When the Trump administration issued a memo last week directing agency officials to claw back grants for biking, walking, and other green infrastructure, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.) quickly condemned the move as “a direct attack on communities who were awarded funding to invest in safer, cleaner mobility solutions.”
Those were strong words from the top-ranking Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee — and it could signal the start of a bruising battle to protect some of America’s most hard-won safety dollars. And Larsen argues that many of his Republican colleagues will join him in the fight, too.
We sat down with the 13-term congressman to dig deeper into why saving vulnerable road users’ lives is a federal priority, which communities will suffer the most if DOT doesn’t reverse course, and whether all of this is legal. And check back in soon for a follow-up conversation with Ranking Member Larsen on our podcast, Talking Headways.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Streetsblog: What compelled you to speak out in support of the biking, walking, and EV projects awarded funds under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and why do you think every American should take notice of the Trump administration’s attempt to call those funds back?
Rep. Rick Larsen: First and foremost, as a biker and a walker, this is a pretty obvious step for me to take. I’ve been an advocate for the bike and pedestrian infrastructure portions of the of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the FAST Act before that, and all the different names we gave to the transportation bill before that.
So I’ve been an advocate for bike and pedestrian infrastructure funding in its various iterations since I’ve been in Congress. And to hear that the administration is attempting to implement an executive order through a memo [that would] try to supersede what’s in the statute — that ought to concern people.
The administration is trying to use questionable legal arguments to bypass Congress’s intent — and Congress’s letter of the law.
Streetsblog: So you suspect that this move is illegal?
Larsen: I’ll let the courts decide what’s legal or not legal. But my argument about why the administration is wrong is that when Congress wrote the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we specifically we put in programs for safe routes to schools and safe city streets; [we wanted there to be] federal money to fund safe ways for people to get around.
Second, when we wrote the law — and when cities and counties and jurisdictions applied for the money — [those communities] took direction from [U.S. DOT] to put in the sidewalk infrastructure and other pedestrian infrastructure.
This administration can change the rules. I may not like those rules, but they have the authority to [do that]. But they can only change the rules going forward, not retrospectively. And what the administration’s attempting to do is to look back in time — and in fact, to look back in time only to Jan. 20, 2021, when the Biden administration took office — and take money away that has already been announced.
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Streetsblog: Unfortunately, not every member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure committee seems to share that point of view. Chairman Sam Graves [R-Mo.] recently told Transportation Topics that he’s amenable to the idea of withdrawing funding from “green” projects, provided it’s redirected to “laying asphalt, pouring concrete, building ridges and building roads.”
How would you respond to that statement from your colleague?
Larsen: I support building bridges. We don’t just have a roadway death problem in this country; we have an an obsolete bridge problem in this country — which is why the BIL put so much money into bridge improvement.
There are plenty of programs that we put in place to help replace old bridges in this country. I have one in my town that Harry Truman built, and it’s getting replaced right now; here’s one just down the street from that, which Herbert Hoover built and that needs replacement, too. So I’m not going to argue about replacing bridges for safety purposes.
But I will note that if you’re going to address highway and roadway deaths in this country, that means ensuring that people who are walking have a safe sidewalk to separate themselves from the roads and cars. [It also means] giving people who are biking a way to separate themselves from cars on the road. That is what you can do to reduce highway deaths.
Expanding lanes is not going to make the roads safer for people to use them. [When there are] 40,000 plus deaths on the roadways — and in part, those deaths are people who are walking or biking — it’s a national epidemic. Clearly, there is a federal interest in reducing highway and roadway deaths, and therefore a federal interest in ensuring that people have safe places to walk and safe places to bike.
Streetsblog: I’m glad to hear you underline that cycling and pedestrian infrastructure should be a federal priority. However, in one of his first memos out of the gate, Secretary Sean Duffy issued some guidance to U.S. DOT staff to prioritize projects that are “purely local in nature and unrelated to a proper federal interest.” I would just invite you to expand a little bit more on that: where do you think that point of view comes from, and how would you challenge it if you were in conversation with Secretary Duffy?
Larsen: Well, I think the I think the secretary has a different view than I do about the role the federal government plays in investing in transportation and an infrastructure.
There’s been a legitimate policy debate about what role the federal government should play, going back to Cumberland Road; I even like to joke that Lewis and Clark actually may be the most famous intermodal trip across America. If we go way back in the history of the United States to see where the federal government has played an important role in infrastructure, [we see] that role has changed because of the changing nature of transportation.
And what I would note to Secretary Duffy is that, again, if highway and roadway deaths are preventable, and it is a national epidemic, and we want those to drop, then there’s a direct federal interest in investing in the types of infrastructure that will decrease the situations where pedestrians and bikers can be injured or even killed.
I think it’s an easy argument to make. States are not going to all individually make the decision to get to Vision Zero, which is zero roadway and highway deaths. And so if we’re going to direct some dollars from the federal level to local and state levels, part of those dollars have to be directed towards reducing those deaths.
Think about it: the highest rate of pedestrian deaths is actually on tribal reservations. Not in the urban areas, not even in rural areas; rural areas are second, then the suburban areas, then urban areas.
So there’s a real inequity in the funding of safe roadways and safe streets; people who live in tribal reservations and people who live in rural areas are just more susceptible to being killed as a result of walking or biking than their neighbors. It’s just a totally inequitable situation we have in this country.
Streetsblog: To wind us down, what are you and other members of Congress who are supportive of these threatened projects going to do to protect them, besides the powerful statement that you issued last week?
Larsen: Well, I’m thankful that Transportation and Infrastructure Democrats are all on board about this, and I think that there will be some Republicans who are as well. It’s a bit of a myth that there aren’t Republicans who support [pedestrian and cyclist safety].
The memo that Secretary Duffy and the DOT put out is going to have as much impact on red states as it will on blue states. It will have as much of a negative impact on districts represented by Republicans as it will in districts represented by Democrats. The pain of this direction that Secretary wants to take will be felt equally, especially when you look at the projects around the country that could be impacted.
So as we move forward with the surface transportation bill, I think that there’s opportunity on the committee to find nonpartisan solutions to decreasing the number of pedestrian and bicycle deaths as a result of car and truck [crashes.]
