The ~$ 77-billion-per-year federal transportation program has been limping along for years, accomplishing very little while requiring enormous taxpayer infusions to cover its costs. This program doesn’t need a facelift; it needs to be blown up and replaced with something completely new.
Our new policy proposals for the upcoming reauthorization in 2026 are not a menu of improvements on the margins of this bankrupt, poorly performing program. They are an interwoven package of essential reforms for building a new program from the ground up that’s accountable to taxpayers and oriented around accomplishing specific outcomes, like improving safety, state of repair, access to jobs and opportunity, and emissions. With the clock ticking on reauthorization, it’s critical that advocates, local leaders, and policymakers understand what’s at stake—and how they can influence the outcome.
Join us for our webinar series that will explore these policy proposals and help you get involved.
Whether you’re new to transportation policy or a seasoned advocate, this series will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to inspire a safer, more sustainable transportation system. Learn more about our three sessions and register below.
The future of federal transportation: Fix it First and Accountability
Despite spending $1.5 trillion over the last 30 years, the federal transportation program has failed to deliver results. This session will take a closer look at whether the program is worth saving, and unpack our policy proposals that would hold agencies accountable for real outcomes and prioritize fixing it first. Our Director, Beth Osborne, and Policy Manager, Corrigan Salerno, will give you a deep dive on how our policy proposals will help us achieve the results that Americans want. Join us for the conversation on Wednesday, June 4, from 12-1 p.m. ET. Register here >>
The future of federal transportation: Safety over speed and Invest in the Rest
Despite listing safety as a key priority, our roads are much more dangerous than the rest of the developed world. Our transportation system continues to prioritize and reward moving cards fast over safely and efficiently getting everyone where they need to go. Our policy proposals can change the U.S.’s dismal performance on safety and the complete transportation system.
Tune in on Wednesday, June 18th, from 12-1 p.m. ET for a conversation with our AVP of Transportation, Steve Davis, and other T4 staff on designing our roads for safety and investing in public transit and passenger rail to create more prosperous communities.Register here >>
The future of federal transportation: Reauthorization 201
This webinar will build on Reauthorization 101: Understanding the Process. Reauthorization 201 provides a deeper analysis on how advocates, organizations, and individuals can influence the upcoming Surface Transportation Reauthorization to achieve the transportation priorities that are most important to you and your communities. Join the authors of the Reauthorization 201, including T4A’s Policy & Outreach Associate, Elisa Ramirez, PolicyLink’s Canyon Wildwood, and Sarah Kline of SK Solutions, on Wednesday, June 25th, from 12-1 p.m. ET to learn how you can take action to inform federal transportation policy. Register here >>
The stakeholders most responsible for producing the mediocre outcomes on transportation—poor road conditions, increased congestion, continued emissions, record pedestrian deaths—believe all taxpayers should hand over an additional $210 billion above what the gas tax brings in to keep producing more of the same for the next five years. Haven’t they been given enough?
With transportation investment priorities this misguided, it’s easy to draw comparisons to this popular absurdist tweet. When our budget is $190 and you’re asking for $400, there’s a basic math issue we’re not addressing.
As the nation approaches the expiration of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the Highway Trust Fund’s insolvency looms large once again (save the date: 2028), forcing policymakers on Capitol Hill to contend with tough questions on who, what, where, and how federal transportation funding is spent.
The trade group for state departments of transportation
The American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, or AASHTO, is a trade group that represents state departments of transportation. Under the IIJA, state DOTs received record levels of funding—approximately $270 billion in flexible formula funding, a 50 percent increase compared to what they received in the 2015 FAST Act, the previous federal transportation bill. (By comparison, their funding only increased by 15 percent in that 2015 law over 2012’s MAP-21).
But apparently, this record level of funding didn’t go far enough. As Congress debates the replacement for the IIJA, AASHTO says that the funding levels from the IIJA—plus inflation since 2021—should be the floor for funding in the next law, despite the fact that this will wildly outspend future gas tax revenues and only deepen investment in a broken approach. How much money are they really asking for?
The ask: IIJA funding levels (plus inflation!) as the starting point
Assuming state DOTs are asking for an inflation adjustment to account for their ballooning highway construction costs, the next bill’s highway elements alone could cost over $400 billion over a five-year authorization. The gas tax is only projected to bring in $190 billion over this period. Read that again: For highway spending alone, they are asking for more than double what the program’s revenues are going to be. Right out of the gate, they believe that taxpayers should pony up more than $210 billion over five years to pay for highway and bridge-focused programs alone. Forget about transit and every other form of federally funded transportation.
To further put that into perspective, that’s greater than the Gross Domestic Product of Denmark ($400.1 billion, according to United Nations stats).
That’s just for the programs they cared enough about to support. AASHTO is not defending programs with specific goals to improve resiliency and mobility options (like the PROTECT program and Transportation Alternatives program). They are instead asking to consolidate programs like these and give themselves even greater capability to shift program funding around from goal-oriented programs to those with wide-ranging project eligibility and little in the way of actual direction (though these programs seemed plenty flexible to status quo priorities before). While state DOTs are asking for more money and less accountability, the federal government is at a point where we’re discussing cuts to programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and early child education (Pre-K).
As we suggest in our own platform for reauthorization, it’s well past time we assess the value proposition of the Federal Aid Highway Program. Why should we continue to pour money from all taxpayers into a program producing such bad outcomes? Decades of flexibility for state DOTs and other agencies without any significant accountability for accomplishing specific, measurable things have led to our infrastructure’s current state of mediocrity.
The fundamental difference between groups like AASHTO and T4America (and others in Congress starting to bring a critical eye to this program) comes down to this question: Why does our federal transportation program produce such bad outcomes? Is it because this program is underfunded (AASHTO), or are the problems more fundamental? Why does throwing more money at this system fail to solve problems efficiently?
The primary barriers to achieving world class transportation—meaning transportation that cheaply and reliably gets you to work and does not kill you at a rate far exceeding the rest of the world— are current policy and practice.
While there is always plenty of fanfare and coverage accompanying the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card release1, there’s little public praise for the original source of much of its data. Federal Highway Administration data, especially the Conditions and Performance Report, undergirds most recommendations in ASCE’s report. The most recent edition of the C&P report finds that, pre-IIJA, if we were to spend approximately $87 billion* annually on repairing existing assets, we would be on track to eliminate the road repair backlog entirely.
*2018 dollars. Amounts are not adjusted in this post.
While that seems pricey (and we’re overdue for a report update), we spent well over double that on highways already: $206 billion was spent across all units of government in 2021, even before the IIJA. Instead of planning to address repair directly, it seems the plan is to ensure that topline funding levels are so absurdly high that at least some of the money gets spent on maintenance before expansion.
Our priorities call for a federal program that prioritizes fixing it first. Before building new capacity, we need to address the growing backlog. The 25th edition C&P report estimates that there will be $1.9 trillion in new maintenance needs alone between 2019-2038. Adding new lane miles simply expands the total number of liabilities we must care for in the future.
Giving states these blank checks with almost no oversight plays into bad political incentives for state politicians and the infrastructure lobby to continually greenlight boondoggles that don’t serve people. Congress needs to take a stronger stance to ensure federal funding is spent in some minimally responsible manner. Without ensuring that funding is directed to accomplish specific outcomes, the next reauthorization will lead us down the same dangerous, congested and dirty road we’ve been down the past 35 years.
On the surface, President Trump’s FY26 “skinny budget” framework, released on Friday, May 2, 2025, suggests limited implications for the nation’s transportation funding. However, a closer look reveals that the budget, if implemented, stands to have outsized funding impacts on programs tied to Complete Streets, active transportation, transit, transportation electrification, and capacity building.
The FY26 budget season is kicking off in earnest on Capitol Hill, amid the ongoing budget reconciliation process. As part of the process, the Trump administration has a chance to lay out its priorities to Congress on how it should deliver on the federal government’s national role. Congress will debate and adjust that budget framework before it is voted on and ultimately signed into law.
On May 2, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget presented a FY26 “skinny budget” framework to Congress, outlining investment priorities for the next fiscal year. The budget request has drawn headlines as it proposes to cut $163 billion in programs, including those that would slash vital housing and community development programs, with the remaining allocated domestic funding further reorganized to advance the administration’s domestic priorities.
On May 2, 2025, the Office of Management and Budget presented a FY26 “skinny budget” framework to Congress, outlining investment priorities for the next fiscal year. The budget request has drawn headlines as it proposes to cut $163 billion in programs, including those that would slash vital housing and community development programs, with the remaining allocated domestic funding further reorganized to advance the administration’s domestic priorities.
On the surface of the budget framework, transportation spending remained relatively unchanged, allocating nearly $1.2 billion more than the existing IIJA allocation for INFRA, rail safety, and rail infrastructure grants. But digging into the framework and its impact on the transportation system, the administration’s recommendation would entrench car culture and delegate transportation strategies to the states. The framework explicitly calls for over $300 million in cuts to essential air service, which serves rural communities. Whatever the reason for these cuts, without enhancing passenger rail service and infrastructure investments in parallel, these rural communities stand to lose connection to vital access to jobs, services, and health care.
However, our concerns for the transportation program come more from what is not spelled out in the President’s recommendation. Not all programs in IIJA have guaranteed funding from the Highway Trust Fund, meaning they rely on annual federal appropriations. These programs include grants for passenger rail, transit, Complete Streets, and other multimodal transportation initiatives. The lack of reference to these transportation programs in the budget framework seems to strongly suggest that these programs are not priorities for the administration. The administration’s budget framework also would rescind $4.1 billion in IIJA advanced appropriations. The budget framework provided little clarity as to which targeted advanced appropriations would be cut, nor which timeframe (whether just FY26 or clawing back past years’ funding), but fact sheets from the administration indicate much of it could come from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program.
The budget framework also goes after capacity building, technical assistance, and infrastructure funding to advance Complete Streets and active communities. The CDC’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion is proposed to be eliminated, as part of $3.6 billion in cuts from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Center provides critical support to lower-capacity communities to advocate for and build Complete Streets, while encouraging thriving active communities. The administration argues that the states and localities should be responsible for their own capacity building and investments for Complete Streets. That isn’t always possible, often due to a lack of local/state resources to recruit and maintain adequate capacity to plan, design, and build Complete Streets. For many communities across the nation, the mayor and a few key staff may be juggling multiple municipal roles to keep essential services running.
Lastly, the budget framework further targets investments and tax credits that support the growth and transition to electric vehicles, cutting more than $15 billion in IIJA funding from the Department of Energy. Within this cut, there is overlapping funding with USDOT that advances EV infrastructure and EV manufacturing capacity in the U.S.
What’s next?
President Trump’s budget proposal is an opening conversation from the administration to Congress, and will likely create debates on national investment priorities. Transportation advocates should keep an eye out for the next step in the process, with the administration anticipated to deliver a detailed FY26 budget proposal to Congress by the end of May. That’s when the details of the budget framework will reveal which programs are recommended to be cut and the associated program policy changes that the administration will work to advance. Given the massive cuts to important programs, Congress will likely face heated debates over what the final FY26 budget will look like—if it doesn’t default to another continuing resolution as we‘ve seen in past budget cycles.
Now is the time to reach out to your elected representative and tell them how these changes would impact you. To make a strong case, advocates should gather and share stories and local data illustrating how the cuts would affect safety, access to jobs, and economic opportunity. As Congress begins shaping the final FY26 budget, local perspectives will be essential to protecting the programs that communities rely on.due
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
President Trump started his administration talking about improving the state of our nation’s infrastructure and delivering it quickly and streamlined. After 100 days in office, Trump’s actions on transportation can best be summarized as chaotic, evasive, combative, and inefficient.
With the start of any new administration, there is bound to be a resetting of priorities, reshuffling staff, and recalibrating of expectations. Some of the themes for the incoming Trump administration’s transportation priorities were articulated during USDOT Secretary Duffy’s confirmation hearing. Those priorities aligned well with key transportation to-dos that we have identified recently for the Trump administration. However, the administration’s handling of transportation in the last 100 days will only exacerbate and accelerate the federal transportation program’s failures over the past three plus decades.
Chaotic
Within the first few weeks of the administration, Trump signed off on a flurry of executive orders, most notably the Unleashing American Energy order on January 20th. Targeting top priorities of the past administration, the order and subsequent implementation guidance (and repeal and issuance and repeal again) created confusion and resulted in a funding freeze on all federal transportation funding. The confusion only deepened with newly minted USDOT Secretary Duffy issuing various memos that extended the funding freeze to allow for project by project review, inclusive of those projects awarded. It was articulated that obligated projects underway would not be impacted, but communities across the country seeking federal reimbursement report delays and ongoing barriers to accessing grant funds. Even a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the administration must unfreeze funds due to federal overreach. Also within the Duffy memos was a change in scoring criteria for competitive grants that included things like areas with higher marriage and birth rates, areas with no vaccine or mask mandate, utilization of user-pay models. Those criteria are so vague, plus the administration’s messaging is mismatching the memos (i.e. congestion pricing in NYC versus supporting user pay models; bikes are healthy but keep them off our roads).
Evasive
At an April 2nd Senate Environment and Public Works hearing, Secretary Duffy was pressed by the committee on why the funding freeze remains in place—and why key Infrastructure Law programs are being stripped—despite the harm it’s causing to communities across the United States. Duffy defensively replied “I’m actually complying with the will of the Congress,” when he was clearly doing the opposite. Sadly, we’ve seen this type of action in the last Trump administration, where Congressional mandates and funding the administration does not like is slow-walked and moth balled while still saying they are complying with Congress. It is happening now with USDOT going after the National EV Infrastructure program and the Reconnecting Communities program as well as smaller programs like the IIJA authorized Access Pilot Program, which has disappeared. USDOT claimed in its freeze review that it is not opening up obligated projects, yet they are not reimbursing grant recipients and are telling them to amend their projects or face cancellation. Also, key reports and data points have started to be heavily altered or disappear from public access on the USDOT website, especially if it intersected with key terms that would violate Duffy’s Woke Recission memo.
Combative
Safety was the driving point Secretary Duffy articulated repeatedly and passionately during his confirmation hearing. And in his most recent Congressional appearance, he walked away from that commitment while claiming to comply with Congressional mandates. Actions, however, speak louder than words. In early March, Duffy went after transit agencies, specifically targeting New York’s MTA and Washington’s WMATA systems in March. In those letters, Duffy demanded those agencies improve transit safety or lose federal funding, singling out Chicago’s CTA as next on his list. Duffy and other Congressional leaders have sadly continued to conflate safety issues (related to transit operations) with security issues that are within the jurisdiction of local law enforcement and social services. In the midst of targeting transit, In a leaked memo, Duffy also went after biking and electric vehicles, directing USDOT to strip away any funding from projects and project elements focused on biking and EV infrastructure (in addition to equity and climate change). That leaked memo’s impact is starting to be seen in recent funding notices such as BUILD and SS4A and related safety language coming out of USDOT revolving around outdated, not-so-safe ideas (bikes don’t belong on roads, disallowing road diets, etc). On the other hand, SS4A funds are being made available and the notice seems mostly in line with the law. Lastly, on April 24th, Secretary Duffy issued a letter to all USDOT grant recipients, threatening to withhold federal transportation funding, if the recipient advances policies and procedures that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion or if their jurisdiction impedes federal immigration enforcement, regardless of state and local statutes.
Inefficient
The Trump administration has boasted through their Department of Government Efficiency that they are yielding savings and cutting away onerous processes to make government more efficient and responsive. Reality couldn’t be further from this assertion. In various rounds since February, the Trump administration has effectuated voluntary and mandatory reductions in force, including at USDOT. Probationary workers were terminated with little notice and seasoned employees were compelled to take a buy-out offer or face limited recourse during Reduction in Force (RIF) announcements. Such staffing actions are having a significant impact on USDOT operations, from research, grant and program administration and oversight, to effectuating rules/guidance/data to guide funding recipients. Just look at NHTSA and its management of its Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS):In an early April memo, NHTSA announced its plans to finalize 2023 data in 2026 (while making available a full preliminary 2024 data set). That’s 24+ months after the end of 2023 (compared to a decade ago when data was finalized 9-11 months after the close of the data reporting year). It takes time to review, analyze, process, and publish FARS data (or any dataset for that matter), but reduction in staff will aggressively slow down and stall such processes that only cloud our decision makers from vital trends and patterns of our transportation system.
Another example of chaos meets inefficiency was a DOT directive to require all State/Metropolitan Transportation Improvement Plan amendments be additionally reviewed by DOT headquarters. On any given month across the 52 state DOTs and 450 metropolitan planning organizations, there are well over 3,000 amendments that are historically processed by FHWA division and FTA regional offices. Sending all amendments to DOT HQ would have meant slowing down transportation funding obligations and paralyzing the nation’s transportation program (further and still exacerbated by the reduction in force at division/regional offices and DOT HQ).
What’s next?
Looking ahead in the coming weeks, the impacts of the recent tariffs (and recissions and reapplications of tariffs) will start to be known, exacerbating the trends of the first 100 days of the Trump administration when it comes to transportation. Also, the impacts of the reduction in staffing at USDOT will start to become evident in grant obligations and oversight. These emerging issues will exacerbate a scarcity mindset in transportation under the backdrop of an upcoming surface transportation reauthorization process. These trends and patterns may adversely tint Congressional discussions that only perpetuates a failing transportation program, stifle gains in investing in the rest of our transportation system, harm more people as auto oriented policies and investments are entrenched, and the state of repair of our transportation system will continue to suffer from weakened oversight.
All is not lost, and it will be important to engage your Congressional delegation early and often regarding the misaligned administration actions and reinforce its legislative oversight to correct these worrying trends.
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.
Recently imposed tariffs will substantially increase the base cost of a car, but exorbitant transportation costs for Americans are nothing new. We should be striving to make transportation more affordable, with cleaner cars and better, more accessible transportation options that eliminate the need for Americans to own a car.
Earlier this month, President Trump imposed sweeping tariffs, including on imported cars and parts. Othershavecovered in great detail the impact on the cost of new cars, including imported vehicles, but also those assembled here with parts that criss-cross borders with Mexico and Canada. American cars were already expensive due to the domestic industry’s focus on more profitable, larger models. The few modestly priced domestic cars could become even less profitable under the tariff regime because of imported parts and are at risk of being discontinued. Modestly priced imported cars will also obviously become more expensive with the added tariff. Many Americans will likely delay new car purchases, but repairs will also be more expensive due to tariffs on car components.
These tariffs are adding insult to injury since car ownership is already so expensive. The average 2025 sales price for a new car before these new tariffs is up almost 30 percent since 2018 to $48,401. The America Automobile Association (AAA) estimates the annual cost of car ownership at $12,297. This includes depreciation, gas, maintenance, and repairs. In fact, Americans spend 18 percent of their income on transportation, compared with only 11 percent in the European Union. The percentage is much higher for lower-income families and represents a burden that contributes to keeping Americans in poverty.
America’s transportation costs aren’t just bad for families. Our approach to transportation costs the taxpayer. There’s a common misconception that gas taxes and tolls cover the cost of roads, but in reality these sources only cover a small proportion of road costs. Road maintenance sucks up general fund money—taxes you and I pay regardless of whether we drive—at many levels of government. Congress, for example, has transferred $275 billion from the federal general fund since 2008 to cover shortfalls in the highway trust fund.
Tariffs could also increase the cost of road and bridge maintenance. Roads and highways are expensive to maintain, but they also undercut the tax base. That’s because they occupy land that could otherwise produce tax revenue, and our dangerous car-dependent roadways kill and injure many people, which costs lives, degrades quality of life, and increases health costs.
Safer, greener cars
American policy should favor more modest and cleaner cars instead of larger, dirtier ones. Unfortunately, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has failed to address the danger of large vehicles with high front hoods that impede the drivers’ ability to see what is in front of their vehicle and increase the severity of crash impacts. This has diminished safety for everyone outside these cars. NHTSA has been extremely slow to even incorporate this issue into vehicle safety ratings, let alone regulate this trend that has contributed to the pedestrian safety crisis.
In addition, national CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards have had perverse incentives for decades that end up encouraging domestic car manufacturers to build larger vehicles with high clearance so that they don’t have to be as fuel efficient. These larger vehicles are also more expensive. For low-income families that might want an affordable used vehicle, big gas guzzlers are most of what’s on the market.
Affordable transportation options
If we really want to help families with affordability, making it possible to thrive in America without having to buy a car is the most effective way. If a household can meet their transportation needs with fewer cars, that would represent a massive cost savings for families. In the absence of affordable cars, we need affordable options like walking, biking, and public transit.
T4America’s principles provide a roadmap for getting there. Create a safe environment for walking and biking by designing for safety over speed. Refocus the highway program on fixing it first instead of expanding highways, which encourages sprawl and car dependency. And invest in the rest: transit, walking, and biking infrastructure so that everyone has more affordable options. We also need more abundant housing near jobs, services, and transportation options (which, by the way, would help to address the housing affordability crisis). The Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing + Transportation Index and State Smart Transportation Institute’s Measuring Accessibility Guide can help illuminate where more housing would deliver affordable transportation.
America’s affordability crisis was bad, and it looks like it’s about to get worse, but we have the tools to address it if we’re willing to shed the status quo.
USDOT has released its Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the FY2025 round of the Safe Streets and Roads (SS4A) competitive grant program. Almost $1 billion is available for projects that improve roadway safety for people in and out of a vehicle.
SS4A grants are open to Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), Tribes, municipalities, counties, or business improvement districts for projects to enhance roadway safety. Unlike previous years, transit agencies that aren’t created by state authority are no longer eligible to apply.
Of the available funding, $580 million is intended for implementation grants, while $402.3 million (or 40 percent) is set aside for planning and demonstration grants. Applicants can seek planning funds for road safety action plans, supplemental planning, or quick-build demonstration projects. If they already have a safety action plan, applicants must submit a self-certification eligibility worksheet by email no later than May 9, 2025 (5 p.m. ET). Applications for planning and demonstration grants and implementation grants must be submitted by June 26, 2025 (5 P.M. ET).
The USDOT’s R.O.U.T.E.S. grant toolkit is available to support communities that may need technical assistance in navigating the grant application process. This toolkit is intended to ease the burden for communities, particularly rural or underserved, by providing information on competitive grant opportunities and strategies for putting together a successful application.
What’s changed?
Despite similarities to previous SS4A NOFOs, there are some notable changes that reflect the priorities of the current Presidential administration.
One of the main updates is to the selection criteria section. Economic competitiveness, equity considerations, workforce, and the climate are no longer included. Additionally, projects that reduce lane capacity for vehicles will be viewed less favorably by the administration. Applicants who have not previously received funding from this program will be favored for both planning and implementation grants. To apply for an Implementation grant, applications must certify that they have a recent and valid safety action plan. The components required for a valid safety action plan can now be found in up to three plans recently developed by the applicant. Examples of plans that could be eligible are a local Vision Zero plan or a regional transportation safety plan. The plans must be developed between 2020 and June 26, 2025.
Big opportunity to test roadway change
The SS4A program offers a valuable opportunity for cities, towns, and counties to test roadway changes through quick-build demonstration projects. These temporary, low-cost interventions allow communities to experiment with new street designs, such as bike lanes and safer crosswalks, before making permanent changes.
By testing these improvements, communities can gather feedback, measure the safety impact of the design intervention, and address concerns in real time. Piloting street design changes quickly and cost-effectively can help build valuable momentum towards long-term safety improvements. This was the case in Versailles, Kentucky, which secured an SS4A grant to fund quick-build demonstrations to inform updates to their Regional Safety Action Plan. Temporary installations were implemented to measure the impact of design changes on high-crash areas, and the lessons learned from these projects will guide long-term improvements to these areas and other locations across the county.
Tips for writing a great grant application
SS4A is an important tool to advance roadway safety for all users. That’s why we believe it’s crucial that communities of all sizes capitalize on this opportunity. While there will be scores of competitive applications, we’ve compiled some key strategies that will better position applicants to win these grants:
Communities must align their project objectives with the program criteria. Tailoring projects to meet the program criteria included in the notice of funding opportunity ensures their project is eligible for the program. A competitive application will clearly define the problem the community is facing and specify how the project will address those needs.
Build a diverse coalition of stakeholders, including local leaders and businesses, to demonstrate a broad base of support. Competitive grant programs often require a certain amount of non-federal funding to match the federal dollars. A wide array of supporters can help put together a local match, which can even include in-kind contributions. Additionally, understanding the specific funding program parameters and administrative steps is essential for having a better chance at success.
Preparation is key. Start the process early, and stay informed through webinars listed by the NOFO to get an overview of the opportunity, ask questions, and effectively coordinate your application to ensure your project stands out.
Now is the time to prepare your SS4A Application
SS4A funding can help communities design safer, more connected streets for everyone who uses them. With SS4A applications due by June 26, 2025, cities, towns, counties, or other metro areas interested in pursuing a grant should start planning now to put together a strong, competitive application.
From transportation agencies tasked with long-range transportation plans (LRTP) to Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) developing Transportation Improvement Plans (TIP), we constantly see agencies struggle with prioritizing the right projects and measuring their success to truly advance goals. Our new framework can help agencies establish clear priorities and select projects based on transparent, outcome-driven performance measures.
Transportation agencies and MPOs often create ambitious goals around job access, congestion reduction, safety, cost-efficiency, and livability. While all are important priorities, they are often immeasurable, vague, and conflated goals that don’t breed success, leaving staff scratching their heads wondering why residents still face delayed buses, dangerous roads, increased traffic, and few multimodal facilities. Why have a goal if you don’t have a way of measuring its success?
To help agencies better identify and assess their transportation goals, we compiled a framework for the best practices for transportation project selection and performance measurement.
Our recommendations help agencies prioritize goals and get more specific with measuring outcomes. If an agency has too many goals, particularly if they contradict each other, it complicates the process and the public at large will believe that the process is entirely about political influence, not merit.
No transportation agency will ever have the resources to complete every project on their list. But, if you try to prioritize everything, you are prioritizing nothing. To genuinely improve access and connectivity across your region, you need a way to choose projects that generate the greatest benefits.
We urge other agencies to read through our recommendations, along with our previous Guide to Performance Management and Practical Solutions Memo to begin crafting performance measures that align with your community’s needs. Agencies of all sizes in all regions will benefit from our straightforward processes that aim to maximize transportation access for all users.
A year after the Key Bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board is urging the owners of 68 bridges across the U.S. to assess their vulnerability to collisions. This moment also presents an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the state of the practice for assessing the health of our nation’s bridges and ensure agencies target taxpayer funds to the bridges that most need repair.
In the days after the Key Bridge collapse, questions were swirling on the state of repair of our bridges and what could be done differently to avoid a bridge collapse. But in the year since, the number of bridges classified as in poor condition has ticked down less than 1 percent according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
This is not the first bridge collapse in recent history: The Silver Bridge collapse, between West Virginia and Ohio in 1967, brought about the development of the National Bridge Inspection Standards. After the 1980 Skyway Bridge collapse, infrastructure design was altered for future projects to create structural redundancy and fortification. But are our leaders motivated to take similarly bold action today
A year after the Key Bridge collapse, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is asking states to revisit collision vulnerability assessments of 68 bridges scattered across 19 states. They are also recommending that FHWA, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provide guidance to bridge owners on how to reduce the risk of vessel collision. Congress should require this, if the guidance is not forthcoming in the near term.
However there is a broader problem: several past bridge collapses were the result of problems undetected by bridge inspections or from DOTs failing to heed the problems identified. In the case of the 2007 I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the NTSB determined that the bridge failed because of design errors, subpar components, and bridge modifications that adversely affected bridge load capacity. These critical flaws were not caught by bridge inspections, and the NTSB recommended changes to the inspection regime.
In the 2013 I-5 Skagit, WA bridge collapse, the NTSB determined that repeated overhead bridge structure damage was due to low clearance truck strikes and no additional warnings or countermeasures to avoid future strikes. Nine of the 10 inspections before the collapse showed high load bridge strikes, but nothing was done in response to these repeated warnings.
In the 2017 I-85 bridge collapse in Atlanta, the NTSB determined flammable materials that had been improperly stored for five years under the bridge led to an excessive heat fire, impacting the structural integrity of the bridge. The presence of these flammable materials was overlooked by bridge inspectors and not included in their inspection.
Lastly, in the 2022 Pittsburgh Fern Hollow Bridge collapse, the NTSB determined poor quality inspections led to a failure to identify fracture-critical issues and incorrect load rating calculations. They also found insufficient oversight of the City of Pittsburgh’s bridge inspection program by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
These bridge inspection protocols heavily rely on visual inspection, theoretical calculations, limited training and recertification of inspectors, and “engineering judgment” to determine the bridge’s health. In the earlier examples, that approach undercompensated the bridge’s respective poor health and collapse vulnerability. In other cases, bridges are being weight restricted for fear of structural issues when that is not, in fact, the case. For example, 10 bridges with load restrictions in Nebraska were load tested in 2021 across three counties using load testing sensors to emulate loads and assess the bridge’s response. As a result, six of those bridges had their restrictions removed. The standard visual inspection found conditions to be worse than they really were.
We are identifying bridges in need of immediate repair while not recognizing critical needs elsewhere, meaning we are not targeting funding correctly. This is all happening while agencies are spending funds on new roads and bridges that further stretch our resources.
Using technology like load testing sensors (which are widely available and relatively inexpensive) can more accurately assess and identify structural issues invisible to the naked eye. Pairing visual inspections with frequent data collection via sensors can better identify bridge health issues and result in proactive maintenance This fix it first approach would lead to few-to-no bridges in poor condition and no bridge collapses. Furthermore, there is a need to support robust and frequent bridge inspector training, to keep current with the required skillsets and tools to assess bridge health. Looking ahead to the next surface transportation reauthorization, it’s not just about securing more funding—it’s about getting more from every dollar. The next federal transportation bill must set a new standard, prioritizing modern tools for accurate assessments, diligently trained inspector workforce, and a fix-it-first approach to ensure resources go where they’re needed most.
Gender inequities in transportation systems have often overlooked women’s travel and safety needs. From biased crash testing to undervalued non-work trips, this Women’s History Month, we’re reflecting on how we can redesign our communities to create a more equitable and inclusive transportation system.
Past investments in transportation infrastructure have seen the adult white collar male commuter as the prototypical traveler, creating an imbalance in how we design our transportation system. It’s time to question how these design choices have left women at a disadvantage, and consider the steps we need to take to build a gender-equitable system.
Beyond the commute
Most urban transportation systems today revolve around serving the 9-5 commute. Although more women today participate in the rush hour commute as well, women and men generally share different mobility patterns, with women being more likely to take non-work trips which involve care work or grocery shopping. The differences are particularly significant when it comes to household responsibilities such as childcare, with women being three times more likely than men to do school drop-offs. Public transportation plays a crucial role in supporting these multi-purpose trips, with women making up 55 percent of transit riders.
The value and necessity of these multi-stop and non-peak journeys have long been overlooked in transportation planning. You can see this in the guidance the U.S. Department of Transportation provides on how to measure the value of time, assigning monetary value to the anticipated time-savings a transportation project will deliver for its users. There are many issues with the application of this guidance, one of them being that the language places heavy emphasis on trips made by white-collar workers over “personal” or “leisure” trips, as the USDOT memo describes them. But by not putting a value to saving people time on those non-work trips, USDOT still does not prioritize these trips.
It is essential for transportation agencies to prioritize journeys beyond white collar commuting by actively supporting shorter, localized trips. The COVID-19 pandemic showed us that looking at travel differently is possible because the pandemic disrupted and reshaped mobility patterns worldwide and continues to do so. Cities saw a rise in multi-purpose roadway spaces and Open Streets to accommodate active transportation activities such as walking and cycling. The same approach can be applied to designing transportation systems that address the travel behavior and needs of women, such as measuring access to destinations and services, analyzing access to non-work related trips, and valuing travel by transit and active transportation options, which women are more likely to take.
Another facet of this safety problem for women is the rapidly increasing size of vehicles that is impacting the rising rates of pedestrian deaths. The U.S. vehicle fleet has rapidly transformed, with larger trucks and SUVs replacing sedans, which featured low front bumpers with high visibility. SUVs, on the other hand, have been growing in size and weight and feature tall front hoods that can conceal visibility at intersections, particularly shorter people, and are likely to strike pedestrians in their head or chest in the event of a crash, which is more deadly. Because women (and children) are likely to be shorter, that danger is significantly more pronounced for them, and it costs them their lives.
A call for change
Women’s History Month gives us a chance to reflect on these inequities in transportation, and think about how planning, policy, and design can prioritize the needs of women. From introducing physiologically representative female crash dummies to prioritizing where and how they travel, women’s experiences in the transportation system should be more than just an afterthought.
Despite historic levels of investment in infrastructure over the last twenty years, America’s 2025 infrastructure grades for roads, bridges, safety, and transit look mostly the same. No one should consider putting a single penny more into a program with such bad results. Unfortunately, raising new money is at the top of the list for our country’s association of civil engineers.
The 2025 infrastructure Report Card, released by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) today, grades every aspect of U.S. infrastructure every four years.2 While ASCE has made some notable improvements (we’ll cover some below), they’ve also stuck to their guns: The #1 solution to the poor condition of our roads, bridges, and transit systems is to spend more money. We just aren’t spending enough.
Consider:
Roads scored a D in 2001 and a D+ in 2025
Bridges scored a C in 2005 and 2025
Noting that these failing scores happened during a period with a huge infusion of funding in the 2009 stimulus and historic amounts of money for roads in the 2021 infrastructure law, perhaps it’s finally time to stop calling for more money as a potential solution?
There’s an obvious problem with telling taxpayers the price before they tell us what we’re buying. (Especially coming from those employed in building the stuff. ) ASCE has been described by Strong Towns over the years as part of the “Infrastructure Cult”—those who believe that prosperity can always be achieved through more growth, and that any and all infrastructure spending is always a good financial investment that leads to growth. ASCE’s report cards of years past were sometimes comically half-baked when it came to the math: Chuck at Strong Towns examined the numbers in the 2011 report:
…The total cost to households and businesses is $1.042 trillion. Well, ASCE states that to reach “minimum tolerable conditions” (a pretty sad standard) would take an investment of $220 billion annually. Over 10 years, that’s $2.2 trillion. Yeah, you read that right. The American Society of Civil Engineers wrote a report suggesting that over the next decade we spend $2.2 trillion so we can save $1.0 trillion. And you wonder why we’re broke.
Credit where it is due
ASCE has made some significant improvements to their specific recommendations and how they talk about some of the problems. Having read these report cards for 15 years now, they have truly evolved and improved many of their specific recommendations, even just compared to the 2021 edition. (“Solutions That Work” in their parlance.) But there’s a real likelihood that these specific improvements in their recommendations will just get lost in the overall clarion call to the public and the media this week of “bad U.S. infrastructure needs more money.”
The obsession with many states and transportation agencies to fight congestion and delay is a fool’s errand, according to ASCE. We need to instead “dedicate resources to preserving a state of good repair, because no nation can build its way out of congestion,” according to this year’s recommendations. That’s a pretty stunning admission you’re not likely to hear from your state DOT and definitely not from the trade association for concrete manufacturers. They recommend focusing instead on “travel time reliability,” which is much closer to what people actually care about.
And they call for more frequent, accurate, and up-to-date data on road/bridge condition, along with more transparency within state DOTs to explain how they chose individual projects. For bridges specifically, they rightly note that the rate of improvement for repairing bridges in poor condition has drastically slowed in recent years, and they call attention to the skyrocketing number of bridges in “fair” condition, which is really where deferred maintenance shows up as good bridges degrade because maintenance is deferred.
When it comes to roadway safety, they are coming around on the power of design in impressive ways: “Incorporate infrastructure design choices that can help save lives, including reducing lane width and implementing low-cost features such as asphalt art, which can heighten the visibility of crosswalks.”
All of these changes represent a pretty significant departure from past report cards, and a pretty stark break from how they talked about these things 16 years ago. But if no new money is coming, how hard will they fight for more disruptive ideas like halting the expansion of the system in order to prioritize repair? We have learned a clear lesson from numerous reauthorization debates over the years: once new money is identified and in the bank, the impulse to talk about any policy changes evaporates.
More money will not get us where ASCE wants without making some hard choices
Here are a few facts on infrastructure spending:
We can’t even afford to maintain the system that we currently have. ASCE says we need to spend $87 billion per year from 2018 to 2038 just for basic rehabilitation of highways. By comparison, states reported in 2022 that they spent ~$89 billion collectively across all capital costs for roads.
We certainly cannot afford to keep expanding our system. Each new lane-mile costs ~$24,000 per year to preserve in good condition. (And those are estimates from 2019!)
From 2008 to 2018, even with the one-time infusion from the 2009 stimulus, the share of roads in poor condition eligible for federal funds got worse overall, increasing from 16 to 23 percent.
The 2021 infrastructure law (the IIJA) increased highway funding by 50 percent. In 2022, states reported that they spent $22 billion on highway expansion.
Voters don’t want to keep expanding highways. In a 2020 T4America poll, 79 percent agreed the government should fix existing roads before building new ones and 73 percent said state governments should have to justify building any new roads. In another 2023 poll, “building new highways and freeways” was the least popular long-term solution for reducing traffic.
It’s clear that ASCE values their role as the clear-eyed engineers in the room, and they do not want to prescribe how new money should be spent. But they fail to understand: To refrain from prescribing how money should be spent is to reinforce the broken status quo of how that limited money is currently spent.
The INVEST Act—a much better version of what became the 2021 infrastructure law—included an unprecedented change. States aiming to use formula highway dollars to build new road capacity would be required to demonstrate that they could maintain that road long-term. Paired with other provisions in the law, the INVEST Act would have finally started to prevent states from expanding their road networks when it comes at the expense of their repair needs. This incredibly responsible approach from 2020 was not mentioned in either the 2021 or 2025 Report Cards as a real world solution.
We really need groups like ASCE (and others) to look more critically at a federal program that has failed to deliver on priorities like safety and maintenance and may have outlived its usefulness. Can ASCE think in these terms? Despite all the good recommendations throughout this report that we really like, they’re still focused on an overall number: According to ASCE’s Bridging the Gap report, surface transportation needs from 2024 to 2033 about $3.5 trillion, of which $2.2 trillion represents the nation’s roadway system. If funding levels included in the IIJA become the new baseline for annual investment, the nation’s roadways will have a funding gap of $684 billion over the next 10 years.
Just to translate that a bit, if the IIJA—which increased highway funding alone by 50 percent—becomes the new baseline for federal transportation investment for the next 7 years, we’d still need $684 billion more? And that’s just for roads.
After 27 years, ASCE has evolved. But they aren’t quite ready to admit that the federal government has spent $1.5 trillion since 1991 on surface transportation and it’s resulted in subpar transit systems, crumbling roads and bridges that aren’t improving enough, historic levels of traffic deaths, and the largest sector for emissions. If you think that doubling that price tag is going to improve those outcomes, I’ve got a (poor condition) bridge to sell you.
We don’t need a penny more for a program with failing scores that have barely changed in 25 years—no matter how you measure them. We need better priorities.
A leaked policy memo from leadership at USDOT will add a new layer of extra-legal review of all awarded competitive grant projects without fully signed federal funding obligations, calling for bicycle infrastructure, green infrastructure, and EV chargers to be cut from projects.
What’s in USDOT’s new memo?
Drawing authority from the President’s inaugural slate of executive orders and the Secretary of Transportation’s first round of policy memos, the Department of Transportation Secretary’s office has, according to a leaked policy memo, issued another round of unprecedented orders, calling for the removal of all elements of projects related to bike infrastructure, charging infrastructure, climate change or those that take equity into account competitive grant funding. The memo specifically applies to competitive grants that have not yet completed grant agreements or obligated the funding, including those that have only been partially obligated. Projects with existing and executed grant agreements are not subject to additional review, but any new federal dollars made out to those projects would be.
What’s the difference between funding that is announced or obligated?
When the federal government announces an award, the awardee does not get that funding as a grant. First, the federal government and the awardee have to negotiate and sign a funding agreement, which lays out the project scope, schedule, and budget and demonstrates the availability of required nonfederal funding match.
Funds can be canceled or reclaimed until they are obligated, which is a binding commitment to pay out money. Funding cannot be obligated until the grant agreement is signed and all permitting and relevant regulations are complied with. Planning grants that don’t have those regulatory requirements are obligated once there is a signed grant agreement. However, capital (ie, construction) projects would need to complete regulatory review and permitting before being obligated.
Once there is a grant agreement and funds are obligated, an awardee must spend their own funding and file for reimbursement from the federal government.
This memo instructs USDOT operating administrations, like The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), to conduct a project-by-project analysis to identify any activities that include primary elements of “equity, climate change, environmental justice, green infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure.” Once projects are identified for non-compliance with the administration’s priorities, they will be subject to individual scrutiny for a final decision on whether they will be canceled, modified, or continue as planned. Projects that contain “flagged activities” could be revised, even if they meet all requirements of law, to comply with this administration’s agenda. This comes full circle from the “Woke Rescission” memo, which we unpacked in a previous blog, and follows the episode of STIP and TIP review of obligated projects that were recently walked back (though the new burdensome review remains an issue for environmental permits, according to a recent letter from AASHTO).
While it is normal for a new administration to set its own agenda, it has always applied to spending and policy going forward. This administration is setting the precedent that any project not underway can be undone when there is a new president. This memo furthers the agenda laid out in the “Unleashing American Energy” memo, which calls for increased reliance on fossil fuel consumption.
Under this approach, USDOT will reach back to 2022 to defund many projects that Congress specifically defined as eligible activities in the text of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Congress defines the scope of what federal programs can fund. Even under the Biden administration—despite its commitments to advancing zero-emission transportation—USDOT still followed congressional intent by awarding the statutorily required 25% of funds to more emitting fossil fuel buses under the Low or No Emission bus program, despite strong demand for zero-emission buses from applicants.
By nature of being eligible for funding, the bike, green infrastructure, and EV chargers elements of projects already got the okay for funding from Congress on a bipartisan basis. If this becomes precedent, future presidents could make unilateral decisions to freeze funding for any project that does not align with their own priorities. Allowing the pendulum to swing back and forth every four years undermines the rationale of the supposedly stable highway trust fund—perhaps further evidence that the model is no longer sustainable. If funding appropriated years in advance can be arbitrarily revoked, why even plan beyond the next fiscal year?
For an administration that has spoken at length about the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse, even absent the hugely dangerous and detrimental impact this will have on people’s health, safety, and long-term environmental sustainability of the transportation system, these reviews are going to slow down projects they would want to proceed. Actions like these continue to sow confusion and are inefficient, waste staff time, and squander funds and resources at the federal and local levels.
What’s at stake
Nearly $2.9 billion in funding was announced for the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program for projects in over 1,700 communities. Only $515 million has been obligated across 979 grant,s according to a search of USASpending data. The vast majority of this program’s funding, $2.4 billion, and hundreds of communities receiving assistance through this program would now be subject to review and renegotiation due to this memo.
About $7.6 billion was announced under the RAISE/BUILD program for federal fiscal years 2022 through 2025. Still, only $1.25 billion, or less, of funding has been secured and obligated, leaving the rest of the announced funds, representing potentially hundreds of projects, stuck once again in the grant review process.
Zooming out to the whole program, based on data last updated by the USDOT on January 31, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Federal Railroad Administration have a combined $51 billion in funds unobligated for non-formula programs. Much of these funds are now likely subject to review, cuts, and delays.
It likely will not stop there
While the current memo applies to competitive grants, there is good reason to expect that this administration will expand this review to cover other programs, too, if they find they don’t agree with how states, regions, localities, and transit agencies are using the funds.
For example, new, flexible formula programs created in the IIJA designed to address infrastructure resiliency, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, and build out the national network of electric vehicle infrastructure remain at risk and could be the next target for politicized review and freezes. Further, if Congress decides to rescind funds for impounded or frozen climate-related programs, the impacts would disproportionately hit rural states, likely disrupting planned projects of all types. Carbon Reduction Program and PROTECT funds have been programmed for anything from new highway lighting to tunnel rehabilitation. Members of Congress should be aware of how cuts to these programs may fall hardest on whose constituents.
If President Trump is interested in claiming the mantle of “infrastructure president,” here’s a list of specific actions the president can take to make significant improvements to the federal transportation program.
As we’ve done for past presidents, we’ve put together a list of specific actions that President Trump should take on transportation in his final term. Buckle up for this detailed list of 14 specific to-dos across five different areas:
Finally fix stuff
Actually improve safety
Streamline the process
Reconsider the (broken) models
Improve transparency
As T4A director Beth Osborne wrote recently, the federal transportation program has been failing to deliver for decades. Spending more money has failed to improve congestion, emissions, efficient access to jobs and daily needs, or reduce the number of people struck and killed while walking. President Trump could make a powerful statement by acknowledging that our current strategy isn’t working and urging Congress to beach this rudderless ship of a program that’s sailing off in no particular direction at all.
1) FINALLY FIX STUFF: President Trump can be the first to finally focus federal spending on fixing things first
He should aim to have “the best” infrastructure rather than just “the most”
Unsurprisingly, the American public doesn’t know much about the federal transportation program.3 Most Americans do not realize there’s no requirement to first repair existing infrastructure before building new assets that require decades upon decades of new, additional maintenance costs. Requiring states to repair things first would likely have immense public support if Congress proposed it, yet a bunch of supposedly fiscally conservative Senators lost their minds at USDOT merely suggesting that states consider doing so.
At some point, we will have to stop expanding a transportation network that is already too large to realistically maintain, or go broke trying. Repair Priorities showed that we’d need $231.4 billion per year just to keep our existing road network in an acceptable state and bring the backlog of roads in poor condition into good repair over a six-year period. Yet across all units of government, in 2015, we spent just $105.4 billion on all highway capital projects. Step one is to stop digging the hole, especially when the gas tax, the primary source of federal funding, has only been covering a fraction of checks that Congress has been writing since as far back as 2008.
President Trump should step in and tell the freeloading members of Congress that the free lunch is over. Tell them their states can’t just expand their transportation system forever with zero thought given to how their children and grandchildren will pay for its upkeep.
(A) Reward areas that are making improvements in the condition of their roadways with competitive grants and limit the grantmaking for those who are not.
More than $200 billion of the $643 billion in the IIJA went to competitive grants, and every administration puts its own stamp on the projects they choose to advance. Add in criteria to reward those who are being the best stewards of the other federal dollars they have received. Those who are begging Congress for more free taxpayer money to expand roads they can’t afford to maintain should not be rewarded with more grant funding to do anything.
(B) Before providing funding for anything new, require transportation agencies to demonstrate they have funding for its maintenance and repair throughout its useful life.
This is another fact that tends to shock people we’ve surveyed: agencies don’t have to prove they can afford to maintain anything they are building. And they can build something new even if it will jeopardize their ability to maintain things they’ve already built. If you or I are buying a house, we have to prove to the bank that we have stable and sufficient income. But when your state DOT takes federal highway formula money and decides to build a new highway with it, they don’t have to prove to anyone that they have enough money to maintain it even for just the next five years, let alone the next 50. It’s time for that to change. USDOT could institute a requirement like this tomorrow with many competitive programs. For formula programs, President Trump can tell Congress to institute this change in the replacement for the IIJA, which is due in September of next year.
(C) When infrastructure fails, whether by natural disasters or otherwise, require that it be updated for current needs.
When floods, fire, extreme heat, or other changes in weather lead to the loss of a road, bridge, transit line, or anything else, transportation agencies should consider whether that asset needs to be replaced, what needs to be done to reduce the chance of a repeat failure, and how the design should be updated to improve priorities like safety and connectivity. Expanding that asset should only be considered if there is a plan to maintain it, as discussed above.
(2) ACTUALLY IMPROVE SAFETY: Stop paying lip service to safety and get the U.S. off the bottom of the rankings
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy came in with a stated interest in improving safety. It’s sorely needed—the U.S. sits at the bottom of the rankings of the developed world on traffic safety. The numbers are even more dire for people walking. Safety is always described as a top priority, though states face no penalties for injuries or fatalities increasing on their roads. It’s time to put safety above all else, penalize those who use federal dollars to make it worse, and reward those who are moving things in the right direction.
(A) Reward improvements in safety.
Reward the cities, metro areas, and states with roadways that are getting safer with increased access to competitive grants, and limit the grantmaking for the places that are not. Consider serious injuries in addition to deaths, and especially evaluate the numbers for people walking, biking, or getting around outside of vehicles.
(B) Make it clear that cities and states can and should be testing to see what safety improvements work in what conditions, and fund them to do so.
The Secretary should write a memo making it clear that the guidance in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is never an excuse to stand in the way of progress on safety. If provisions in the MUTCD are leading to bad safety outcomes, states, and other agencies should not follow that guidance and submit reports to USDOT about provisions that make safety worse. USDOT should consider updating the guide to better prioritize safety or, even better, pare it back entirely to only cover the design of signs, markings and signals. The MUTCD was never intended to govern street design.
(C) Cap vehicle safety ratings at four stars for any vehicles that impede the driver’s ability to see in front of or around them.
As the vehicle fleet gets bigger, taller, and heavier on average, people in older vehicles, and especially people outside of any vehicle, are more at risk. Collisions that were only injuries 20 years ago are becoming fatalities today. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and other relevant USDOT offices should stop dragging their feet and update the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) on crashworthiness and crash avoidance systems to account for people walking and biking. This is something that’s already been proposed by the National Safety Council. (Page 42)
(3) STREAMLINE: Cut red tape and speed up (good) projects
The President and Secretary Duffy are partially right—good projects do take too long. While we’re also glad that terrible, destructive projects also take too long, there’s absolutely some low-hanging fruit when it comes to improving the process by which projects get planned, designed, and built. Here are three:
(1) Streamline the grant application process for all USDOT grants so that rural and lower-capacity agencies can better compete.
While not easy for any unit of government to navigate, smaller and midsized cities face an uphill challenge with the complex process of applying for USDOT competitive grants. USDOT could do two things to improve that process: First, create an online application and a simple plug-and-play benefit-cost analysis (BCA) calculator so that these places don’t have to hire overpriced consultants. Second, reduce the paperwork and speed up the process for signing a grant agreement. What you might not know when you see that list released of RAISE grant winners (or any other grant program) is that it can take months to years to receive any funding because they have to negotiate a grant agreement with USDOT. Speed that up and simplify that process.
(2) Ensure that project streamlining efforts consistently extend to all modes, all regions, and all transportation agencies.
One reason transit projects get built more slowly (and at higher cost) than highway projects is because Federal Highways (FHWA) district offices and Federal Transit (FTA) regional offices interpret many of the same rules differently. For example, FHWA applies streamlining laws and regulations much more liberally than FTA does. Environmental review should be bypassed or abbreviated for more projects that have clear benefits. And the state DOTs demanding streamlining changes from Congress or USDOT, who subject their local governments to arduous requirements when they subgrant money to them, should stop. This process disproportionately harms the smaller and rural areas this administration claims to prioritize because these places don’t have the funding to take over the project or the size and clout to push back.
(3) Remove burdensome federal requirements to bring down costs.
Highway agencies often feel pressure from FHWA under existing design standards and project development protocols to do things that increase costs, like designing roadways with lanes that are unnecessarily wide for streets where lower speeds are the goal or having to do a costly traffic study before making commonsense improvements like new crosswalks or signals. FHWA claims that state and local agencies have flexibility, but their experience counters that claim.
(4) RECONSIDER THE MODELS: Stop wasting money based on bad data and travel models
(A) Take down the Secretary’s value of time memo.
Rescinding this single memo would have a significant impact overnight. USDOT’s enshrined guidance on the “value of time” leads to an enormous waste of federal money, with billions going toward trying to save certain people a few seconds at a time, claiming that those seconds add up to tens of millions of dollars in economic benefit. Rather than explaining further, just watch our video:
We’ve had the technology for years now to measure the actual time of trips instead of assuming that “slightly faster vehicles on road X = a better system.” The time for inaccurate and misleading proxies has long passed. President Trump should direct Secretary Duffy to rescind this memo yesterday.
(B) Review the accuracy of travel demand models.
Traffic models predicted unimaginable congestion without widening The Katy Expressway in Houston. Yet even after widening it to 26 lanes in some places, traffic got worse, failing to deliver on the projections from the flawed traffic models used to justify the billions spent on it. Yet those same models will be used again and again to justify other similar projects. Agencies (or Congress) almost never look back to evaluate if new projects delivered on the promises made or if the new reality comes close to the rosy projections. Like a weather forecast, we’re mostly just concerned about the predictions for tomorrow and rarely go back five years to consider the accuracy of a past forecast. USDOT should start rigorously comparing past projections with actual outcomes, reporting their findings, and updating the models when there are discrepancies.
This near-comical graphic from the Frontier Group combines past federal projections of future growth in vehicle miles traveled. The darkest line is reality. Every year the models continued to project basically the same growth in miles traveled, even though every one continued to prove false.
(5) IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY: Make it easier for taxpayers to understand where their money is going and what is being accomplished
The simple truth is that it’s nearly impossible to get up-to-date data on where transportation money has been spent, and the conditions and performance of the transportation system. In fact, when the IIJA expires in September 2026, we’ll just have (an incomplete) picture of where the money went during its predecessor (the FAST Act) from 2015-2021. This means that the members of Congress who will decide how much of your tax money to invest in transportation and how to invest it, have almost no idea about how well the money has been spent for the last 3-4 years. Would you give your employees a raise when you have no idea if they’ve done a good job for the last year? This is yet another reason why public faith in the federal program is incredibly low.
(A) Require project sponsors to report on what their projects have accomplished.
Understanding where and how money is being spent is only part of the question. The administration should also make it easier for taxpayers to learn what has been accomplished with the billions handed out to states and metro areas each year. USDOT should create a new requirement for project sponsors to submit simple reports five years after completion to report on the performance of the project. Did the project deliver all the promised benefits? Did the promised congestion relief materialize? Did the project accomplish its stated goals for improving safety? How does today’s reality match up with the lofty promises used to justify each project?
(B) Standardize transportation spending data format and availability for annual state/metro area spending.
The State Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) is a four-year list of projects a state has committed to funding, planning, and building. Though these STIPS are intended to help the public understand how and where their tax dollars are going and hold leaders accountable, good luck deciphering (or even finding, in some cases) your state’s STIP. USDOT should standardize the format and availability of this data so that the public can easily understand how their tax dollars are spent, compare spending across states and metropolitan planning organizations, and hold their agencies and elected leaders accountable.
(C) Require transparency regarding compensation in leadership positions, including bonuses at Amtrak.
One way to fulfill Amtrak’s mission of reliable, quality passenger rail service is by ensuring that every dollar possible helps them improve or expand service. It’s not unreasonable to provide good compensation to smart, motivated, and competent staff or executives, but salary and bonuses should be tied to serving passengers and justified by quantifiable, measurable results in improved service and travel experience. There should also be accounting for the total number of executive staff, their salaries, and all bonuses.
Stay tuned! We’ll be checking in on these items from time to time throughout this administration and reporting back.
The State Smart Transportation Initiative just released its new framework, Innovative DOT. This comprehensive framework offers specific recommendations designed to support state transportation officials in positioning their agencies for success in today’s evolving transportation landscape.
Developed with input from top transportation professionals—including T4America— and state DOT staff from across the country, the State Smart Transportation Initiative’s new framework highlights innovative approaches that leaders are adopting to enhance transportation system efficiency, government effectiveness, and constituent satisfaction. Learning from peers can help state transportation officials tackle shared problems without reinventing the wheel.
This comprehensive resource covers everything from planning to operations and agency culture. It shows how your agency can build a path to resilience while implementing policies and practices that prioritize people over cars.
It also highlights one of our principles, fix it first, and calls on states and local governments who aren’t already doing so to advocate for dedicated funding streams to invest properly in a state of good repair, focusing on maintenance rather than expanding existing transportation infrastructure.
We encourage transportation professionals, policymakers, and stakeholders to explore this valuable resource to continue innovating and improving their organizations to address contemporary challenges state DOTs are facing.
The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI) is a joint program of Smart Growth America and the High Road Strategy Center at the University of Wisconsin.
With the Biden presidency in the rearview mirror, we can look back at where the administration succeeded and failed and what lessons we can take for the future.
Joe Biden promised to tackle the climate crisis and address equity in transportation investments. Despite passing major legislation and hiring great spokespeople for reform, his administration did little to change the nation’s broken status quo. Here are the lessons we should take from this failure.
Talk does not equal action
The Biden Administration hired folks at USDOT who could speak eloquently about the need for transportation options and the system’s impact on the environment, both good and bad. Most notable was Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose oratory skills painted a picture of the multimodal transportation system we would build together.
But talk is not the same as action. Despite Transportation for America outlining 12 executive actions Biden could take without Congress, only two were implemented: repealing a Trump-era rule to make it easier to fund transit projects and supporting and implementing the Reconnecting Communities Program.
The administration left other priorities only partially completed. Reestablishing the greenhouse gas (GHG) performance measure for transportation was extremely slow, and they were unable to defend it from a court challenge. It took nearly four years to appoint a full Amtrak Board while failing to correct overrepresentation from the Northeast Corridor. Improvements to pedestrian safety in car and street design were modest, at best.
Another missed opportunity: some of the tasks they left untouched were more technical and likely to go unnoticed by political opponents, even though they would also have been extremely impactful for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (a goal the administration was explicitly committed to). Even as housing prices skyrocketed, the administration failed to revive the Location Affordability Portal and apply location efficiency and equitable development criteria to decisions involving the location of new federal facilities. The administration applied outdated, inaccurate, and inequitable value of time guidance to discretionary funding decisions focusing on vehicle speed without considering actual projected time savings for those traveling, whether they travel by car or use other modes of travel. They also failed to require the measurement of induced demand and review the accuracy of current travel demand models that are notoriously biased toward roadway expansion.
Fear of conflict is paralyzing
The administration shied away from the fights worth having (see our comments on the GHG rule above). An illustrative example was the saga of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) memo asking staff to encourage state DOTs to focus on their repair needs, take advantage of the law’s flexibilities, and endeavor to reduce emissions and improve safety.
This nonbinding internal memo angered Senator Shelley Moore Capito (WV), who grilled Secretary Buttigieg in a 2022 Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) hearing on the implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The crux of Capito’s opposition to the memo was the suggestion of a (non-existent) mandate and a one-size-fits-all context in the fix-it-first language. Despite Capito’s argument being wholly illogical—it was not a mandate—FHWA eventually replaced it with a memo that said FHWA maintained the same priorities but wouldn’t encourage the states to do anything to support them.
The real problem was this incident’s chilling effect. The conflict discouraged USDOT from taking other actions that might be met with objections. We’re left to question, if there is no opposition at all, are you doing anything that is actually meaningful?
Prioritize your priorities
What would eventually become the IIJA started as dueling proposals from the House and Senate. The House’s superior INVEST Act proposed bold, bipartisan reforms to the transportation program, prioritizing maintenance, safety, and access to jobs and services. However, the weaker text in the Senate’s version eventually won out, mainly due to pressure from the White House.
Additionally, the Biden Administration’s signature legislation continued a longstanding approach to fixing problems with the transportation system by creating small, discrete programs to fix problems that the much larger program would continue to make worse. For example, 9 percent of the highway program was dedicated to safety (6 percent to the Highway Safety Improvement Program and 3 percent to Transportation Alternatives). However, no policies, regulations, or standards were changed in the rest of the system, which meant we would keep digging that hole deeper.
The same is true in carbon emissions, with the IIJA leading to substantial emissions increases directly attributable to the bill. For the Reconnecting Communities program, funding went to projects that divided more communities than they were reconnecting. While the IIJA has provided immense funding overall, the legislation dedicated more money to the same old system and little funding to fix its problems. We got what Congress should have expected: more of the same.
Moreover, the separateness of the Administration’s new programs have made them that much easier to unwind and end.
Don’t over-process
Another problem was the administration’s obsession with process over outcomes. The administration published lots of reports, guides, and best practices that hit all the right notes. For example, The U.S. National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization from the Joint Office on Energy and Transportation (JOET) masterfully describes the need for both electrification and improved transportation options to reduce GHG emissions from transportation. But it’s hard to say whether these reports changed how anything was actually done.
The administration’s obsession with process prevented it from simplifying grant applications, particularly grant agreement processes for the beneficial discretionary grant programs in the IIJA. T4America was involved in a grant agreement amendment process, which included multiple rounds of edits from more than a dozen editors, making a simple process long and complicated.
Combine this with the slow pace on rules for the new Carbon Reduction Program and the inflexibility and slow rollout of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, and you can see how there was little to show on the ground three years after IIJA passage when Biden’s Vice President stood for re-election. Now, Biden’s plans are being pulled down from government websites.
Make it hard to dismantle
We’re watching much of Biden’s signature policy achievements evaporate as the Trump administration takes actions (albeit many of them probably illegal) to set its direction on transportation for the nation. For example, three years into the NEVI program, only 200 EV chargers have been installed, and Trump is pausing the program. Even with more chargers in the works, it’s hard to imagine NEVI will produce the number of chargers needed to catalyze transformative electrification of our transportation system. On top of that, the administration failed to publish a map of where the planned chargers would be installed so that people would feel a loss if they were pulled back until after the election (instead, this was done by nonprofits T4America and Plug-in America).
Once something is built and operating, it’s harder to take away. The lack of visible impact not only weakens the case for keeping the programs but was inexcusable given the urgency of the climate crisis.
As excited as people were about the Biden Administration’s well-written plans and guidebooks, it is now clear how little of an impact they had as they are paused or removed from federal government websites.
Outcomes matter
The key lesson from all this is that outcomes matter, and you can produce outcomes by moving forward forcefully with purpose. An inclusive process can be helpful, but to ultimately serve people, especially disadvantaged communities, you need to deliver tangible results. We will look to work with this White House and Congress where we can find common ground on accountability, economic development, and safety. And we’ll be urging leaders at all levels of government who wish to advance a fix-it-first, pro-safety, pro-transportation options, smart growth agenda to focus on the outcomes they can generate under their purview during their term. American communities don’t have the time to lose on anything less.
Yesterday, our Director Beth Osborne led a webinar that provided a high-level overview of our Reauthorization 101 resource and analysis of Trump’s recent executive orders and memos. Here are the top three takeaways from the conversation with over 400 attendees.
1. Many are still confused as to what the administration is trying to accomplish
During the webinar, multiple attendees questioned the purpose of these speedy memos and executive orders. These are largely unprecedented actions and are difficult to calculate since there seems to be much back and forth with legality push backs (even internal push backs with Congress). Much of these actions are difficult to predict and it’s unknown if they are even capable of being implemented. One attendee pointed out how these EO’s could possibly clash with foundational legislation such as the Civil Rights Act. Ultimately, only time can tell and there are multiple variables at play that can reverse or accelerate these actions.
2. Everyone wants to know what they can do during this chaos
As advocates and transportation enthusiasts, attendees questioned what could be done during these times of uncertainty. At this point of time, the most impactful action is to let respective Congressional representatives know about the weight of these issues. Identify your representatives and call their office to explain what projects could be at risk in your community and what those projects bring to enhance life. Emails are another option to inform offices of the possible impact these memos can have on districts and states. DC offices are not the only option to contact, state legislators and state DOTs are also liaisons to contact and escalate how these actions could harm cities.
3. Who is at risk?
A large theme from the webinar was wondering whose communities are at risk of losing out on their obligated funding. T4A wants to equip our partners, advocates, and communities with all the right information and resources. Check out our analysis on funding that is at risk, broken down by state, county, and congressional districts. Be informed, know what is at risk and escalate to your legislators!
The Long-Distance Rail Study, released by the Federal Railroad Administration in the twilight hours of the Biden Administration on January 20, 2025, prioritizes lengthy projects that have little chance to succeed instead of shorter-term projects that can deliver service to Americans. It is imperative that Amtrak focus on routes that run daily and not only serve major employment centers but the small urban towns that lie between.
Cardinal Train passing by L’Enfant Station on 2/23/25 (Photo By Author)
In January 2025, just before the change of Presidential Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) released the Amtrak Long-Distance Service Study as a report to Congress. The study, which was due in November 2023, was mandated by Congress as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), with the goal of evaluating the restoration of several long-distance passenger rail routes to be operated by the National Passenger Railroad Corporation (Amtrak).
The United States has lost many long-distance passenger rail routes in the decades following the founding of Amtrak in 1971. (Long-distance routes are routes that travel over 750 miles). The study found that many of the remaining 15 long-distance routes serve as a vital link for many rural communities that lack other transportation options, such as interstate highways or airports. Investing in more routes within the Amtrak network will offer increased access to communities across the country by a method other than driving or flying.
1940 map of passenger rail routes in the United States (Source)
Comparison map of Amtrak routes in 1971 vs 2021 (Source)
While it is admirable to recommend 15 more long-distance routes (some of which are the restoration of previous services, while others are brand new service proposals), many of these projects are not able to be completed in a short period of time. Many of the recommendations require complex negotiations with the freight rail companies that own the tracks, constructing new or refurbished accessible stations and boarding platforms, and brand new corridor alignments in order to meet the needs of these proposed services. It is important to think in terms of four-, six-, and eight-year increments for project timelines, as that is the time frame in which Congress and the Presidency operate. And it is often extremely difficult to convince elected leaders to support a project that they may not even see while they are in office.
Quick win opportunities: The Cardinal and the Sunset Limited
Of the 15 remaining long-distance routes, 13 have departures seven days a week. However, two of the proposed 15 trains have a lower frequency, only departing three times a week instead: the Cardinal and the Sunset Limited. Unlike many of the other new route proposals, upgrading the Cardinal and Sunset Limited to daily service is a feasible project that could be implemented in a shorter timeframe and deliver impactful results.
Houston, TX, the fourth most populous city in the United States and on the Sunset Limited route, is the largest city in the country without daily passenger rail service. The Cardinal exclusively connects Charleston, WV; Cincinnati, OH; and Indianapolis, IN, while the Sunset Limited exclusively connects Houston, TX; El Paso, TX; and Tucson, AZ. Cultivating daily service on these two routes would allow for reliable connectivity for many rural communities and small towns to economic and education opportunities and to health/social services.
The North Coast Hiawatha, prominently listed as the “Seattle-Chicago” route, was a long-distance route that was discontinued in 1979. It was similar to the current Empire Builder route that travels between Chicago and Seattle or Portland (splitting service in Spokane), operating three times a week between Chicago and Seattle. However, unlike the Empire Builder, the North Coast Hiawatha took a more southern route through North Dakota and Montana, connecting cities such as Bismark, Billings, Bozeman, Helena, and Missoula. All of these cities currently lack passenger rail, which the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority is advocating to change. Restoring the North Coast Hiawatha and upgrading it to daily service would allow for reliable connectivity and would increase access to everyday destinations.
Another branch of an existing service that was considered but not incorporated in the study was branching the Crescent, which runs from New York to New Orleans, at Meridian to have a branch to Fort Worth. This line has even received federal grants and currently has a supportive freight host (CPKC) for much of the route.
Tangible opportunities for tomorrow’s wins
With passenger rail funding at a crossroads in the United States, it is important that the FRA and Amtrak utilize existing rail assets in relation to population, economic, and health centers and prioritize starting passenger rail operations quickly. Projects such as the daily Cardinal and Sunset Limited, restoration and enhancement of the North Coast Hiawatha, and splitting the Crescent at Meridian to go to Dallas are shorter-term projects that would construct a brighter future for passenger rail. These projects would create new connections for riders, and allow greater mobility around the United States for a more reasonable cost and within a more reasonable timeframe.
Congress is starting to talk about the next federal transportation bill, due next year. But they seem more concerned with how the money is distributed, to whom, and how fast it is being spent, rather than what the American people are getting for their tax dollars.
With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) sunsetting in 19 months, Congress has to prepare a bill to reauthorize the federal highway, transit and rail programs. But numerous committees so far tasked with that work have not even started to consider the most fundamental question: how well is the highway system working?
The federal government has spent $1.5 trillion of American taxpayer dollars over the past 30-plus years to build a world-class surface transportation system. In 2012, a strong bipartisan majority—373 to 52 in the House and 74 to 19 in the Senate—passed a transportation reauthorization bill that refocused the program on national transportation goals, increasing accountability and transparency, and improving project decision-making through performance-based planning and programming.
The seven national goals Congress wrote into law (23 USC 150) finally captured the priorities that have been highlighted since 1991: safety, infrastructure condition, congestion reduction, system reliability, freight movement and economic vitality, environmental sustainability, and better project delivery. After 34 years of increasingly spendy bipartisan transportation bills, how have we fared on these goals?
Safety
The United States has the most dangerous roads in the developed world. By a lot. Twice as deadly as Greece, three times as deadly as Israel, and six times as deadly as Norway. In fact, the U.S. is twenty percent more deadly than Chile and 30 percent more deadly than Serbia. Most of these countries are getting safer, but not us.
Roads in the United States are so deadly and unsafe that our numbers change the narrative on worldwide traffic safety in the developed world. The 2024 roadway safety report on the 70 countries in the International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group (IRTAD) notes that overall road deaths would have actually fallen by 12.8 percent if the US had been left out. We are dragging the performance of the rest of the developed world in the wrong direction.
For people walking, it’s even worse. Compared to a 29 percent improvement in the rest of these countries, pedestrian fatalities in the US have increased 75 percent since 2010, which you can find in the National Complete Streets Coalition’s report on pedestrian safety, Dangerous by Design.
While the federal transportation program has included a specific program to address safety, the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), which has existed since 1973, has always been a tiny part of the overall program—currently, 6 percent of the highway program. Add in the Transportation Alternatives program, which helps build sidewalks and other infrastructure to help people without a car get around safely, and you get up to 9 percent. Whatever constitutes our approach to safety is failing for everyone who uses the road.
Congestion reduction/Reliability/Freight
USDOT chose to assess congestion reduction, system reliability, freight movement, and economic vitality through overly simple measures of vehicle speeds, so we will address these areas together. One of the biggest excuses for not taking established steps to improve safety (the steps every nation doing better than us is taking) is the need to support the economy by eliminating congestion. Saving lives with slower speeds has taken a back seat in favor of trying to eliminate congestion at all costs, which has been the ultimate goal of all federal transportation spending for the last 30 years. Yet, no matter how you measure this effort, it has failed.
Between 1993 and 2017, the most populous 100 U.S. cities added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles, an increase of 42 percent. That rate of freeway expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period. So congestion should have gone down, right? Nope, it went up 144 percent. Congestion increased in every single one of these 100 metro areas. It went up in places that tried really hard to build their way out of congestion, like in Brownsville, TX, where the population increased 73 percent, they increased freeway lane miles by 287 percent and congestion increased by 1230 percent. It also went up in places that lost population, like in Detroit, MI, where the population decreased by 5 percent, they increased freeway lane miles by 15 percent, and congestion still increased by 45 percent. Let that sink in. Fewer people, more highways, and congestion increased—a lot!
Infrastructure condition
What have record levels of investment in infrastructure gotten us when it comes to the basic condition of our roads and bridges? USDOT’s Conditions and Performance Report for 2024 found that the share of federal-aid highway pavements with good ride quality improved during the 2008–2018 period—from 40.7 percent to 47.2 percent (not even half). But the share of federal-aid highway pavements with poor ride quality also worsened during that time, rising from 15.8 percent to 22.6 percent. In terms of bridges, the share of federal-aid bridges in good repair decreased from 47.8 percent to 46.0 percent; however, the share of federal-aid bridges in poor repair also decreased from 10.1 percent to 7.6 percent. Pretty lackluster results.
USDOT likes to note that the busiest roads (by amount of vehicle miles traveled) are in (slightly) better condition, as they likely have more repair dollars spent on them. While this is true, either all roads you’ve built are important enough to maintain, or they should not have been built in the first place. This claim also runs directly counter to rhetoric often deployed about the “importance” of rural areas—as if it’s ok if their less trafficked roads are poorly maintained.
Emissions
We covered this just two months ago. Based on current investment patterns, over the course of the current infrastructure law, federal surface transportation spending could increase emissions by nearly 190 million metric tonnes of emissions over baseline levels through 2040 from added driving. This is the emission equivalent of 500 natural gas-fired power plants or nearly 50 coal-fired power plants running for a year.
And we weren’t doing well before the IIJA either, as we showed in our 2020 report, Driving Down Emissions.
Speeding up project delivery
Why would we want to speed up the delivery of projects producing such terrible results? Slow them down. Stop them.
Members of Congress preparing the replacement of the IIJA this year and next should be warned that the collective failure to make improvements in these priority areas will be given as the primary reason to pump more money into the same programs we have been funding for decades. They may have changed names, shifted from formula to discretionary or vice versa, or seen their proportions change, but they are basically the same programs.
If you point out that the results have been truly disappointing, you will hear how the transportation agencies aren’t to blame, even as they ask for more money to do the same things. For example, we regularly hear that roadway fatalities are up because of the misbehavior of people using those roadways rather than the design or function of those roads. Their counterparts in other countries don’t feel that way, which is one reason they are successfully saving lives. If state DOTs aren’t able to improve safety, then we should give funding to other entities that can.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, whose committee will be writing a large chunk of this law, is starting with the wrong questions and assumptions. She told POLITICO that she wants to look at formula vs. discretionary to see if the discretionary [grants] getting out and to determine kind of efficiencies need to be made. The most essential question to ask is whether or not the enormous amount of spending on transportation has resulted in better outcomes, like the goals Congress overwhelmingly supported and put into the U.S. Code: making the roads safer, reducing congestion, improving infrastructure conditions, and reducing emissions. If the answers are no, then clearly it’s time to stop throwing good money after bad.
Congress is looking at spending another $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. People will point to the overwhelming bipartisan support. Inevitably (as happens at every reauthorization), there will be calls for more money for the same programs, more flexibility for states to spend federal funds however they like, and less accountability overall.
This strategy has failed to deliver, and it won’t deliver anything different, whether we give it more money or less.
We shouldn’t spend another dime on a program that fails so completely to deliver on all of the priorities we have set for it. This is the issue that Congress should be grappling with over the next year as they prepare the next transportation law.
Join us for a webinar on Tuesday, February 25th at 2 p.m. ET to discuss the state of transportation funding, including recent executive orders and the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization.
Federal transportation funding is at a crossroads, with executive orders and USDOT directives reshaping priorities and halting projects, not to mention federal surface transportation program planning already underway. In a rapidly shifting USDOT, what is the latest on projects across the country facing uncertainty, delays, and outright cuts to obligated funding? How will the Trump administration’s policies influence long-term funding decisions? And could a shift in the reauthorization status quo really be a bad thing?
Join Beth Osborne, Director of Transportation for America, for a timely discussion on the state of federal transportation funding, what to expect in the coming months, and how advocates and practitioners can navigate this evolving landscape.
