President Trump’s war on equity continues.
Late on Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced $54 million in cuts to seven elite universities that were researching how to make our sprawling transportation system more equitable — or in the words of Secretary Sean Duffy undertaking “a radical DEI and green agenda.”
Radical? Hardly. The eliminated programs include, among other things, research into how to ensure that decarbonization is equitable, how to support low-income workers who live in transit deserts, how car dependency creates inequities, and how pollution from the transportation system disproportionately affects low-income communities.
How radical can such grants to “University Transportation Centers” be, given that information about the program, still posted on the U.S. DOT website (for now), said the research would “help the next generation of transportation professionals make our roads, bridges, rail, shipping, and airspace safer, more innovative, and more efficient.”
Two years later, here’s what Duffy had to say about the program:
“The previous administration turned the Department of Transportation into the Department of Woke,” he said in a statement. “The American people have zero interest in millions of their tax dollars funding research on the intersection of gender non-conforming people and infrastructure inequality or whether road improvement projects are racist. It’s time to inject a dose of reality back into our higher education system, and that starts with ending these wasteful and divisive grants.”
The definition of “divisive,” of course, depends on who is doing the dividing.
“City College of New York is evaluating this new announcement but remains deeply concerned about the potential impact of federal cuts,” said Jay Mwamba, a spokesperson for the school, one of several centers Streetsblog contacted late on Friday.
Here are the $54 million in grants that were killed out of the original $435 million university grants:
- National Center for Sustainable Transportation (at University of California, Davis): $12 million for “accelerating equitable decarbonization” research. The original grant was for $4 million per year over five years, so Duffy’s order kills the last three years. In the original announcement, UC Davis Professor Susan Handy pointed out the short-sightedness of Duffy’s cuts: “Finding a way to decarbonize transportation that does not exacerbate existing inequities is one of the most significant societal challenges we face,” she said, adding that the grant would help the center “focus on equity and justice and launch new initiatives on rural mobility, vehicle electrification, and sustainable freight.”
- Center for Social and Economic Mobility for People and Communities through Transportation (at City College of New York): Loses about $9 million for “equitable transportation for the disadvantaged workforce” research. Such grants to promote equitable commutes are hardly a new concept. The U.S. DOT has previously focused on disadvantaged communities, including a $5-million grant to red state Kentucky in 2023.
- Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center (at University of Southern California): Loses about $9 million for research on how “the transportation system creates and perpetuates inequities.” The center previously said the work was necessary because “advances in technology … bring a promise of transformative change that can reduce inequities and link previously isolated communities to opportunities. The objective of this research theme is to generate knowledge that will close access gaps and reduce inequities.”
- Connected Communities for Smart Mobility Toward Accessible and Resilient Transportation for Equitably Reducing Congestion (at New York University): Loses $6 million for research on “e-bikes to low-income travelers in transit deserts.” The so-called C2SMART is well-known in New York City for its role in the “Equitable Commute Project” which subsidizes electric bikes for low-income workers. The efficacy of such approaches for connecting workers to jobs without increasing car dependency is well documented.
- Mineta Consortium for Emerging, Efficient, and Safe Transportation (at San Jose State University): Loses $6 million for research on “how improvements to auto travel can benefit higher income, often white drivers, while depressing transit ridership potential and depriving it of revenues necessary to provide comprehensive services to lower income, often BIPOC people and research into using crowdsourcing and collaborative planning to address safety concerns of women and gender non-conforming people using public transportation.” (The Mineta Consortium is named after Norman Mineta, who ran the Department of Transportation in the last year of the Clinton administration and most of the Bush administration.)
- Center for Transit Oriented Communities (at University of New Orleans): Loses $6 million for “equitable transit-oriented communities [and] how neighborhood stabilization efforts support environmental justice” research. (Progress reports on the research are posted here.)
- Center for Smart Transportation (at Johns Hopkins University): Loses $6 million for research on “hyperlocal pollution exposure inequalities in New York City, promoting EV usage for low-income gig workers, long distance ride sharing [and] gentrification.” The center’s grant report might have attracted Duffy’s attention for several reasons: “Air pollution is disproportionately affecting racial minorities and economically disadvantaged populations.” Or maybe it was this: “This project fits well within the U.S. DOT strategic goals of climate and sustainability and equity, aiming to quantify the spatial heterogeneity of air pollution exposure disparity and how it is linked to street design for cities in the United States.”
Well, that was then. This is now:
