The Trump administration’s attempt to rip out a protected cycletrack in the nation’s capital has been temporarily delayed by a lawsuit. For everyone else, the USDOT is hoping to cut off those fights before they even start by cancelling billions for these safety projects before shovels ever hit the ground.
Since taking office, the Trump administration has cancelled or delayed billions in funding for safety, transit, and electrification projects across a list of targeted states. After an examination of thousands of awarded discretionary grants and federal obligation data, T4America has identified billions in projects that were announced as awarded but have not seemingly received “approval” or a grant agreement from USDOT and are likely the next projects at risk of cancellation. USDOT has already moved to cut over a dozen from this list. Is your community’s project next?
While this list may not be fully exhaustive or may have captured some grants that are obligated, we have identified what we believe to be over $3 billion for over 200 grants that may be at risk of cancellation for conflicting with Trump administration priorities– and that’s not even counting the billions in transit grants stuck in federal limbo:
Note: While in the process of creating this list, T&I Ranking Member Rick Larsen announced that USDOT unfroze over 120 transportation grants. These updates are accounted for in this list as best we can, but this only underscores the uncertainty and lack of transparency regarding the handling of competitive grants. USDOT and the Office of Management and Budget should release their list of “unapproved” grants and clear up the confusion.
Know of a local project held up by USDOT? Let us know here.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration’s National Park Service moved to remove a protected bike lane on federal land in Washington, DC that carries 4,000 people per day, has reduced all traffic crashes by 46 percent, and has made biking dramatically safer—all while decreasing overall travel times on the corridor. Trump officials have cited the potential increased traffic during cherry blossom season and upcoming America 250 celebrations—all despite the fact that a bike lane moves more people than a congested road. While the federal government has limited power over the District’s local streets and can only remove infrastructure on federal land, it is splitting a key connector between the city’s north and south.
The administration is also having a major impact on local infrastructure in other communities across the country as it continues to hold up billions of dollars in funding for safety, transit, and transportation electrification projects.
Grant reviews
Amidst a multimillion-dollar wave of cancellations for bicycle, pedestrian, and safety infrastructure projects in September 2025, USDOT Deputy Secretary Steven Bradbury outlined the status of many awarded federal competitive grants that the Trump administration inherited from the Biden administration. According to Bradbury, the Trump administration inherited a list of 3,269 grants that were awarded but had not yet been finalized and needed to pass through a new “approval” stage to move forward. This new federal approval stage comes with no official definition or certainty that projects will proceed as originally intended.
Despite this, the administration has repeatedly patted itself on the back for quickly following through with the new, unnecessary process it invented. In September, USDOT circulated a list of 2,998 “approved” projects out of the 3,269 awarded grant backlog. Nominally, approval suggests that projects are approved to proceed; in reality, grantees on this approval list have often had to change the scope of projects to ensure they still receive federal funds, whether that means switching from battery electric buses to hybrids that the administration prefers or eliminating safety improvements on streets that would better serve the needs of all users.
Even if a project is approved, there’s no guarantee it will move forward—already, an approved rail safety grant worth $66.4 million and a $10.7 million grant to a transit hub were cancelled late last year, likely in retaliation for the state’s disagreement with the administration on a presidential pardon, a wholly unrelated issue.
Nevertheless, with 3,269 grants at the outset and 2,998 of those “approved,” that leaves over 200 projects with funds stuck in limbo. This administration has been opaque about how it is handling these grants, but odds are they are in Russell Vought’s Office of Management and Budget, awaiting a final decision on whether or not to cancel them.
A review of reviews
USDOT has followed an internal policy for the review of competitive grants. In March 2025, an anonymous tipster shared a photo of an email of a new policy memo at USDOT, calling for a review of all competitive grants to identify any elements of “equity, climate change, environmental justice, green infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure.” Combined with a grant-focused Executive Order issued in August 2025, federal agencies have asserted more latitude in their power to cancel grants or compel grantees to make changes.
What happens after you trigger USDOT?
Once identified under the review memo, projects seem to have three options:
- Allowed to slide and continue as planned
- Modified to have offending elements removed
- Cancelled outright
Scenario one: Carry on as awarded
It’s not exactly clear what precisely allows a community to slide by DOT’s review system after being flagged for cancellation or changes, but a pattern is emerging. We’ve seen it happen multiple times: when a grantee is having trouble with USDOT, instead of raising a fuss, they contact their members of Congress, who then might be able to negotiate with the Secretary of Transportation directly. As one might guess, different members of Congress have varying levels of credibility with the administration. As one local city manager recognized while under USDOT review of their bike and trail project, having support from the party in the White House doesn’t hurt.
Scenario two: Modifications and safety second
Unexpected federally mandated modifications lead to delays, increase costs, and can fundamentally undermine a project’s ability to address the problems the community identified in the first place. Many communities are funding projects that prioritize safety by de-prioritizing speed, especially in places where vehicles and people are likely to share space. But local leaders (like these in the city of Detroit) are having those options taken away from them by bureaucrats far away in Washington, DC, even when the measures being removed are actively recognized by the federal government as proven safety countermeasures.
There is limited reporting on this issue, as grantees are understandably hesitant to stick their necks out against the federal government and potentially face retaliation.
Scenario three: Cancellation
As for examples of outright cancellations, there were plenty. In September, USDOT sent letters cancelling projects in places from San Diego to Alabama, for being “hostile to motor vehicles.” In December, a batch of cancellations targeting Colorado affected transit, road, electrification, and rail safety programs, rescinding over $100 million in funding. In February, officials from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and USDOT let reporters know about plans to specifically target hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation grants for cancellation on an explicitly partisan basis.
A secret fourth scenario: limbo
But the seemingly worst fate for grantees is the dreaded review limbo. Cities, towns, and communities trying to pursue important projects are effectively being ghosted by the federal government. Whether these delays are intentional or the result of the massive reduction in staff that took place in the first year of the Trump administration, even in T&I Chair Sam Graves’ district, grantees have seemingly been waiting for federal approval and reimbursement for over a year.
The state of Colorado has reportedly not yet received an official notice from the federal government for the February round of grant cancellations. For certain programs, it may not need to receive one at all. That’s because USDOT and the OMB can simply wait out grantees and let their funding expire. For certain types of federal funds, there is a limit to how long they are available to be obligated. While under an administration acting in good faith, this guards against waste for projects that don’t make progress; in this context, it places grantees in a bind where they can do all the work, receive no communication from USDOT, and then have their funds effectively evaporate. Beyond the simple cost of delay from inflation and permitting, this strategy leaves grantees in limbo about whether or not they can pursue their own priorities at all. Even more to the administration’s benefit, the confusion could be used to discourage litigation to “uncancel” grants.
The administration is particularly focused on delaying EV infrastructure deployment. There has seemingly been no movement on Charging and Fueling Infrastructure awards made in more recent fiscal years of the program, with grantees seemingly stuck in limbo since the administration explicitly targeted the program in its Unleashing American Energy Executive Order. Evaluating federal obligations made for the program, we identified 60 projects that were awarded $880 million, for which funding agreements or obligations cannot be tracked down. Even for projects with funding agreements, unobligated funds still remain stuck in limbo.
At risk: Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grants
We cannot state with certainty which of these projects is at risk or whether they’ll move forward. USDOT has not released an official public list indicating which of the apparently more than 3,000 awarded but unobligated grants it inherited from the previous administration are under review.
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