A series of recent cuts to federal research centers is casting a spotlight on a critical but little-known corner of the transportation world, raising disturbing new questions about why the Trump administration is scrapping basic programs that could make roads safer, more accessible, and less polluted. According to media outlet StreetsBlog USA, in May, U.S. DOT issued a scathing memo announcing the repeal of $54 million in “woke university grants,” which the agency said had been “used to advance a radical DEI and green agenda that were both wasteful and ran counter to the transportation priorities of the American people.”
The StreetsBlog USA article went on to say: “The [Trump] administration reduced these projects to a list of MAGA boogeymen, including a swarm of buzzwords that prompted the rescission of dozens of other research grants, like ‘decarbonization,’ ‘equitable transportation,’ ‘low-income travelers,’ and ‘gender non-conforming’ public transit users. These rollbacks represent a stunning and unprecedented assault on what is normally a sacrosanct corner of the transportation world: the university transportation center.”
Established by Congress in 1987, the University Transportation Center (UTC) program was founded so the federal government could invest directly in research and workforce development to improve the nation’s transportation system. It has been renewed in every major federal transportation bill since. The program is currently made up of 35 “centers” – each a cluster of 3 to 10 trusted colleges and universities that share resources and collaborate on a set thematic area approved by the DOT. Those centers have the exclusive opportunity to apply for a pool of special grants available only to UTCs. Each grant empowers a full slate of research projects and workforce development activities, educational programs, and outreach to students as young as kindergarteners for a year.
In exchange for that special status, the centers must focus on specific, federally identified priorities and go through a rigorous application process showing they’ll use taxpayer money in accordance with the DOT’s strategic plan, as well as a handful of “priority areas” that it identifies each year. Until now, it was unheard of for a UTC grant to be pulled when a new party took control of the White House.
Even as grantees have scrambled for clarity on the new administration’s goals, they got the devastating news that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was rescinding not just the $4 million the center had won from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law so far, but “about $6 million” total. The termination letter, obtained by Streetsblog, did not cite specific projects that the agency had publicly decried as the kind of “woke” transportation research “the American people have zero interest.” Instead, the agency called out three grants, entitled “Vehicle Miles Traveled Mitigation Strategies: Implications for Equity and Sustainability Across the Urban-rural Continuum,” “Path to Economy-Wide Net Zero Emissions by 2020,” and “Climate Justice & Environmental Justice.” The Trump administration also cut off funding for a constellation of other, seemingly unrelated projects and took a cudgel to the center’s entire operations, rather than applying a scalpel to a few objectionable programs, or asking the team to rescope their work.
Because their grant was terminated “effective immediately,” the consortium had few options to fill a sudden hole that represented more than 40% of their budget. That meant even projects that were near completion were brought to a halt, and people were immediately put out of work.
Source: StreetsBlog USA, Windels Marx
