,” demonstrating how just measuring congestion only tells half the story. The transformative highway investments that built this country and provided auto access to nearly all destinations have already been built, and they do their job of getting people where they need to go every day. But by chasing diminishing returns to reduce congestion, at enormous and increasing costs to build roads, we just play out the sunk cost fallacy. Instead, tracking performance for improved access to more affordable modes of transportation, like walking, biking, and transit, could help provide people with real opportunities to make the choice to save.

Despite USDOT and the EPA’s efforts over the past year, and the decades worth of attempts from state DOTs, millions of Americans will spend countless hours this year stuck in traffic, suffering the consequences of billions of dollars wasted on projects designed to wring marginal time savings in car-dependent infrastructure that has hit a point of diminishing returns. If people’s only reasonably option to get to work is to drive, they have no choice but to get a car—it does not matter how fast, marginally cheaper, or how fuel-efficient that car is.

Freedom means actual choices, not just affordable cars.

Real freedom is, and always will be, defined by one’s ability to make meaningful choices in their own life. Despite this, most people lack the basic freedom to determine how they get around in the United States, especially when compared to the array of options available in other places. Just about everyone needs a car to meet their daily needs in the United States, and the industries that sell vehicles, car insurance, gasoline, and repair services know this and charge accordingly.

Not everyone has the ability to own and drive a car. Up to a third (or more) of Americans are non-drivers, and if you’re not a non-driver today, odds are that you will be one day in the future. Thanks to the longstanding underinvestment in smart land-use and transportation options, the most affordable choices remain out of reach for most Americans. But making transportation investment decisions that reduce car ownership by even a fraction of a percent over the next two decades could save American households trillions in avoided car-related costs. Real savings—meaning real, avoided purchases—and real freedom might actually be realized when our limited funds are dedicated to transformative investments, like building out world-class transit, that would actually help save people money. 

Header photo credit: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

What’s in the tangled FY26 transportation spending bill? 

With the Senate passing a new FY26 appropriations package with contentious funding for the Department of Homeland Security removed, Congress looks likely to soon pass a funding bill including fiscal year 2026 Transportation-Housing and Urban Development appropriations after a brief partial government shutdown. Here’s what’s inside the compromise:

Last week, Congress looked like it was on track to pass a package of fiscal year 2026 funding bills, including the Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bill, ahead of the January 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown. After passing in the House on January 22nd, it looked like it was on its way to passing in the Senate, up until federal agents employed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) killed another American in Minneapolis. In response, Senate Minority Leader Schumer vowed to withhold Democrats’ votes for DHS funding unless new reforms to hold the agency accountable are included in law. With DHS funding tied together with several other “must-pass” funding bills in H.R. 7148 (THUD among them), Congressional leaders were in a difficult position to avoid a shutdown. However, late on January 29, Congress and the White House announced a deal to keep the government open by separating out the DHS bill and extending funding at current levels for two weeks to negotiate a deal on DHS accountability. 

Congress now has to thread the needle to pass the funding packages on time, and there’s a chance there will be a brief  government shutdown over the weekend as Congress negotiates policy provisions with holdouts (all outside of the scope of the THUD bill). Whatever funding package passes, and whenever it does, will likely contain the following fiscal year 2026 transportation funding details.

What’s in the bill, though?

When it comes to topline funding numbers for USDOT, the bill is a bipartisan compromise. However, it’s important to evaluate how this Congress got to those toplines. 

While the Senate’s draft of the bill won out over the President’s and the House’s preferences for drastic cuts and potentially harmful policy riders, not every program or grantee was so lucky. Over $2.3 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding was either rescinded or shuffled around in the bill, undermining trust and confidence in the supposed certainty expected with a five-year surface transportation reauthorization bill. 

Transit 

The bill provides $16.7 billion for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). As expected, $14.6 billion would go to the Mass Transit Account for transit formula grants. On top of the formula grants, there is $211 million for Transit Infrastructure Grants. $147 million is for “Community Projects” earmarks proposed by members of Congress. This is a major increase over 2025, since last year’s funding bill included no money for earmarks. However, like with other areas in the bill, that increase is from rescinded and reprogrammed funding— in this case, nearly $10 million for ferry programs, $40 million from FTA oversight funds, and $138 million from the Federal Railroad Administration’s oversight and technical assistance funds from the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail Program. 

Congress falls especially short in supporting transit when it comes to the Capital Investment Grant program, which is intended to build out America’s project pipeline of major transit infrastructure improvements. The bill provides only $1.7 billion for the program, about $500 million below the funding levels set last year. It’s not all bad news, though, as some $194 million in old grant funding is repurposed exclusively for transit projects to support the FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics (fulfilling a wish of T&I ranking member Rep. Rick Larsen)—but again, that’s all old money. Overall, the bill cuts transit funding when you discount expected Mass Transit Account funds. 

Passenger rail

The bill “provides” the FRA $2.9 billion for FY26, but Congress once again reached this top line by using various transfers of funding for the Federal-State Partnership program and CRISI grants. The bill took $150 million from IIJA advanced appropriations for the Federal-State Partnership Program, instead allocating $110 million to CRISI grants and $40 million to FY26 Federal-State Partnership Program projects. Compared to previous bills for fiscal years 2024 and 2025,  the FY26 bill flips the script on how funding is distributed between Amtrak’s National Network and Northeast Corridor.  The bill provides $850 million for the Northeast Corridor (a decrease of $291 million relative to FY25) and $1.57 billion for the National Network (an increase of $291 million relative to FY25). 

Pulling from old, unobligated funding sources—includinga grant the administration cancelled for California High Speed Rail—the bill permanently rescinds nearly $1 billion in unobligated funds. This includes roughly $2 million in rail funding left over from appropriations made in the 109th through 114th Congresses, $14 million in Maglev grants from the 116th Congress, a massive $929 million made for California High Speed Rail from the 111th Congress, and finally $20 (yes, $20) for Amtrak funds originally appropriated in 1996, sending these funds back to the treasury.

Highway programs

Federal Highway Administration programs are funded at $65 billion, with $62.6 billion for highway formula programs and $2.4 billion for general fund programs. This is a major $1.34 billion increase over last fiscal year, and that increase mostly comes from $1.3 billion in reprogrammed funds. 

National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program funds are among the funds being traded for highway program earmarks in the bill. This comes after a judge recently ruled in favor of states seeking to use NEVI after funds were frozen by the administration at the start of last year. Over $503 million in NEVI funds that would have gone to state DOTs as formula funds are rescinded—but notably, this rescission is made in proportion to how much a state has obligated out of their first fiscal year of IIJA funding. That means states that were slower to obligate this funding for building electric vehicle charging infrastructure will lose more than those that moved fast. While that may potentially be a silver lining for state DOTs still eager to build out new electric vehicle chargers, EV adopters are losing out across the country as plans for a comprehensive national charging network are being surrendered to highway program earmarks. We estimate what that might look like here. 

On top of that formula cut, $300 million will come out of NEVI’s little-discussed 10 percent discretionary grant set-aside for localities and states. Since the set-aside program was used to increase Round 1B and Round 2 Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program funding awards, existing awardees under that program could be affected. The Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grants program is among those we previously noted were slow to obligate under the Trump administration, with some funding at risk of expiring or already expired, so it’s likely these grantees never had a chance to spend their funding down. SMART grants, which funded things like advanced traffic signal management and autonomous and connected vehicles project pilots, were also slashed by over $200 million, likely affecting existing awardees. 

Some oversight and common sense

In response to USDOT’s disruptive implementation of programs during its first year under President Trump’s second term, many of Congress’s policy provisions in the bill focused on improving transparency and oversight of the agency. Among other changes detailed below, the bill would require DOT to deliver Congress status reports on grants that have been awarded but not obligated—a huge issue throughout this past year since the administration took office and began either canceling or slow-walking grants that they don’t like. 

While the only thing in this country stronger than law is the Trump administration’s willingness to bend (or break) it, the bill makes great efforts, especially given the composition of this Congress, to bring some much-needed transparency to DOT’s policies, processes, grant cancellations, organizational changes, and available data. 

USDOT would be required to be more transparent in its actions, including by giving Congress advance notice before making cancellations, compiling details on cancelled or impacted grants, and putting together a report on the grant review backlog, including findings on how staffing reductions may have played a role in worsening delays. This backlog update requires a status update of all awarded but not obligated competitive grants and earmarks—something we’ve specifically advocated for with Congress over the past year. Additionally, old Notices of Funding Opportunity, grant award lists, and guidance from the administration must be kept online for at least ten years to ensure continuity between administrations.

One positive in the highway program is $30 million for reconnecting communities projects that lost their grant funding under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Unfortunately, those funds come at the expense of other rescinded programs and are available only for a handful of very large awards over $145 million. Additionally, the excessive 40 percent planning set-aside for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grants is reduced to 30 percent, freeing up millions for useful capital projects. (The final year of SS4A grant funding will open up this spring, with a likely June application deadline for implementation and planning/demonstration grant applications.)

Standing issues

So, while Congress seems to have threaded the needle to avoid another shutdown, the baggage from the previous shutdown remains unresolved. The Gateway Tunnel project, the largest transit project in the United States and an economically critical infrastructure connection in the Northeast Corridor, remains frozen at the President’s behest, with little justification. Obligation rates for competitive grant programs that the administration dislikes remain low. 

If Congress fails to meet the deadline to pass the appropriations bills required to keep the government open, it’s not unlikely that the Trump administration will once again look to transportation program funding as another lever to pull to increase the pressure on Congressional Democrats to reach a deal. It certainly would not be the first time the administration has used the threat of withholding transportation funding to pressure states and federal funding recipients to conform to its priorities. 

Congress can’t ignore the need to REPAIR our broken infrastructure

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

A new bill introduced in Congress this week, the REPAIR Infrastructure Act, would continue the work of the Reconnecting Communities Pilot program to improve people’s access to destinations that matter and help address the mistakes of divisive transportation infrastructure. Previous examples of projects have successfully generated billions in benefits, providing safety improvements, affordable housing, public amenities, and new economic development opportunities.

Issues for miles

While freeways can be good at moving vehicles from point to point at high speed, their construction often came at a significant cost for the people in the neighborhoods they were built through. Hundreds of thousands of homes in vibrant communities supporting strong, local economies were knocked down in the effort to build the highway system, displacing over a million residents. Though we may never know the full extent of foregone economic opportunities, analyses of Washington, DC, and Atlanta, Georgia, reveal that billions of dollars worth of valuable land that once was used for homes for all types of people has since been lost to overbuilt infrastructure. In rural towns,  main streets were transformed into dangerous, high speed roads to provide for the convenience of travelers at the expense of residents’ safety and the local economy. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act initiated a pilot program to begin to reverse the damage, and over a thousand communities across the country attempted to participate, but over $13.8 billion in requests unfortunately went unanswered, largely due to the Reconnecting Communities Pilot’s low funding of $1 billion over five years.

The REPAIR Infrastructure Act, recently introduced in the Senate by Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, co-sponsored by Senators Merkley and Warnock and in the House by Representative Pat Ryan, co-sponsored by Representative Shomari Figures, would continue those efforts started in the IIJA, opening up $15 billion in new opportunities to stitch America’s communities back together and prioritize people and their access to jobs and economic opportunity.

The REPAIR Infrastructure Act would pick up where the Reconnecting Communities Pilot left off. This is great news for the country’s many rural and urban communities split by overbuilt infrastructure, especially when one considers how massively oversubscribed the RCP program was compared to other programs. Looking back even to its first year, the pilot program garnered a similar number of applicants as the Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant program, which had nearly 15 times the funding. In just three years of funding opportunities, the REPAIR Infrastructure Act’s predecessors1 received over 1,400 applications for funding from communities from all fifty states, with over 1,000 applications from towns, cities and counties, many in rural areas.

What the bill does

The REPAIR Infrastructure Act would reauthorize and evolve the Reconnecting Communities Pilot from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to continue its work, enabling communities across the country to access federal funds for projects to reconnect communities split by divisive transportation infrastructure. The bill would provide $3 billion annually over a five year period for localities, states, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, nonprofits, tribal governments, and other entities to apply for planning and capital project funding on a competitive basis.

Building off its predecessor, the program would encourage applicants to put forward projects with strong community partnerships and an emphasis on improving people’s access to housing, healthcare, places of worship, and economic opportunities. Awards made in fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024 show a geographically diverse, national demand for strong projects to bridge all kinds of dividing infrastructure in all kinds of communities. With over $500 million awarded to planning projects for reconnecting communities over the last four years, there’s still much work to be done to advance these projects. Improving on how it delivers for rural communities relative to its predecessor, the bill explicitly calls on USDOT to grade applications based on how well they would support development along rural main streets—which is key, as nearly 20 percent of awards went to rural communities in the FY 2023 round of awards. Going further, the REPAIR Infrastructure Act introduces new eligibilities to existing federal aid highway programs, like the massive National Highway Performance Program, such that states could use any of their largest sources of federal funds to advance these projects.

All the while, the program stays focused, limiting funding to projects that would not add new liabilities and lane miles to the highway system, instead prioritizing safety, communities, and economic development.

Going the distance

While the REPAIR Infrastructure bill does a great job at providing discrete opportunities for communities and even states to reverse the course of bad decision-making, it falls short of making the sort of systemic change that would fully solve these problems at the scale we are actively creating them each year. Congress needs to ensure that the largest streams of federal funds—federal highway formula dollars—do not continue to be used counterproductively to demolish existing homes and businesses in service of highway expansion, as they still are across the country. Take California for example: Hundreds of homes were demolished by the government to expand highways between 2018 and 2023, all for projects that have ultimately failed in their goals to reduce traffic congestion.

The United States has no shortage of urban roads and highways, yet we keep building. Over the decades spent expanding our highway system, the country has become so covered in roads that, according to a recent analysis, they occupy an estimated 22,000 square miles of land in urban areas worth over $4.1 trillion. To put that in context, that would be about roughly the size of West Virginia, or a triangle with points in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, Texas. Considering that the United States has a growing $830 billion deferred highway maintenance bill to deal with, but shrinking highway revenues to pay for it, scaling down the state-sized stamp of asphalt seems wiser and wiser each year.

By reducing the number of lane miles we have to maintain, we permanently cut down on future maintenance costs, and replacing that same land formerly occupied by roads opens up new opportunities for long-term economic development. That same analysis found that reducing just a fraction of the country’s urban lane miles and replacing them with much-needed housing, commercial development, or other uses could actually net over $27 billion annually. While that might initially sound hard to believe, it pencils out when you consider how economically successful projects that would today be eligible under the REPAIR Infrastructure program, like Rochester’s Inner Loop North Project, which netted more than $200 million in private investment off a $24 million public project, have been. In Milwaukee, the benefits of a project to remove divisive infrastructure were even greater, with a $25 million project generating a billion dollars worth of completed or planned private real estate development. While the REPAIR Infrastructure Act does not focus exclusively on road projects, it would provide opportunities for projects like this and others that would unlock the benefits of access in communities of all sizes.

By giving communities long awaited opportunities to prioritize infrastructure investment that (re)connects people and provides access to destinations that matter, the REPAIR Infrastructure Act would continue to help undo the legacy of divisive transportation infrastructure. Bills like the REPAIR Infrastructure Act are crucial to set the tone in Congress for what’s really important to address in Surface Transportation reauthorization—prioritizing safety and connectivity by rethinking how and why we build transportation infrastructure.

Analysis: New FTA bus program awards skipped out on clean vehicles

The Trump Administration awarded 97% of Low-No Bus program grants to low emission buses in FY25, far outpacing previous years

The Trump administration’s decision to take $2 billion intended to lower bus emissions and instead maximize the purchase of dirtier buses is another example of how, without real accountability, the next transportation bill is on track to undermine congressional intent.

The latest round of awards in the Low or No Emission program for procuring new, cleaner buses is out, and at $2 billion, it’s the largest announcement ever. More buses are always great, but there’s a wrinkle: this is going to be the most polluting round of funding in the program’s history since the administration almost exclusively bought more emitting buses. If this is how the Trump administration is going to treat these types of funding priorities, how can they be trusted with a new reauthorization?

The Low-No lowdown

On November 20, 2025, transit agencies and stakeholders everywhere cheerily celebrated the announcement of $2 billion in federal awards to buses made under the Low or No Emission Grant Program. Created in the FAST Act (the transportation bill before the current law, the IIJA), the “Low-No Program” has been around since the first Trump administration, and has been responsible for the delivery of thousands of zero-emission and low-emission buses to transit agencies of all sizes across the country. Unlike the other capital formula programs at FTA, this program was specifically tailored to help transit agencies procure more expensive transit buses that use either “no emission” electric or hydrogen propulsion, or alternative fuel low-emission sources, like propane, compressed natural gas, or diesel-electric hybrids, that are both known to emit less greenhouse gases and cancer-causing particulate emissions than traditional diesel. Both types of vehicles come with major operational benefits to transit agencies, climate benefits for the environment, and health benefits for the bus drivers and riders exposed to tailpipe fumes when near transit.

Over the program’s lifetime, agency demand has skewed heavily toward electric buses, spurred on by the potential operations savings and other benefits and statutory language in the program calling for the Secretary to consider projects with the lowest emissions. However, demand for electric buses was so great and the buses were so effective at reducing emissions that the low-emission, fossil-fueled buses rarely, if ever, won out when evaluated solely on performance before the IIJA. To circumvent this, certain members of the Senate added language to the program during the passage of the IIJA, installing a multibillion-dollar minimum for these non-zero emission buses so natural gas and propane buses would be more competitive (essentially, they did “affirmative action” for fossil fuels).

Despite the change, our Greener Fleets report from 2023 demonstrated that the demand for low-emission buses was so low in fiscal year 2022 that the newly added minimum set-aside couldn’t be reached—even with the Biden administration awarding funds to almost every low-emission bus applicant.

In the following rounds, “low-emission” buses ended up making up a greater number of awards. Since the IIJA’s passage, electric bus manufacturers have struggled with inflation and demand, with a major manufacturer pulling out of the U.S. market and another going bankrupt. Observing those challenges with zero-emission buses and recognizing the higher probability of getting an award for a low-emission bus application, transit agencies applied for more low-emission buses in FY 2023 and FY 2024.

Based on our analysis of the more than 100 projects awarded under the Low-No program, an unprecedented 97 percent of awards made by USDOT in the FY25 funding opportunity went to low-emission buses. This comes despite the fact that the program itself requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to consider in its awards, projects that “make greater reductions in energy consumption and harmful emissions, including direct carbon emissions, than comparable standard buses or other low or no emission buses.” And now a program created nearly ten years ago specifically to prioritize the deployment of zero-emission buses is going to buy almost none of them.

This is a drastic departure in the distribution of funding awards compared to previous years of the program, including those under the first Trump administration. This should not be too surprising that the administration would have this bias, as they indicated in the notice of funding opportunity, they would favor low-emission buses to the greatest extent allowed by law. But was what the administration did this year even allowed by law? Did the USDOT properly consider how emissions-reducing “low emissions” applicants were compared to “no emissions” applicants?

You can’t trust this administration to implement programs as intended by Congress

This move is disappointing and indicative of a continued disregard for the congressional intent and purpose behind IIJA programs that the administration has consistently demonstrated over the course of the year. It is doubly a shame, as this year’s funding opportunity continued to make great strides in improving program design, prioritizing awards to agencies that emphasized better procurement practices, like prioritizing applicants that worked with manufacturers to get simpler buses on the road faster for riders. These are the sorts of improvements that would have scaled best with zero-emission buses, where changes like these matter most.

There were plenty of legitimate reasons to diversify federal funding awards to electric transit buses and low-emission buses, especially this year. Electric buses have struggled in recent years, with manufacturers closing U.S. operations, and transit advocates being more cautious about the trade-offs that transitioning to electric buses today could entail. Even considering that, the law remained unchanged between fiscal years 2024 and 2025. Unless the distribution of applications for electric buses versus low-emission buses represented a complete and full reversal of trends observed in previous years, the Trump administration seems to have put its thumb on the scale.

Why should Congress entrust the administration with more funding?

Congress is in the process of drafting the next surface transportation reauthorization bill to replace the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which expires in less than a year in 2026. As Congress considers what guardrails it installs in that bill, the Trump administration will ultimately be responsible for implementing programs like this one that prioritize national goals like emissions reduction and safety improvements.

Yet the administration has demonstrated a consistent bias against the type of projects that are most effective at meeting those emissions reduction and safety goals. They have cut safety rulemaking short, and eliminated funding for projects that create safe infrastructure for people walking or biking, introduced arbitrary freezes to programs, allowed funding to lapse for projects that reduce infrastructure liabilities and repair divisive infrastructure, and more. This funding award further underscores the point we made earlier this year that we are in no place to provide this administration with more funding until the existing laws are implemented faithfully to their intentions and toward national goals.

Rural and red state pain: Four notable impacts of Trump’s unprecedented transit cuts

The Trump administration’s new proposals to eliminate dedicated federal funding for public transit and eliminate the ability to transfer funds for transit would devastate transit agencies, particularly rural transit agencies. A deep dive into the data shows us four key implications of the proposed gutting of federal support for transit.

Transit agencies deliver crucial service and mobility options, connecting people to jobs and daily needs in communities of all sizes across the nation. President Trump’s USDOT is floating a proposal to end federal support for transit from the gas tax, ostensibly to try and rescue the country’s transportation trust fund which is rocketing toward insolvency. (Which also will not work.)

1. Rural transit agencies across a surprising group of states, including Nevada, Texas, and West Virginia, would suffer more than others

2. Because rural transit agencies rely more heavily on federal transit funding than urban transit agencies, this proposal is functionally an attack on rural communities’ transit

Urban transit agencies often benefit from state support and have the added advantage of covering a greater share of their costs with fares, (thanks to their use of transit modes with higher farebox recovery rates.) While urban agencies would struggle immensely under this proposal, they at least have more options for weathering the storm. But people in rural communities would likely be left without mobility options as their agencies are gutted. For non-drivers, seniors, and people with disabilities in rural areas, this would decimate their freedom of mobility and access to jobs and critical services outside of major urban areas.

3. While the federal trust fund is a key source of transit funding for all transit agencies, in some states, it is the most significant source

People in these states, like Montana, Louisiana, and Vermont, would face budget gaps of up to 60 percent without this federal funding, cutting off access to jobs, medical services, and community for people in rural America.

4. Eliminating flexible transit funding is bad for states of all kinds, too

In order to impose the administration’s top-down vision of transportation that excludes transit entirely, the administration is proposing to eliminate states’ ability to direct transportation funding to their own priorities. There are two issues at play that need to be explained here: Flexible funding and highway program transferability.

Flexible funding for transit and highway improvements is a power that states have to take money from their highway transportation funding programs, and “flex” those dollars to transit projects that are eligible under existing FHWA programs, like building bus lanes. Transportation goals can be achieved by different means. Projects to support transit can help leave roads less damaged, reduce congestion and emissions, and save urban land for more productive private uses than a six-lane highway, all by taking cars off of highways. That’s why transit has, for decades, remained a type of project states can fund using their flexible transportation dollars, using their own judgement and discretion. USDOT is proposing to take away the ability of all states to make that choice—to decide that a transit project will help them achieve their mobility goals better than some other type of project.

Transferability is an entirely different concept, which describes states’ ability to shift funds between FHWA (i.e, highway) programs with different purposes. Excessive transferability dilutes the purpose of certain federal highway programs, since they are designed, at least in principle, to be goal-oriented. For example, states are given certain amounts for the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, and the Highway Safety Improvement Programs. It defeats the intent of providing funds for those specific purposes when states transfer 50 percent of those funds—as they are allowed to do—into other programs for expanding highways which will make congestion and air quality worse, or create new, dangerous high-speed highways.

Whether it’s a hospital worker traveling to their job so they can care for us or an older American who can no longer drive, everyday Americans of nearly every stripe, in communities of all sizes, rely on transit. As the data shows, there’s much to lose for nearly every state in walking away from the historic, nearly 50-year-long federal commitment to transit.

Axing federal transit funding won’t solve the Highway Trust Fund’s fiscal woes

The Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate the core pillar of federal transit funding won’t fix the Highway Trust Fund’s budget woes. Other proposals put forward by this Congress so far haven’t helped much either.

Historical primer

We spend a lot of money on highways, but when it comes to real performance, we do not get a lot out of all that spending. After over a trillion dollars spent over the last 30 years, our infrastructure conditions and road safety are not any better. Part of the reason why we are able to spend so much money is that the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) has a dedicated revenue source that provides consistent payouts—whether or not the funds are needed for the purpose. While it is politically durable, the Highway Trust Fund is not reliable.

Ever since its inception in 1956, the HTF has struggled to cover the repair bill of the massive federally subsidized highway network that we continue to expand today. This first came to a head in the early 1980s, when the HTF, funded at that time by a four-cent per gallon gas tax, was running out of money to both pay the repair bill for the first generation of highways built in the 1950s and 1960s and continue its rapid rate of expansion led by state DOTs. The choice then was to either borrow from the general fund, raise taxes, or match spending to what funds come in and focus on repairing existing assets. In 1983, during the Reagan administration, Congress chose to raise taxes.

Raising taxes, however, is unpopular, and 1983’s five-cent increase in the gas tax was only made possible by a coalition of pro-transit members of Congress who conditioned their supporting votes on one cent of that increase going to transit, thus creating the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund. Since 2008, instead of having those difficult conversations, Congress has just taken more than $275 billion from all taxpayers to cover the yawning deficit. Despite the fact that transit users—along with all other taxpayers—have been massively subsidizing highway expansion spending for nearly 20 years, transit is being targeted for removal from the Highway Trust Fund.

As a reminder, the issue is highway spending

Eliminating the Mass Transit Account would completely fail to solve the Highway Trust Fund’s deeper problems. The only way out of the transportation funding shortfall is for Congress to once again consider its three options:

  1. Take from the general fund and deficit spend to keep the status quo going
  2. Raise taxes on vehicles that already cost far more than many families can afford during an affordability crisis.
  3. Adjust spending down to match revenues and refocus on repair and reducing highway asset liabilities

We’re in this mess because previous Congresses chose to take money from all taxpayers to prop up a program that is failing to deliver on its promises of safety, state of repair, and mobility. For nearly 20 years Congress has punted on the hard conversations we need to have about the purposes of this program and what we get for our money. And so the nation’s transportation trust fund is rocketing to insolvency, and these proposals are merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The unavoidable truth is that we spend ~$20B more per year than the gas tax brings in on just the highway programs alone. Rep. Graves’ recent idea to add new taxes on cleaner vehicles, like hybrids and EVs, would barely make a dent in that number. USDOT could tell Congress to end all transit funding, passenger rail, competitive grants, and scores of other smaller programs and the trust fund would still be speeding toward insolvency. There are serious ways to address this problem, but these proposals from USDOT are not it.

Here’s what’s making Congress’s funding deal so tough for transportation and what a shutdown means for USDOT

With both parties failing to reach an agreement on how to extend appropriations for federal agencies last night, we’ve entered a government shutdown, the first since 2019. While the main driver of this shutdown stems from Democrats’ intent to prevent the expiration of certain healthcare tax credits under the Affordable Care Act, the chaos affecting the federal transportation program over the course of the year should be reason enough to think twice about throwing more money at USDOT. Plus, will there be road closures?

On September 30, 2025, the last day of Federal Fiscal Year 2025, the Senate failed in its second attempt to pass the Congressional majority’s bill to continue funding federal agencies at current levels. As we entered into Federal Fiscal Year 2026 at 12:01 a.m. on October 1, funding for many government agencies and programs lapsed, including for several agencies within USDOT.

Smart Growth America outlined the basics of a government shutdown, but to be quick, Congress had the chance to extend a “clean Continuing Resolution,” or CR, proposed by Republicans, but Democrats rejected it in an attempt to negotiate for some of their priorities to be included in the CR.

Not so clean funding extension

It’s not exactly normal for Congress to battle over a clean funding extension. But considering the way federal agencies, including USDOT, are implementing existing federal programs, we’re no longer operating under normal circumstances. Federal programs deemed insufficiently aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities have already been shut down for months now. Here are three key reasons why simply extending the current funding levels would mean continuing the broken status quo that has allowed USDOT to illegally cancel, delay, and reprogram federal funds as it sees fit.

  1. USDOT has overruled Congress on what its “federal priorities” are and has cancelled an unprecedented number of project awards.
    Since March, USDOT has undertaken a project-by-project review of awarded competitive grants to ensure alignment with the administration’s priorities. They have screened projects for infrastructure improvements they dislike, including bike lanes, multi-use paths, and sidewalks, and forced awardees to remove them from designs or outright cancelled grants. USDOT Deputy Secretary Bradbury has justified this by stating that these projects do not constitute a federal interest, despite these priorities for active transportation projects like these being explicitly eligible for federal funding since at least ISTEA 1991. Is USDOT trying to wind the status quo back to 1956?
  2. The administration intentionally delayed implementation of grants to allow appropriations to lapse. This is an example of impoundment and a pocket rescission.
    In addition to directly cancelling grants, USDOT has implemented IIJA programs at a drastically reduced pace compared to previous administrations. Thanks to this intentional slowdown, numerous Fiscal Year 2022 grants were never obligated before the end of their period of availability and have now expired. This is likely an illegal impoundment of funds and against Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and mirrors the Nixon-era circumstances that resulted in the Impoundment Control Act’s passage in the first place.
  3. The USDOT is not implementing programs that the administration dislikes and is ignoring its responsibilities put forward explicitly in law.
    Several programs under USDOT seem to have effectively been “frozen,” with the staff required to implement their statutorily required projects either fired or forced onto other priorities. Frozen programs in USDOT include—but are certainly not limited to—the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program and those mandated to modernize the system under Section 11205 and Section 13010 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

What do we anticipate the shutdown to look like at USDOT?

Unless the Office of Management and Budget  (OMB) has drastically different plans, most workers’ jobs at the USDOT’s surface transportation modal administrations should continue. While federally funded projects might be administratively affected in some cases, work on most projects will continue

Recently released FY26 shutdown plans indicate that while USDOT plans to furlough over 12,000 workers, the majority of furloughed workers are in the Federal Aviation Administration. There are no listed plans to furlough workers in the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but 239 workers at the Federal Railroad Administration and 31 staff members in the Office of the Secretary will be furloughed.

While OMB Director Russell Vought has injected tension into the shutdown showdown by threatening to enact further firings through reductions in force (RIFs) during the shutdown, USDOT Secretary Duffy has not identified what sort of jobs would be at risk of an additional round of firings. Much of USDOT’s staff is fully funded by revenues from the Highway Trust Fund and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s advanced appropriations, and therefore may be insulated from this political fight, although this is very much not guaranteed.

Business as unusual

While it seems like USDOT staff can look forward to regularly scheduled work, the months of firings (and court-ordered rehirings) of workers under OMB-directed RIFs have redefined what constitutes the department’s business as usual. Though the sheer number of people employed at an organization does not directly indicate capacity to execute projects, preparation documents from the most recent near-shutdowns in FY24 and FY25 help to illustrate the extent to which the department’s capacity to enact grants, develop policy, implement programs, and advance projects may have been diminished due to reduced staffing.


 

Shut down the system

How to keep USDOT accountable is likely to remain low on the list of questions that Congress must answer before overcoming this shutdown, but this remains a growing, multibillion-dollar problem for grantees who depend on the federal government to be a partner. With negotiations over the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill expected to begin this fall, Congress must determine if USDOT itself is a worthy steward of federal funds.

Grants are under attack on two fronts: Congress should stand up to USDOT and assert its power over the purse

Not only is the Trump administration’s USDOT potentially trying to run out the clock for FY22 grants it does not like, but it’s also in parallel cancelling competitive grants awarded to localities and communities across the country. These communities worked tirelessly to secure funding for projects focused on things like the safety of people walking and biking and reducing transportation barriers. Enough should be enough– Congress needs to step up and assert its role over policy before negotiating the next reauthorization.

Read our letter to Congress, co-signed by 45 organizations.

Certain federal grant funding is expiring at the end of the month

Last week, we warned about a potential “pocket rescission”-style strategy from the US Department of Transportation, intended to run out the clock on certain programs’ previously awarded Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act grants before the funds become unavailable at the end of the federal fiscal year on September 30. Even more concerningly, USDOT may have an internal deadline to obligate funds by as early as next week, in order to close out grant administration before the end of the fiscal year, reducing awardees’ window of time for action.

To understand what is at risk, we analyzed available data for some of the programs most at risk, taking a look at USDOT’s lists of “approved” grants (which are supposedly safe for obligation) and public federal obligation data reported on USASpending.gov.

Altogether, across seven programs that we evaluated (though more could be at risk), we identified over $400 million for projects that could be at risk, and we are tracking them here. In just those programs, we found over 50 projects with awards that did not seem to have any obligations associated with them on USAspending.gov, or were apparently not included among USDOT’s latest list of “approved” grants.

USDOT is also directly cancelling grants that don’t align with their new priorities

Unfortunately, this grant expiration issue is not the only one facing advocates. On August 7, 2025, the White House issued an executive order, making it easier to cancel grants in the future and setting a standard that all discretionary grants should “demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.”

Now, independent of the expiration of FY22 grants, USDOT has sent multiple letters cancelling non-state DOT entities’ discretionary grant awards. In at least three places —New Mexico, Illinois, and Connecticut—local news coverage has picked up on the issue, but it is likely much more widespread. More examples of projects we believe to be cancelled can be found on this sheet, but when USDOT controls all funding decision-making, grant recipients can be hesitant to come forward with news on cancellations publicly, out of fear of future reprisal.

In total, we believe there are roughly 200 projects that may not be approved by the Trump administration, and remain unobligated out of the initial 3,200 awarded but unobligated discretionary grants backlog the Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration at the start of their term. The status of these 200 grants is unclear, and it is difficult to determine which projects are specifically at risk due to a systemic lack of transparency in federal grant funding.

These 200 grants may be at risk of both expiration at the end of this fiscal year or at risk of being actively cancelled for not aligning with the president’s transportation priorities. Considering they are not to be found on a list of approved grants, assume that the list of 50+ FY22 grants at risk of expiring and the list of cancelled grants could constitute part of the 200 grants with an unclear status.

USDOT has not publicly discussed any information regarding the cancellations of these grants. If you know about a project that has received a notice of cancellation from USDOT, especially from the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, Safe Streets and Roads for All grant, or RAISE/BUILD program, please let us know. Drop us a tip here. 

Why is this happening?

USDOT has indicated for months that it planned to cancel grants that do not align with the administration’s policy priorities. Early on, we drew attention to these concerns, which began with policy memos indicating the intention to cancel obligated grants, a move that only intensified with continued scrutiny of awarded competitive grant projects. While the Secretary claimed progress as the DOT made project-by-project review of grants its priority, approval may not have come easily for grantees.

Getting a project sponsor’s grant to the new “approval” stage can be challenging for certain grantees. In order to get approval, grantees have had to change the scope of projects to eliminate equity-related provisions and agree to new standard Terms and Conditions for competitive grant agreements that conditioned aid on cooperation with federal agencies and allowed greater flexibility for the USDOT to cancel funds for any policy reason. As these new processes unfolded, we noticed a major slowdown in funding obligations for key competitive programs relative to the previous administration, all while the administration was touting progress on its new metric of approvals.

There is serious uncertainty around what exactly is at risk, brought on by the status quo opacity around federal discretionary grant administration that has been true across any Presidential administration. USDOT, under the current and previous administrations, has not been transparent or proactive in informing the public of the status of specific projects’ grant agreements but they have always been quick to tout award announcements. While the Biden administration maintained a list of awarded grant projects funded by the IIJA, it lacked important data on whether projects had been obligated or not yet. The true number of unobligated, awarded grants left at the end of the Biden administration, which Secretary Duffy stated was at over 3,200 projects when he inherited the office, was not clear to the public. As a result, the obligation of those funds has been left to an administration with vastly different priorities for infrastructure and transportation.

To improve transparency, USDOT should create an online, public dashboard that notes the status of each announced discretionary grant award under all federal programs, and include the status of any agreements between the grantee and the awarding federal agencies. To support transparency efforts, Congress should require that USDOT create such a tool in the interest of transparency and to ensure faithful implementation of the programs they passed and funded.

Enough should be enough

Right now, many members of Congress are not getting what they voted for in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. If members of Congress and the communities they represent cannot expect to receive what has already been passed in law, why should you trust that the next bill will preserve your priorities?

USASpending.gov data showing zero new funding obligated to Reconnecting Communities Pilot program projects (CFDA 20.940) since January, 2025 as of September 16, 2025.

That’s why we’re asking Congress to hold off on negotiating the next surface transportation reauthorization bill until they can ensure that the previous one is implemented faithfully according to what is currently in law. Multiple grant programs under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act remain entirely frozen, such as the Transportation Access Pilot Program, which would have helped modernize the federal program by prioritizing access to destinations in travel demand modeling. FY22 and FY23 grant awards for the Reduction of Truck Emissions at Port Facilities program have been scrubbed from the internet. The Reconnecting Communities Pilot has received $0 in new obligations since January 2025, all while FY22 funding is expiring at the end of the month.

Congress should make certain that it is getting what it paid for under the previous surface transportation reauthorization before storming into the next one. Otherwise, what do you expect will happen to the next round of programs included in a bill that the executive branch does not like?

USDOT might let your projects’ grant funding die

The Trump administration’s inaction at USDOT may lead to FY2022 grants expiring at the end of Fiscal Year 2025, potentially putting millions in community projects at risk. Unless funding is obligated by September 30, 2025, many grant awardees could see their hard-earned federal support disappear.

After months of highly publicized obfuscation of the grant process, politicized delay, and systemic loss of agency staff capacity, we have received word that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s inaction under the Trump Administration may have been part of a broader strategy to allow unobligated discretionary grant awards to expire at the end of Fiscal Year 2025, potentially cancelling millions worth of project funding.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set limits for how long funding was available to be obligated before lapsing. The last day of the 2025 fiscal year, September 30, 2025, represents the deadline for USDOT to obligate funding to awardees of many programs. As a result of this irresponsible management at the federal level, grant awardees may lose out on hard-earned funding.

Due to the lengthy timelines for new programs to be implemented under the IIJA, certain awards with expiring funds were only announced as recently as last year. Worse, recent attacks on projects that do not align with the Trump administration’s priorities may have left hundreds of projects stuck in review limbo if they failed to clear a new, post-award, project-by-project review process. Projects that previously received Fiscal Year 2022 grant awards under these programs but have not yet had grant agreements signed with or funding obligated by USDOT could be at risk.

If your community has an award with USDOT that has not been fully obligated or does not have a fully executed grant agreement, we recommend exploring your legal options before the potential September 30, 2025, cutoff for FY2022 awards.

The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided billions of dollars in funding for transportation infrastructure projects and created dozens of new programs. Many of these programs distributed funding through competitive discretionary grants, which required staff from across the country to complete onerous and time-consuming applications to earn federal dollars for their projects. Thanks to what appears to be intentional inaction from the Trump administration, those efforts to secure funding to improve communities may ultimately be rendered pointless.

Under the Biden administration, the deployment of USDOT discretionary grants was marked by growing pains and lengthy deployment timelines, born out of inconsistent and underdeveloped processes, which left its successor to finalize many grants. However, as we have detailed over the course of the year, the Trump administration has decidedly increased the level of uncertainty injected into discretionary grant programs. The administration has been holding grantees to standards of evaluation that are completely different and unrelated to what they initially applied for, and is directly targeting projects that contain elements to address equity, climate, and even basic mobility improvements, such as bike lanes and sidewalks.

Despite court orders to unfreeze programs, the administration has continued to slow walk Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act grants that do not align with its priorities over the course of the year, and did the same with the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, slowing communication with grantees (either intentionally or as a result of understaffing) to delay the obligation of funds before having all unobligated funds rescinded in H.R.1, the 2025 GOP Budget Reconciliation Bill.

In what seems to be likely circumstances, USDOT may send a notice to awardees with expiring funds on the eve of September 30th (the end of the fiscal year), letting them know that they are not moving forward with grant agreements, intentionally leaving this notice to the last minute to run out of the clock so that grantees will not have time to file lawsuits before October 1st. This effort, similar in principle to pocket rescissions (in that it requires the executive branch to avoid spending on Congressionally approved funds), could potentially be repeated in future fiscal years for grant awards with lapsing funds.

Despite our efforts to illustrate the impact of rescissions, it doesn’t seem to matter which state, district, or elected official represents you—the administration has rescinded projects across the board. Representative Maloy, a Republican congresswoman from Utah, stated that they were unaware of transportation rescissions that hit their community. All federal representatives should be made aware of what a potential lapse brought on by USDOT’s inaction will look like for their communities.

More information and analyses to come.

Dragging the federal transportation system into the 21st century

We’re more than a quarter of the way through the 21st century. Yet we still measure and evaluate our transportation program like it’s 1965. The next reauthorization must drag this system into the modern era.

The built environment that most Americans know today is defined by what was considered, at the time, to be the best practices in transportation engineering and design. However, that time was the 1960s, when it was cool to smoke on planes and gasoline was filled with poisonous lead. We’ve had a lot better ideas since then, and we should not feel committed to policies based on tradition. 

In the same way that we didn’t always put seatbelts in cars but do nowadays, we need to update our standards from the 1960s. We need to bring the federal program into the 21st century. Here’s how to incorporate Transportation for America’s modernization principles in federal transportation reauthorization.

Bring the federal program into the 21st century

In our platform for reauthorization, under our final core principle to “modernize the program,” we outline four specific ideas:

  • Remove outdated performance measures like value of time and level of service
  • Make multimodal access to jobs and essential services a required performance measure
  • Evaluate success and progress over the long term
  • Develop a new framework for permitting and environmental review that advances a faster, outcomes-based approach to approvals

Check out our webinar on bringing the federal program into the 21st century here.

Before we unpack those, what do we mean when we say bring the federal program into the 21st century? Didn’t Congress address things like electric vehicles in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act? While Congress did, and that was important, we’re not just talking about electrification (plus EVs have been around a while). There’s much more to modernizing the transportation system than swapping gas tanks for batteries. Besides, the IIJA dedicated about $148 billion to the National Highway Performance Program, the US’s largest roads program, and only about $4.1 billion for states’ National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program.

We’re talking about reworking how the federal government interfaces with that policy that determines how we measure and evaluate success, make decisions, and prioritize outcomes we want out of the transportation system. We’re talking about reforming the system itself, the measures and evaluative tools we choose to evaluate the success of potential projects and select them. 

Today, federal transportation policy helps transportation systems deliver diminishing, if not negative, returns on investment in infrastructure. This is an area ripe for reform: our continued efforts on this path have helped build the conditions where transportation and housing costs are now straining the wallets of the average American.

1) Remove outdated performance and selective measures from practice

Here’s an example. Over sixty years after its introduction in the 1965 Highway Capacity Manual, we still use level of service (LOS) as a major factor in selecting and designing projects. LOS works by assigning road segments “grades” based on how much delay there is—congested roads with more vehicles get Fs, and roads where vehicles are flowing freely get As. 

In practice and in project selection, those grades are often presented as justifications for interventions aimed at reducing congestion via road widening. But LOS itself is not always informative of the realities on the ground. It ignores local development, what sort of businesses can be accessed from the road, the presence of pedestrians, and more. After all, a road only gets an A-grade LOS under free-flow, traffic-free conditions– in other words, when it is not being used. All LOS measures is the ability to drive at high speeds without anyone near you. While that might be what a community wants for a limited-access highway or interstate, that’s hardly the preference for in-town streets where you are trying to create a vibrant place, encourage more connected land use and housing development, or serve the needs of a wide range of people, including those opting to take transit, walk, bike, or drive less often. Measures like level of service tend to point decision-makers toward the same “solutions” to congestion, like widening roads, that have been shown to simply not work, and recreate the problems they are built to solve. 

Level of service, among other technical measures and guidance, like “value of time,” should be subordinated to more sophisticated measures that take advantage of modern technology. 

2) Measure access

In surface transportation reauthorization, Congress should add multimodal access to jobs and essential services as a significant performance measure under the federal Transportation Performance Management system. Measuring access prioritizes what matters for users, not for planners. People care about what jobs, amenities, and services they can get to (i.e., access) within a certain amount of time spent traveling. When we prioritize throughput measures like LOS that place a premium on how fast traffic moves, we prioritize going far and fast, but we don’t prioritize the most important point of transportation infrastructure: connecting destinations. 

We don’t plan trips based on how fast we get to move to get there, and our own priorities for access reveal themselves in common parlance. We say, “It takes me about 15 minutes to get to the store,” or “it’s a short 5-minute walk from here.” We don’t say “I was able to travel at 45 mph along this corridor in light traffic relative to off-peak conditions.” Thinking about and selecting projects when considering multimodal access helps uplift this by placing a priority on projects that best work in favor of users’ needs to reach diverse destinations. Right now, the vast majority of destinations are inaccessible by transit, walking, and biking, because our transportation system has spent decades prioritizing investments in speed, rather than access and connectivity. 

However, increasing complexity and sophistication, like with arcane transportation travel demand models, which are used to assess future regional travel patterns and determine investments, does not overcome our need for speed mindset and assumptions. There is nothing wrong with making assumptions and modeling outcomes from investment decisions. But instead of helping to prioritize investments in the areas of greatest need, in practice, transportation models can provide a scientific-looking stamp of approval used to conveniently greenlight new projects that perpetuate status quo, unsafe and disconnected transportation systems. 

This is made worse by the fact that, because of assumptions baked into many models on a structural level, they almost invariably lead to results that show us doing poorly on the performance measures that should matter least, like level of service. In many regions, models and performance measures are directly integrated with the processes that determine which projects are selected for funding (with no specific reason to single them out, here it is in the Ohio Kentucky Indiana Regional Council of Governments’ selection process). If a section of road is projected to have a level of service below an arbitrary standard according to a travel demand model, an expansion project often automatically scores higher and is more likely to be selected. In places that do score projects, some regions and states use a given year’s projected volume of cars (Average Annual Daily Traffic, or AADT) in place of LOS, but it approximates the same thing. Funding tied to model outputs continues to interface with performance measures that prioritize the wrong things,  which in turn directs investment toward building more of the same, rather than allowing for innovative solutions. 

3) Evaluating success and progress

We are heading full-steam toward reauthorization without completing a basic review of the tools used every day to forecast crucial factors like future traffic, congestion, or ridership, justifying hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of public investment. 

Section 11205 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act required USDOT to complete a study that evaluated how and where our traffic and demand models have gone wrong. But, two years after the required completion date of 2023, that study is still not complete. Waste, fraud, and abuse run rampant in unvalidated systems, and Congress needs to ensure public investments are sound. 

To estimate how any given corridor might be used 25 years in the future, travel demand models rely on far-reaching assumptions about entire regions’ economic and population growth trajectories, technology adoption, and land use patterns. Instead, we should opt for making decisions based on the types of benefits we want to see today, rather than respond to anticipated growth with highway megaprojects. Already, in the implementation of CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program), project selection can be based on anticipated project benefits using the CMAQ calculator. Tools, like Georgetown Climate Center’s Transportation Investment Strategy Tool and investment-impact-based models like it, determine the likely outcomes of projects based on project specifications, scope, and funding. MPOs and states, like Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Vermont, have used tools like these to evaluate the aggregate environmental, quality of life, and safety impact of the projects lined up for funding. Using tools, like those above, would allow project sponsors to estimate the full impact of their entire program, rather than how well a project addresses one particular projected need on a given corridor. It also helps to estimate if the entire investment program is steering selection in the right direction. Because what good are multimillion-dollar investments in transit if the benefits are outweighed by billions in highway expansions?

4) Modernizing environmental review

An investment might have incredible projected benefits, but if they can’t be built on reliable timescales, those benefits may never materialize. With increasing uncertainty about the stability of transportation investments thanks to program freezes and unpredictable federal rescissions, it is more important than ever that net-benefit transportation infrastructure investments can move fast. 

Unfortunately, in the case of the Neighborhood Access and Equity grant program, much of the funding that could have gone to projects to repair divisive infrastructure, improve safety, people’s access to essential services, open up smart growth development, and improve environmental outcomes in very obvious ways was rescinded before it ever had a chance to deploy. In the case of Syracuse’s I-81 project, the city never made it out of the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) environmental review phase. Let that sink in: This project would have removed a pollution-generating highway that throws particulate matter into the air 24 hours a day and replaced it with new, right-sized neighborhood streets, bike infrastructure, green space, and had obvious benefits to the people who lived there and the environment as a whole. However, because laws like NEPA  that guide federal environmental review are focused on process and proofing review documents against litigation, rather than producing good outcomes for people or the environment, projects like these with obvious benefits get stuck in a process that should instead be focused on halting or changing projects that damage the environment.

Environmental review and permitting reform is the hot topic leading up to reauthorization. When Congress looks to reform environmental review, it should not just focus on things like making it easier to build energy infrastructure and highways. Projects with well-defined positive environmental outcomes—like removing a highway and replacing it with green space or people-centered streets—should be able to advance on a consistent and swift basis through environmental review processes with maximum federal support. On the flip side, projects that just guarantee more pollution and more congestion, like highway expansions, should be made to fully mitigate their well-documented impacts and receive lower proportions of federal support.

Looking ahead

Thanks to the proliferation of urban highways and Euclidean zoning, it took just a few decades for the transportation and land-use planning decisions of the 20th century to lead to an unimaginably great transformation of our environment, both built and natural. If we want to build our way out of our problems, we need to scrap outdated policies and modernize the decision-making process at the core of our trillion-dollar transportation system. This article does not get into all the ideas we would want to explore in order to modernize the system, and decision-making is not the only thing that needs to be reformed. Among a million other things, we need to confront the rising costs of transit construction, make changes to parking policy, and amplify the benefits of rail electrification. However, all of those are, in many ways, downstream of project selection and how we evaluate success. Whatever we choose to build and at whatever pace we can, we need to reform decision-making to ensure that we are not selecting for wasteful investments. Billions of dollars in transportation funding are tied up today in projects that are objectively bad for people’s health and incapable of solving the congestion troubles  they were built to address. The system underpinning investment needs to be reformed for funding to effectively flow to projects that deliver benefits. Otherwise, without reform, we’re just due for another do-over of all the expensive, inefficient, and unjust billion-dollar transportation planning mistakes of the 20th century.

The Trump administration is implementing funds for safety grants at about ten percent of the speed of the previous administration

The Trump administration talks a big game about streamlining requirements and reviews. Speed is not everything, but when we evaluate the rates of getting actual dollars out the door and into real projects, it appears that politicized review requirements may be slowing down grant obligations to awarded projects, especially for those related to safety. Meanwhile, status quo, dangerous highway expansion projects from state DOTs keep chugging along.

Announcements are not obligations, and Presidential administrations frequently take advantage of the fact that this is not common knowledge to make flashier press releases. According to the Trump administration, the Biden administration left them a 3,200-project-long list of awarded grants without signed grant agreements.  Since Secretary Duffy’s confirmation, the administration has announced that they have “approved” over one-third of the Biden administration’s awarded but unobligated grant backlog.  But much like how an announcement under the Biden administration did not mean a closed deal, an “approval” under the Trump administration doesn’t either.

Transportation projects must clear multiple stages of political and environmental reviews to reach the construction phase, and it becomes especially complicated when they receive federal assistance in the form of a competitive grant. Under a competitive grant award, the awardee and the federal government need to work together to define their work with USDOT before coming to a grant agreement and having their awarded funding obligated to them.

Take the Emerald Trail project in Jacksonville, Florida, for example—in March, the city of Jacksonville won a $147 million award to build a network of walking and biking paths. But on July 4, 2025, the community lost all of that funding because the city and USDOT never reached a final grant agreement before President Trump signed the bill to claw back the program’s awarded, unobligated funding.

Hurdles

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act created a plethora of new competitive grant programs to address issues like job access, climate pollution reduction, legacy bridge repair, disaster resiliency, accessibility, and transportation electrification.  With the array of programs and unique eligibilities for new funding recipients (who were often inexperienced with federal grant processes), coupled with incredibly complicated policy mechanisms to meet multiple policy goals, competitive grants did not move fast under the IIJA. Take the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program for example: while the IIJA passed in November 2021, it took until May 2023 to post the funding opportunity for communities to even apply. The opportunity prioritized the Biden administration’s policies, uplifting equity in award selection and reporting, workforce development, and domestically made parts (where there were few established supply chains). It took until January 2024 to post the first round of awards. Of those awardees, there’s such a large amount of funding yet to be spent in the program that the Trump administration is proposing to rescind the program’s unobligated funding in their Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations request for a political win against what it considers Green New Deal spending.

What’s going on now

The grant “approval” process Secretary Duffy described in recent press releases seems to be a new term, separate from “awarded, and obligated,” used to describe the internal competitive grant review for topics and project elements that fall outside the administration’s priorities list. For transportation projects, the competitive grant review process flags safety-enhancing infrastructure, like road diets and bike lanes, electric vehicle charging stations, green infrastructure, and studies aimed at improving outcomes for all transportation users equitably. Flagged grants, according to that memo, were to be revised, with project elements in conflict with the administration’s priorities excluded.

We assume that once approved, grants would move forward toward the obligation of funds and signing of grant agreements (despite significantly less staff capacity remaining in USDOT to administer those grants, and possibly even fewer staff in the future). As part of their effort to promote streamlining, the Trump administration continues to make announcements about how voiding reporting requirements in federal funding recipients’ existing grant agreements will save time and increase project speed. But sweeping changes can be confusing to grantees, and those erring on the side of caution may choose to continue with requirements in their existing contracts or hesitate to move forward at all. These changes, combined with reduced staff capacity, could be slowing down these communities’ safety projects.

To understand what is really happening when it comes to funding projects to improve safety and transportation access, we followed the money. Transportation for America evaluated funding obligations under a set of discretionary grant programs and compared the rate of funding obligations so far under the Trump administration with the Biden administration’s record.

Safety, active transportation, and multimodal transportation grant obligation speed

This analysis evaluates obligations logged to USASpending.gov under the Safe Streets and Roads for All grants, RAISE/BUILD program, SMART grants, the Reconnecting Communities Pilot, and the Neighborhood Access and Equity program. We compare how fast the Trump administration has obligated funds per month since re-entering the White House in January (over versus the Biden administration’s obligations per month since the passage of the bill (over 40 months). This biases the awards per month toward the Trump administration, as it counts time the Biden administration had to take to solicit applicants and select awardees. Right now, there is approximately $9.8 billion in announced funding remaining to be obligated.

Sum of obligations for these selected programs: $5.9 billion

Trump obligations per month: $46.6 million

Biden obligations per month: $141.7 million

Total obligated out of both administrations: $5.86 billion

Total obligated by Trump admin: $233.3 million

Total obligated by Biden admin: $5.6 billion

The Trump administration is obligating funds for the competitive grant programs below at 33 percent the speed of the Biden administration. No obligations have been reported.

Safe Streets and Roads for All

The Safe Streets and Roads for All program is a competitive grant opportunity that enables communities to directly receive federal funding to build local-led safety projects, plan for them, or build safety demonstration projects. Despite the program’s explicit purpose of improving safety for everyone using proven methods, the Trump administration specified in the most recent funding opportunity that reductions in lane capacity, a key component in safety-enhancing road diet projects, were to be disfavorably evaluated in the latest grant award process. This may have resulted in a chilling effect for applications to the recent funding opportunity that closed two weeks ago. Though the full impact is yet to be seen, we know at least anecdotally that the administration’s announcement of new priorities to cooperate with ICE and bans on DEI policies in recipients’ offices have scared off a few applicants. Grants under this program have been subject to USDOT’s political grant review process for DEI elements and the reduction of vehicular capacity for bike infrastructure. 

Total funding from IIJA: $5 billion 

Total obligated funds: $525 million

Trump obligations per month: $1.4 million

Biden obligations per month: $12.9 million

The Trump administration is obligating funds for the Safe Streets for All program at 11 percent the speed of the Biden administration.

Reconnecting Communities Pilot

The $1 billion Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program is intended to improve access to daily needs and repair past harms by removing or mitigating divisive infrastructure, particularly in disadvantaged communities. This program has been targeted by the administration for its focus on equity.

Total funding from IIJA: $1 billion

Total obligated funds: $77 million

Trump obligations per month: $0

Biden obligations per month: $1.9 million

The Trump administration is obligating funds for the Reconnecting Communities program at 0 percent the speed of the Biden administration. No obligations have been reported.

Neighborhood Access and Equity

The Neighborhood Access and Equity program, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, put an additional $3.2 billion toward Reconnecting Communities projects, enabling redevelopment, safety enhancements, and transportation access across the country. Approximately $776 million in funding was obligated to 60 out of 98 awarded states and communities before its rescission as part of the H.R. 1 2025 Reconciliation Bill (AKA “One Big Beautiful Bill”). Approximately $2.4 billion for 60 awarded projects was rescinded, clawing back funds despite communities having invested hundreds of staff hours in winning the awards and securing the millions of local-match dollars.

Total funding from IRA: $3.2 billion

Total obligated funds: $777 million

Trump obligations per month: $1.9 million

Biden obligations per month: $32.6 million

Prior to rescission in the 2025 Reconciliation Bill, the Trump administration had obligated funds for the Neighborhood Access and Equity program at 7.5 percent the rate of the Biden administration.

RAISE/BUILD program

RAISE/BUILD is one of the most popular competitive grant programs because nearly anyone can apply for it, and it can fund almost any type of project, including complex multimodal projects that have a hard time getting other funding or that bring together numerous different jurisdictions. In previous presidential transitions, priorities for what are now known as RAISE/BUILD awards shifted according to the priorities of the administration. In Trump’s first term, awards were more likely to be directed to road expansions than transit or active transportation projects in rural and exurban areas. 

Total funding from IIJA: $15 billion

Total obligated funds: $4.1 billion

Trump obligations per month: $43.2 million

Biden obligations per month: $98.6 millio

The Trump administration is obligating funds for the RAISE/BUILD program at 55 percent the speed of the Biden administration.

SMART program

The Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program, established in the IIJA, put forward $100 million each year to provide grants to public sector agencies seeking to advance transportation efficiency and safety, along with new technology for projects like pedestrian detection and transit priority traffic signals. 

Total funding from IIJA: $500 million

Total obligated funds: $149,284,719.00

Trump obligations per month: $0

Biden obligations per month: $3,732,117.98

The Trump administration is obligating funds for the SMART program at 0 percent the speed of the Biden administration. No obligations have been reported.

Federal Aid Highway Program formula funds

And while projects awarded to towns and cities to improve safety problems in communities often ignored by state DOTs now languish in limbo, state DOTs themselves have had no real trouble spending their funding apportionments under this administration. Federal Highway Administration formula program dollars, which are given out regularly to states, receive far less scrutiny than competitive grant programs but are funded at a greater scale. Mistakes made in these status quo programs are often the impetus for the very discretionary grant programs that are being slowed down. These FHWA formula programs include the National Highway Performance Program, Surface Transportation Block Grant, National Highway Freight Program, Congestion Mitigation Air Quality Program, Carbon Reduction Program, and PROTECT Program.

Total funding from IIJA: $270 billion

Total obligated funds: $183 billion

Trump obligations per month: $4.0 billion

Biden obligations per month: $4.4 billion

The Trump administration is obligating funds for these highway formula programs at 90 percent the speed of the Biden administration.

NOTE: This analysis comes with caveats from imperfect data. USASpending data has to be manually uploaded by staff, who are in short supply in federal agencies these days. Under normal circumstances, reporting delays between a federal action and public data lasted about a week, but now that timeline is unclear. Further, there is no easy way to determine which awarded projects now have a signed and completed grant agreement, so the actual obligation of money can begin—we can only infer which projects have signed agreements if obligations are being incurred for a given project in this data. Altogether, this means that we expect President Trump’s rate of obligations to get better as time progresses and prior project obligations reported (minus the cancelled Neighborhood Access and Equity Program). All data is as of the date of retrieval, July 8, 2025.

Congress’s new budget reconciliation bill takes back billions from locally-led projects across the country

Close-up of Capitol building

We found that up to $4.7 billion in competitive grants promised to existing, awarded grantees across the country and billions more for financing climate projects will now be rescinded following the passage of H.R.1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And that’s just the grants.

Correction: Earlier versions of this blog referred to incorrect numbers on the amount rescinded under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and Diesel Emissions Reduction Act and have been corrected.

Provisions included in the budget reconciliation bill that President Trump signed last week will rescind billions in transportation funding for projects that improve communities’ street safety, convenient job and opportunity access, and clean air. Whatever was not spent down before July 4, 2025, is now being clawed back. To understand the true impact of the bill, we took a look at public spending data from USAspending.gov to estimate how much funding had been obligated to projects and what was left to be pulled back.

Of these program rescissions, the one most likely to be acutely felt and impactful will be the $2.4 billion being taken back from the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program. Dozens of locally-led programs to address long-standing safety deficiencies from poorly conceived and often intentionally discriminatory projects of the past will now face delays or outright cancellation without this funding, after having a chance to utilize only a fraction of what they won in a rigorous competitive process. With similar projects to reconnect communities being so successful at improving a wide range of outcomes, from equity and safety to economic development, Congress’s decision to repeal this funding for community-focused infrastructure is anything but beautiful. 

Progress on electrification will also take a huge hit: Existing tax credits for the purchase of heavy-duty vehicles and both new and used consumer electric vehicles (EVs) will now be eliminated by September 30, 2025. But it doesn’t stop there. Tax credits for the installation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure will be eliminated by next summer (June 30, 2026). Though proposed by Transportation Committee Chair Rep. Sam Graves and included in the House’s version of the bill and discussed in the Senate, registration fees for EVs are not part of this bill. Despite the bill’s apparent goal to expedite the environmental permitting process and inclusion of a new fee to implement tighter environmental review deadlines, the bill eliminates funding from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act aimed at improving states’ and localities’ ability to conduct those environmental reviews.

In addition to the $4.7 billion we identified as being rescinded from competitive grant programs, additional funding worth more than $20 billion is to be rescinded out of the EPA’s new climate financing program that would have dedicated funds to more efficient transportation infrastructure. Take a look at our program-by-program analysis of the transportation impacts of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”:

Neighborhood Access and Equity Program

The Neighborhood Access and Equity Program was one of the most promising new transportation programs of the last few years. Despite its separate name, it was essentially an enormous, $3.2 billion shot of additional funding for Reconnecting Communities projects to help communities repair the damage of divisive infrastructure. And the losses here are some of the most painful, with about $2.4 billion of funding that was awarded, promised, and written up in press releases now being clawed back from communities across the country. (We broke down what projects would be affected if the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program is rescinded in a previous post.) 

Dozens of communities are now left holding the bag for commitments that will be hard to fulfill. Multiple representatives and senators from the majority voted to rescind their own communities’ funding for these safety and access projects. Projects with unobligated balances for their grant awards, mapped below, will have their awarded funding rescinded and be left with multi-million-dollar holes in their budgets : 

Low-Carbon Transportation Materials Program

This $2 billion program from the Inflation Reduction Act encouraged the use of domestically produced low-carbon construction materials for transportation projects, like the $1.2 billion awarded to 39 states for projects to build infrastructure using less emissions-intensive concrete and asphalt mix. The remaining funding would have gone to non-state recipients, such as cities and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs). Beyond making sure that new materials were less emissions-intensive, the program’s funds could not be used to expand road capacity, which itself can increase emissions. We estimate that only $147 million in funding was obligated before the passage of the bill (up from a previous estimate distributed to our T4A members), leaving more than $1.85 billion to be rescinded. 

Clean Heavy Duty Vehicles Program

The Clean Heavy Duty Vehicles Program, which the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funded at $1 billion, provided states, school districts, municipalities, and tribes opportunities to replace Class 6 and 7 heavy-duty vehicles with zero-emission alternatives. Examples of vehicles that would be replaced under the program include public transit buses, delivery trucks, school buses, semi-truck haulers, and other vehicles. Over $100 million in funding went to projects that included transit bus electrification, such as the North Central Texas Council of Governments’ project to acquire new, zero-emission vehicles in counties that don’t meet air quality standards. We found that only $546 million out of the $1 billion in funding was obligated, leaving around $454 million to be rescinded.

Diesel Emissions Reduction Act National Grants

A similar program to the Clean Heavy Duty Vehicles program described above, unobligated funding for the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act’s national grants is repealed by H.R.1. Six projects awarded using Inflation Reduction Act funding went at least partially to transit electrification, for either the upgrade of diesel trains (to potentially faster and rider-friendly electric rail) or efficient battery electric and hydrogen buses. The IRA provided $60 million in funding for the program.

Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund

The bill rescinds $19 million in unobligated administrative funding for the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), according to Congressional Budget Office data. The GGRF made clean transportation a priority (using strategies outlined in the U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization), and those projects were intended to be financed out of the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund. Other priorities in the program include the Solar for All grant program, which dedicated $7 billion to residential solar. According to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, $3 billion in funding had been obligated to projects prior to its rescission in the bill. Prior to the signing of the bill, the GGRF program was frozen by the Trump administration early in his term, and the administration’s authority to freeze the program has been the subject of ongoing litigation and may not yet have been unobligated or rescinded.

Transportation Project Environmental Reviews

The OBBB also rescinds Environmental Review Implementation Funds, funded at $100 million by the IRA, which provided training and capacity building for states and local governments to improve their ability to conduct environmental reviews, such as through the National Environmental Policy (NEPA) process. This rescission comes despite the fact that expediting permitting and the environmental review process is a stated priority for the House’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair, Representative Sam Graves, and the Senate’s Chair for the Environmental and Public Works Committee, Senator Shelley Moore Capito. The loss of these funds will only have a negative effect on the speed at which these reviews can be completed. H.R.1 instead included a provision for project sponsors to pay a fee equal to 125% the cost of an environmental assessment or impact statement to expedite environmental review timelines by adding deadlines. The true impact of such a policy is not yet certain, but it would not be surprising to see it further biases the process toward status quo projects, like highway widenings that provide familiar parameters for review, while failing to make the process easier for more nuanced and complex projects like transit expansions and highway removals. It is unclear how much had been obligated under this program before its rescission, but we found only three projects in three states with funding reported as obligated to recipients.

Reconnecting Communities projects are under threat. Here is what’s at stake and where:

A map of nearly 98 projects across the country funded by the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program, with 70 at risk.

UPDATE: We have updated our map to reflect new project funding data that has been released online. Check out the map below for specific information about projects. Approximately $2.46 billion remains unobligated across 60 projects. 

On April 30, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will look to cut billions in funding to enact the President’s agenda through the budget reconciliation process. They plan to repeal up to $3.1 billion in funding for dozens of communities with awarded projects to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure. 

The House Majority’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee just released text for their markup of the reconciliation bill. In it, they call for a full repeal of unobligated funding for the Neighborhood Access and Equity program, which provided over $3.2 billion in funding for reconnecting communities projects at passage. We found that up to $3.1 billion (97 percent!) remained unobligated and are now in the sights for elimination.

Sign on to defend the billions in funding for reconnecting communities projects at risk from the elimination of the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program.

Why is funding at risk?

There has been a steady stream of confusion and uncertainty around transportation funding due to actions from the executive branch, with a very recent example being especially egregious dispute orders from a federal judge to get on with the programs. However, while the executive branch is flooding the zone with policy announcements and actions stemming from dubious legal authority, Congress is proceeding with a process rooted in law that will take billions in funding for dozens of communities’ projects to undo divisive infrastructure.

The Congressional majority is in the midst of the budget reconciliation process in order to pass a bill that achieves President Trump’s priorities. Reconciliation is a relatively complicated, multi-step process—but it comes with the distinct advantage of only requiring a simple majority vote, rather than a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority in the Senate, to pass. For more information on this process, check out the explainer on the process’s implications on our Smart Growth America site and the Congressional Research Service’s recent FAQ. Congress is currently on Step 2 of its process (see below), with both the House and Senate having adopted the same budget resolution and instructions for reconciliation. Now, the chambers must meet for scheduled bill markups to identify where each committee will identify cuts to programs to meet the framework of their budget resolution. 

Budget Reconciliation Process 1. Chambers pass identical budget resolutions 2. Chambers craft resolution-compliant legislation 3. Chambers consider bills as a whole body 4. Differences reconciled between bills 5. Both chambers pass final version of legislation 6. President vetoes bill or signs it into law. Note: This diagram is a simplification of the reconciliation process.

What should we expect for transportation?

The House of Representatives’ budget resolution framework is sweeping, calling for large funding cuts to pay for continued and potentially expanded tax cuts, while still increasing the federal deficit by up to $2.8 trillion.

Compared to other committees’ targets, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s budget outline for cuts is relatively small, with a top-line deficit reduction of only $10 billion. However, that top line is deceiving. The committee is also looking to shift over $20 billion in funding to the United States Coast Guard for border security and take $15 billion for upgrades to Air Traffic Control systems, as directed by the White House. 

To pay for this, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Representative Sam Graves needed to identify major program cuts and has proposed a $200 annual fee on electric vehicles, a $100 fee on hybrid vehicles, and a $20 fee on gas vehicles. 

The cuts:

Due to the way funding was authorized for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), programs funded by the law should be safer from potential cuts than other funding sources in this process. 

What is not safe, however, are programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), including the Neighborhood Access and Equity (NAE) program, which added additional funding to projects similar to the Reconnecting Communities Pilot program to help more communities plan and build projects to repair divisive infrastructure boondoggles. Other programs that are up for repeal include  Low-Carbon Transportation Materials, Environmental Review Implementation Funds, and more. 

The program was in high demand when it was open for applications, with nearly 1,250 applications from communities in all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, totaling $13.8 billion in unawarded funding requests. 

The Biden Administration awarded nearly 100 projects funding under the NAE program in federal fiscal year 2023. However, it seems the majority of communities did not reach final project agreements with the U.S. Department of Transportation before the transition between administrations. While public data can be delayed, our analysis of USASpending.gov award information finds that only about a quarter of awards (25 projects) have obligations logged. This means that the vast majority of these projects with existing funding announcements are at risk of having their funding taken away. 

According to public data, $3.1 billion remains unobligated across 78 projects. If the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program is eliminated, the awarded funding could be removed, leaving those communities holding the bag and without the ability to complete projects.

Here are the projects that the Majority’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee reconciliation bill would eliminate:

As the Trump Administration drastically reduces staff and professional capacity at the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Secretary of Transportation continues to initiate confusing policies that inevitably delay the deployment of projects and policies in opposition, even when in conflict with the law, it is unlikely that much more funding has gone out to these communities. And now, with new USDOT policies threatening the ability of federal funding recipients to choose to enact policies promoting equity, the odds that funding prioritizing these projects moves forward are very slim. Already, the administration is disfavoring projects that reduce road capacity in grant programs regardless of context. 

What now?

Reconnecting communities projects are not just about repairing old scars, but are about solving current problems and building toward a better future. With funding at risk for these critical projects, right now is the time to let your representatives know that these projects matter in your community. It is especially important to let Congress know why these projects are important. The outcomes of reconnecting communities projects speak for themselves: they focus on increased access to jobs, economic development, safer streets, and more reliable transportation, and often turn unproductive infrastructure over to more productive uses like housing or commercial activity.

Projects across the country and around the world have demonstrated the transformative power of these types of projects. In Rochester, New York, efforts to reconnect a community yielded private development worth more than 10 times the initial investment. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, replacing a limited-access freeway with a more connected and accessible boulevard continues to attract multi-million-dollar private investments. Economic development and reconnecting communities projects go hand in hand, and research has backed this long before the IIJA and IRA boosted funding for them. 

Cancelling pending reconnecting communities projects funded by the NAE grant program would be a major loss for communities across the country, and especially for the many rural communities in states home to less forward-looking DOTs, like the Seminole Nation’s Transit Plaza project in Oklahoma or the Manhattan Trail System project in Montana, that applied and were awarded funding.

Contact your House Representative and let your Senator know that you are concerned about the success of these projects and want to see the many benefits that they will provide come to fruition. 

America Walks, the leading organization in the Freeway Fighters Network and one of our partners in efforts in Smart Growth America’s Community Connectors Program, is leading a sign-on opportunity for your voice to be heard. 

Sign on to defend the billions in funding for reconnecting communities projects at risk from the elimination of the Neighborhood Access and Equity Program.

We encourage you to find projects in or near your community and let your representatives know that you care about the success of these projects and that they matter for your community’s advancement. If you wish this program to continue, we urge you to let your representatives know as well. We’ve included info for identifying the Congressional representative for each project on this spreadsheet. 

Mr. President, unfreeze these funds

After nearly three months of uncertainty surrounding the fate of billions in federal transportation and infrastructure funding, a new court ruling has found the President’s attempts to freeze funding unlawful.  Will the administration get on with it and implement the surface transportation programs?

Great news! A federal judge (appointed by President Trump in 2019) overseeing a case on the ever-extending federal funding freeze has ruled in favor of states, cities, and nonprofits, finding that the federal government overstepped its authority in freezing project funds that they viewed as out of step with their priorities.

Unfortunately, if the past is precedent, this might just be another decision in a series of legal rulings ignored by the administration. Unfortunately, it seems that the courts are unlikely to solve things for grantees. Grantees need to demonstrate strong support from their community and elected officials, and ensure that the administration and their congressional delegation are well aware of it. 

It does not have to be this way. There is a lot the Trump administration could fix in the current transportation program. We at Transportation for America agree that the federal government spends too much for too little benefit and could use an overhaul of the status quo. This administration has had a major opportunity to improve outcomes by focusing on fiscally responsible fix it first investments, and family focused safety improvements that value safety over speed of vehicles, and the efficient execution of projects that invest in the rest of the transportation system by building out the world’s best, affordable quality transit and active transportation infrastructure. 

Instead, it has been a chaotic start during these first months of the administration, especially when it comes to transportation policy. On their first day, the administration effectively paused funding for all Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) projects, including those that likely aligned with the President’s priorities, due to a poorly worded Executive Order that now underpins much of the administration’s policy. Then, they nearly paused all federal funding, including the funding included in the infrastructure law. Within two weeks, an estimated $20 billion worth of projects with grant agreements were threatened under Secretary Duffy’s day-one “Woke Rescission” memo. While they apparently did not follow through with full implementation of the memo, the federal government still suspended states’ ability to spend appropriated electric vehicle infrastructure formula funds and attempted to centralize review of state DOTs’ and Metropolitan Planning Organizations’ transportation improvement plans for alignment with the administration’s priorities. Although that memo was reversed, there is still deep uncertainty for the jurisdictions implementing projects. Even in cases where projects should be able to move forward, the staff who would be assigned to move these projects forward are either fired or forced to take paid leave, instead of working.  

Most recently, an internal memo shifted USDOT’s focus to scrutinizing announced but unobligated discretionary grants, targeting projects that fund bike lanes, “green infrastructure,” electric vehicle chargers, and equity analyses for opportunities to cancel or compel changes to projects, and tying up the agency’s remaining staff with extended reviews. In the meantime, we have heard of multiple instances of delay in programs like the Safe Streets and Roads for All program, resulting in real consequences, such as project cost increases, with some localities even having to go so far as to issue stop-work orders.

Finally, we come to this week’s ruling in federal court that affirms that the executive branch does not have unilateral decision-making power over programs funded by Congress. We’ll be waiting to see if the administration obeys the court’s orders, considering the past few months of chaos have been punctuated by brief reprieves thanks to courts weighing in. We won’t be holding our breath. 

As additional cases wind their way through the courts, federally funded safety projects still face uncertainty. We urge you to continue to advocate for your projects with the press and your elected officials at all levels, but particularly at the Congressional level. 

Elected officials, planners, practitioners, engineers, advocates, and people at all levels need to take action to ensure the administration complies with orders like these and that Congress understands that the public is paying attention.

Let your local elected officials know that they should demand clarification from your federal representatives. Let them know your concerns regarding the negative economic, health, and safety impacts that these projects’ cancellations or delays would result in. At the end of the day, this is a political battle, not a legal one.

 

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.