What happened to that bike path? A deep dive into federal transportation funding

Cole Gabriel was riding his bicycle in pursuit of a Boy Scouts cycling merit badge when he was struck by a car in his Jacksonville, Florida, neighborhood. That was over a decade ago, but Gabriel, now 29, has been “hesitant to cycle since then.”

Jacksonville’s streets have not been historically conducive to cyclists. In 2023 alone, the city logged 304 crashes involving cyclists, leading to 267 injuries and five fatalities. The city is determined to fix the issue. One solution: The Emerald Trail, 30 miles of greenways, trails and parks, linking 14 neighborhoods to downtown and nearby rivers.

The trail focuses on safety, with a particular aim to minimize what transit folks call “multimodal conflicts”, such as collisions between vehicles and bicycles. It received significant support both locally and nationally. Until it didn’t. 

Under the Biden Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the project $147 million through the Neighborhood Access and Equity program, the largest federal grant in Jacksonville history. But Congress voted to cut all the NAE program’s unobligated funds this July as part of President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. 

The $3.1 billion cut killed funding to transit projects from Florida’s Emerald Trail to Boston’s restructuring of Interstate 90 as part of a federal review of transportation projects’ “leftist requirements.”

What are ‘leftist requirements’ in government grants?

On June 10, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s office issued a memo that celebrated clearing 529 of the 3,200 grants through the federal funding obligation process. The announcement stated that the office had “ripped out burdensome DEI, Green New Scam, and social justice” language, and linked to an example of a grant’s “removed leftist requirements”, pulled from a highway project in Colorado.

Removal of “leftist” language has been a driving motivation for the department under the Trump Administration. On Jan. 27, the Presidential Office of Management and Budget Acting Director Matthew Vaeth required federal agencies to “temporarily pause” funding to activities implicated by executive orders on “financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Two days later, and only one day after his Senate confirmation, Duffy issued a memo similarly requiring the USDOT identify and eliminate Biden-era programs or language that “reference or relate in any way to climate change, ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions, racial equity, gender identity, ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ goals, environmental justice, or the Justice 40 initiative.”

That requirement has a broad reach: During the Biden Administration, major federal transportation projects were required to consider possible social and climate impacts. While the centrality of those impacts varied widely by project, the language was commonplace. It left 3,200 grants caught in review. 

In a May 15 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told Duffy he thought it was “nuts” that cycling infrastructure had become a target. 

Bikes, he said, should be considered nonpartisan. Duffy replied that he “likes bikes too.”

Yet cycling projects remain high on the expected target list. During that hearing, Duffy expressed concern that under the Biden Administration, bike lanes were added to projects that didn’t need them. 

In some places, “we don’t need bike lanes,” he said.

Schatz countered that “everybody knows” the review process entailed having staff “control-F for certain words,” and that USDOT’s process had led to disruption of projects that “you and I, on a commonsense basis, would say, ‘yes, we should do it.’”

What happens after government grants are cut?

Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said she was “disappointed” by Congress’s cuts to the NAE program. While the Jacksonville project had not been specifically targeted, she said during a July 8 WJCT radio segment that “anything that had to do with equity” or had “those words in the title” had been cut. 

Gabriel, 13 years removed from his bicycle accident, was similarly disappointed. 

“You look at larger cities and you see all of these unique trails and pathways for people out walking and cycling,” said Gabriel. Separated and protected bike lanes remain “an absolute need” for Jacksonville, he said.

Jacksonville isn’t a typical target for leftism: Duval County, which consolidated with the city’s government in 1968, voted for Trump in 2024. Jacksonville’s congressmen, Reps. Aaron Bean and John Rutherford, both Republicans, lobbied for the Emerald Trail but ultimately voted for the bill that cut it.

Rutherford told the Jacksonville-based Florida Times-Union that while he supported the Emerald Trail, the policy bill was “so big you have to weigh the costs and benefits, and the benefits far outweigh the costs.”

More than $3 billion of the $3.2 billion NAE program remained unobligated this spring, none of which will now be provided. While Jacksonville’s project was locally historic, other cancelled grants were larger. Boston’s Allston Multimodal Project lost $327 million for realigning I-90 and a new commuter rail station. Milwaukee’s Sixth Street redevelopment lost $34 million, which a city official told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel will be “extraordinarily difficult to replace with levy dollars.”

The I-70 Floyd Hill Project: An Exception

The results of the USDOT review have been inconsistent. 

Duffy’s June 10 memo included an example of “leftist requirements” that linked to portions of the federal grant provided to the Colorado Department of Transportation for its Interstate 70 Floyd Hill project. According to CDOT, the Floyd Hill project overhauls eight miles of highway in the I-70 Mountain Corridor between the towns of Idaho Springs and Evergreen.

Prior to the project, Clear Creek County suffered “a tremendous amount of traffic backups on I-70 that clog the road and greatly impact Clear Creek County residents,” County Manager Brian Bosshardt told Straight Arrow News. “This is true during ski season, holidays and most weekends in the summer.”

Eastbound drivers often “exit and clog the roads in Georgetown and Idaho Springs,” Bosshardt said. The $905 million project, which includes $100 million in federal funding, “should help” alleviate traffic, Bosshardt told SAN.

While fixing clogged streets is not a partisan issue, the project’s grant applications match Duffy’s criteria for language removal. 

The Floyd Hill project’s climate strategy led with the construction of an additional express lane on I-70 near Idaho Springs. This, the grant stated, would ensure fewer drivers divert onto frontage roads, reducing overall vehicle miles traveled, thus lowering emissions. 

The climate plan also included replacing multiple bridges and adding a shuttle stop and electric vehicle chargers. Other environmental mitigation efforts include anti-rockfall fencing, wildlife crossings to decrease collisions with animals, a noise wall to offset highway noise and recycling excavated rock into construction material.

The grant contained the following assurances: the required environmental impact report had included racial equity; CDOT and the contractor had a DEI division at the time of the grant’s award; CDOT’s Environmental Justice and Equity branch would look for barriers that prevent impacted communities from participating in decisionmaking; and contracting opportunities for disadvantaged businesses – a standard practice in many USDOT programs since 1983 – would be ensured. 

The June 10 memo did not specify what had been removed or what it intended to remove. 

Despite being cited as the exemplary case of leftist language in the June 10 memo, the grant review process did not lead to any changes in the project’s scope, and the language highlighted in the memo remained in the document, according to an SAN review of the grant. However, its completion date has been pushed back nine months to December 2028, and CDOT allocated additional funds to the project.

What happens when cuts target existing projects?

It’s not unusual for incoming administrations to change grant requirements. But federal policy changes have historically targeted future transportation projects rather than existing ones, in large part because the constitutional limits of the executive branch’s control of grant programs are unclear. Congressional power to compel spending has long been protected in the courts, though recent Supreme Court cases have enhanced the power of the executive branch to make cuts.

Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the USDOT suspended the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program, a $5 billion investment in a network of electric vehicle chargers to help promote EV adoption. Sixteen states sued, arguing the executive branch did not have the constitutional authority to cancel grants allocated by Congress, which decides the federal budget.

In a June ruling, Judge Tana Lin of the U.S. District Court in Seattle agreed with the states, writing, “when the Executive Branch treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch, and when an administrative agency acts contrary to law, it is the Court’s responsibility to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power.”

In a statement to Newsweek, a USDOT spokesperson said, “Another day, another liberal judicial activist making nonsensical rulings from the bench because they hate President Trump.” 

The Department of Justice declined to appeal in early July, opening the way for the grants to be restored.

Schatz expressed concern in May that even if inadvertent, the USDOT could run into an impoundment issue with unobligated funds. If the USDOT review process leaves congressionally allocated funding unspent too long, the freeze becomes a potential constitutional challenge to Congress. 

Trump’s impoundment of funds destined for Ukraine featured heavily in his first impeachment case. Duffy said during his May hearing that he was working to elevate potentially impacted grant reviews with impoundment timelines.

What does the future hold for Jacksonville’s Emerald Trail?

As of July, 1,900 transportation grants have cleared the review process. Duffy expected the rest to be completed by the fall, leaving 1,300 grants currently unobligated.

Groundwork Jacksonville, the nonprofit charged by the city with the development of the Emerald Trail, continues to look for ways to move the project forward. The organization is funding construction on portions of the trail using money from a local gas tax. Mayor Deegan has said she intends to reapply for federal funds.

That sentiment was also expressed by Rep. Rutherford and Rep. Bean, who have indicated their support for future grant applications. Rutherford told the Florida Times-Union that he believed economic development grants would allow the trail to “go after smaller bites of the apple over multiple cycles.” 

Rutherford also said it may not be feasible to attain funding through the USDOT, citing Duffy’s review of all shared-use paths for bicycling. Instead, Rutherford argued, a grant could highlight how the Emerald Trail’s flood-control work has removed barriers to economic growth, a more conservative angle.

But the Emerald Trail continues to have broad appeal in the city. Gabriel saw the reaffirmation of the project’s future as a positive step. 

“I’m excited about boosting recreation in our city,” he said. “I’m certainly thrilled we’re not giving up.”