The War on the War on Cars with Ted Mann

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Welcome to the War on Cars.

I'm Sarah Goodyear with me in the studio is my co-host Doug Gordon.

Hello.

It's good to see you again.

You've been away.

Yeah.

I was in London, Poland and Barcelona for a conference in Poland and book ended the trip.

So hard to come back to New York.

I was in Brooklyn, which I love, but I'm a little envious.

It's the Barcelona of New York.

There we go.

Yeah.

Both start with B.

That's right.

Today, we are going to be talking about something a little closer to home.

The Trump administration's full-on financial assault on all of the modes of transportation

that we hold dear here at the War on Cars, biking, walking, public transit, basically

it's all under attack.

It is the War on the War on Cars, you might say.

We covered some of this in our project 2025 episode, but I don't believe we thought it

would be quite as bad as quickly as we talked about back then.

I think that is the 2025 mantra.

We didn't think it was going to be this bad this quickly 2025.

Anyway, before we get into that, we have a guest here who's going to be helping

us understand what we are up against, but we've got to get a little business

out of the way.

First of all, you can pre-order our new book, Life After Cars, freeing ourselves from the

tyranny of the automobile wherever books are sold.

It's coming out on October 21st, but if you pre-order the book before then, you will

get some really fun bonuses that we've just worked out with our publisher.

It's really cool.

Everybody who pre-orders, you'll get access to a live virtual Q&A with Sarah and with

me and a special guest to be announced.

You will also get a little toolkit poster of ways to imagine life after cars or win the

war on cars.

Suitable for framing.

We're told.

We haven't seen it yet.

We're still designing it.

Patreon supporters who pre-order get even more fun stuff, which includes signed book

plates, an exclusive downloadable street sign artwork designed by a listener, fantastic,

and this is the super fun part, personalized video responses from me and Doug to your questions.

I'm really excited about this one.

Yes.

We've ever thought, why aren't Sarah and Doug on cameo, for example?

Now it's happening.

I know.

I think people often ask themselves that question.

Yes.

You can find out more about how all of that works at lifeaftercars.com.

You'll also find links there to all our upcoming tour dates.

More events are being added all the time.

It's pretty exciting.

Yes.

And remember, you can always find and support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash the

war on cars pod.

So thanks.

Let's get to our guest who is joining us remotely from Washington, D.C., Ted Mann.

He's going to explain what is going on with federal transportation funding for active

transportation projects.

Ted is a reporter at Bloomberg News who has been covering this story as it has been evolving.

He is also the co-author of Lights Out, Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric.

Ted Mann, welcome to the war on cars.

Hello.

Glad to be here.

Thanks for being here.

So thrilled to have you because for transportation nerds in the New York metropolitan area, you're

kind of a big deal.

We all remember you as the person who broke the Bridgegate story for the Wall Street

Journal back in 2013.

Just quickly, that was the scandal that emerged when some traffic lanes were closed

on the approach to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey in what appeared

to be an act of retribution against the mayor of that city for not supporting then Governor

Chris Christie's bid for reelection.

And those closures caused a massive traffic jam, and the fallout became a national political

story.

The famous phrase, time for some traffic in Fort Lee, right?

That came from that.

That scandal seems almost quaint today.

It totally does.

The notion that intentionally messing with transportation in the greater New York

city area, the notion that that is scandalous is quaint and old fashioned.

And it had a really big impact on the Republican primary in 2016 for the presidential election,

widely considered, I think, to be one of the things that kind of made Chris Christie

much less competitive than people thought he was going to be.

The scandal blew up at a really inopportune time for Christie because that was right

when he was expecting to pivot from a blowout reelection victory into starting the fundraising

for his presidential campaign.

And instead, they were busy mopping up a scandal for months, and it really held him back from

what would have been the outset of the bid for the nomination.

Right.

And here we are today.

So on Earth, too, President Chris Christie is in his, you know.

It's like the butterfly effect, but with a traffic cone by exit ramp to the George

Washington Bridge.

Exactly.

But Ted, so you are an expert of sorts in political wheeling and dealing to do with transportation.

And that's really what you've written about in this article that was all over my social

media feeds the other day.

And it has the headline, Trump cancels trail bike lane grants deemed hostile to cars.

Can you tell us what's going on with this story?

The folks at the Trump administration, D.O.T., including Sean Duffy, are going through grants

from discretionary programs that have previously been awarded to cities and counties all over

the country.

There's one known as RAISE, which used to be called Infra, which used to be called

Tiger, but essentially it's a pool of discretionary money that cities and towns can apply

to for things like street safety programs, bike lanes, pedestrian trails, traffic calming.

These have been pretty noncontroversial grants and programs, including the money that went

out during Trump's first administration.

There's a whole other program called Safe Streets for All.

And this time around, they're going back through grants that have already been awarded

and they're clawing them back from the recipients.

And in various forms, at least according to the letters that we've seen, they're

saying this does not prioritize automobile travel and single drivers moving around in

cars through this city and therefore it's not in keeping with our policies.

So it really is the war on the war on cars.

It's probably worth pointing out that RAISE stands for Rebuilding American Infrastructure

with Sustainability and Equity.

And so perhaps those two words, sustainability and equity, got flagged in some sort of

AI doge related purge.

Not that they wouldn't have gone after these things anyway, but it's certainly part of it.

I think that's right.

We're seeing all over the place, including the cuts that Russ Boat announced yesterday

on funding for Gateway and for the Second Avenue subway, where they're sort of applying

the anti-equity consideration frame.

But then also there've been from the outset, from Duffy, there have been indications

that they don't like bike stuff.

It was in one of the early memos, there was a reference to bicycle infrastructure

or something that they were, this is my paraphrase, but view skeptically.

So yeah, it's tough to know exactly where they're coming from other than the language

in the letters where in a couple of these instances, they've used that phrase,

this is hostile to the automobiles, almost like it's hurting the car's feelings.

I have to stop on that, which is it's not saying these grants

prevent more people from moving through the street.

These grants are not good for people.

It's really that they're not good for cars.

It's almost anthropomorphizing the vehicle.

There was one of the letters, I think it is one of the ones sent to Boston.

Boston had a couple of grants pulled back that essentially said,

like, we're looking at your project and it's making it less auto-centric,

which is exactly what would have been put in an application

under the previous administration.

And instead, that was grounds for revocation of the money.

Before we move on too far, because we should talk about each of these projects,

like you mentioned the Gateway and Second Avenue stuff,

that literally just broke yesterday as we're recording this.

And one of the things that they said was that the DBE

or Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program was the problem,

which could you explain what that is for our listeners?

Sure. First of all, it's a law passed by Congress

that federal money is splitting DOT grants when they go out to recipients.

So those would be states, state entities like the MTA

or the Gateway Commission or in some cases counties.

There are supposed to be set-asides when public money is going to pay for big projects

that are intended to steer some of the business to firms

that are from historically disadvantaged demographics.

So in other words, minority-owned contracting firms,

women-owned contracting firms.

This is long-standing federal policy.

It's in the rules if there's still, at least I haven't checked this morning,

but there's a webpage on the DOT's website all about this program

because it's something you've got to abide by

if you take their money to build something.

And as of two nights ago, DOT has turned this on its head.

They're referring to a couple of recent court decisions

to say that all of that is done constitutional

and therefore any recipient of a grant

who took into account historically disadvantaged communities

when they were deciding who would get the contracts under that grant

has now violated the Constitution

and those monies can be frozen or pulled back.

Some of this is in the view of the MTA and the state officials.

They see this as sophistry, right?

Because really what's at stake here is the administration

wants to fight with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

And right now, what's useful to them

is being able to hold back some of this money.

And so I think there is this question of how much is this speaking of Bridgegate?

How much of this is just the weaponization of the DOT

as part of this political gamesmanship that's going on

and how much of it is something that they're really going to be serious about going forward.

So if the issue is we're holding back a $300 million reimbursement

until the government reopens and then MTA will get its money,

that's a problem, but it's not as big of a problem

if what they're actually saying is all $18 billion of the money

for these two projects are now back up in the air

because we've decided that the entire way that DOT has administered grants

like this for many years, decades, is no longer valid.

That creates a whole other problem.

And we should probably just explain that the Gateway Project

is the tunnel connecting New Jersey with Manhattan.

Amtrak goes under there.

New Jersey Transit goes under there.

These are tunnels that are more than a century old

and have been on the verge of collapse for decades at this point.

Yeah, that's right.

And they're a pain point for New York.

And just as they did in the first Trump administration,

the DOT is sort of using that, squeezing on this project

because they know that it's an essential project for New York City

and that gives you leverage overshoot.

Chris Christie way back, I think in like 2010,

was using this project as leverage in his political rise

to not the highest point where he thought he was going to go.

But I want to circle back because, yes, some of this

is targeted at Democrat, quote unquote, states and regions.

But the rescission of these biking and walking grants

is actually affecting lots and lots of places

that are red states, quote unquote.

And you give the example of a project in Fairfield, Alabama,

for instance.

Can you tell us a little bit about what's happening there?

Sure.

If Fairfield is, you know, little city in Alabama,

they're a good example of a community

where there's no other option.

The city clerk when we called said, yeah,

like we don't get the grant, the whole thing doesn't happen.

This isn't San Diego, which is now scrambling

to find the money somewhere else.

And they probably will be able to

because it's a big economy.

There are lots of little communities

that applied for this money because they want a little bit

of what is being built all over the country for themselves,

you know, a safe place to ride your bike.

A convenient way to get across town

that you could do on foot instead of having to get in a car.

And I think that sort of, as you said,

there is this sense that all of these projects,

all of this non-vehicular infrastructure

is essentially liberally coded.

This is for blue cities.

This is for yuppies and Patagonia, fleeces.

And that's just not at all in keeping

with what's actually happening out in the country

People of all political stripes like to be able to ride a bike

and not get hit by a car.

It just is true.

We had a quote in the story from Kevin Mills

in the Rails Trails group basically saying like,

there's this idea that this is only

for one part of the country,

but really the appetite at the local level is very broad

and it's not subject to some partisan divide

or even like a MAGA, anti-MAGA divide.

And so I think that's one of the most interesting pieces

about going after this entire mode

or sort of every mode that isn't the car

is that you're gonna hit a lot of places

where there's actually tremendous public support

for just making it a little bit safer to cross the street.

We'll be right back after this break.

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Okay, we're back.

Could we maybe go through some of those projects?

We mentioned Boston, you mentioned specifically

this case in Alabama, but like what is the Boston project?

Albuquerque, San Diego,

what are these projects that are being clawed back?

One of the projects in Boston is basically

just a road safety overhaul of the neighborhood

of Matapan Square.

And the Albuquerque plan is the continuation

that they're nearing the end of this long-term effort

to do a bike trail going all through the city

and they're at this downtown piece

that required a chunk of federal money

to be able to complete the circuit.

There's a similar project in Illinois

where going back to the 1990s is when they started

planning a bicycle trail, a mixed use trail,

pedestrian and bicycle trail

that would go all the way across this county in Illinois

from one county line to the other.

And it's a place where you have railroads,

I believe the railroads are on the northern edge

and there's highway on the southern edge.

And so this is really providing a transportation alternative

that didn't exist in this county

and that they're almost at the point of finishing,

finally, but now it's been interrupted

by the cessation of that grant.

You know, this reminds me of back in February

we had Beth Osborn,

the executive director of transportation for America on

and she was talking about

the Heritage Foundation Project 2025

saying, you know, we're gonna come after transit,

we're coming after transit.

And she was pointing out

that if you look at the list of transit agencies

and there are about a thousand agencies on that list,

what she told us was they're overwhelmingly

in smaller and rural communities.

And the people who are doing this are,

I think sometimes don't even realize that

they can be sort of shocked.

She says, when you show them the list,

they're like, oh wait, those are the communities

that allegedly I'm supposed to be

in favor of these small rural communities

that are in what MAGA people

would call the real America.

But transit has become so left-coded as you say

and biking as well

that that just all seems to go out the window.

And it's really, it doesn't seem like

there's any kind of legitimate policy rationale here.

It's really an ideological stance.

I think that's right.

Or certainly they haven't given us a policy rationale.

I was just looking at one of the letters

that flew in over the transom.

This one was sent to,

I believe this is the state of Delaware,

but in one of their rejections,

they just say the project runs counter to DOT's priority

of focusing the multimodal grant programs

primarily on projects that promote vehicular travel.

Know why, why we're pivoting away.

And I do think it's true

that it is seeming like an ideological project

and it doesn't exactly match up with the politics.

Again, Kevin Mills' example was Florida,

which has a really aggressive trail construction program

ongoing.

That is now a ruby red state, obviously.

Rhonda Santis is the governor,

but there's a good network of trails

and they're expanding it and building it.

So it's not like there is something

that is essentially partisan here.

It's just been sucked into the broader

sort of polarization project

that is sweeping over everything.

I'm only laughing because, you know,

they're basically saying,

look, we're taking all the multimodal grants

and we're focusing it on one mode.

Like that's, right?

Right, right.

Yeah.

Your multimodal is too multi.

Right, yes.

And also they talk about vehicular traffic

apparently unaware of the definition

of the word vehicular,

which is it's a vehicle can be many different things,

including a bicycle or a bus.

Well, bikes are only vehicles

when you want cyclists to follow the rules of the road.

They're not vehicles

when they're entitled to space on the road.

That's different.

That's when they're toys.

Yes, that's when they're toys.

You know, I think one of the interesting things

that I have noticed in reading your reporting

and other stuff about this terrible news,

they're talking about this being hostile to cars

and that's why they're pulling some of this stuff back,

but they're pulling stuff back

that doesn't actually take space from cars.

If we were talking about Sean Duffy saying,

hey, your project repurposes travel lanes away from cars

and gives it two bikes

or it narrows crossings for pedestrians

and that requires the removal of dozens

of parking spaces.

So, hey, we're gonna take your funding

and that all has to be parking and car travel lanes.

I could sort of get my head around, you know,

sitting in the shoes of a Republican at the US DOT,

but we're talking in some cases,

like you just said about off-street trails

that do not take space from motor vehicles whatsoever.

And I think that speaks to the ideological piece of this.

Like anything that seems to threaten

the primacy of cars,

even if it's your ability to just move, as you said,

from one side of town to the other

in a completely car-free space

that wouldn't otherwise be for cars,

that's on the chopping block too.

Yeah, that's right.

And so some of these, they are reducing a lane

or they're striping a bike lane in part of a space,

which is only signaled for cars right now.

But in others, as you say, yeah,

these are totally off-street.

This is just improving trail networks.

Then there are other examples

and this is in the Clawback,

in particular some of the Safe Streets

for all program grants.

You can see that the objection is actually just,

this might slow down the cars that are moving there now.

One of the rejection letters to Boston says,

your project includes several elements

that impede vehicle capacity and speed.

Like literally that's the point

of the Safe Streets for all grant.

Right, we want drivers to go a little slower

so they don't hit people or when they do,

people are not killed.

Right, to go the speed limit

so that you don't kill somebody.

But yeah, so that's the case.

In some of these projects,

they are rejecting something

that would have reallocated lane space to a bicycle.

But in other cases,

they're not even taking any physical space away

from the cars.

It's just trying to create space for other modes

and also to make the cars go the speed

that the city wants.

The specific project I was thinking of

that you wrote about was the Route 66 bike trail

in McLean County in Illinois.

That was basically following the path of Route 66

and just allowing cyclists some space

that would not have taken space from drivers.

Right, and that's the one that they've been working on

for decades, slowly piecing it together

just to try to create this alternative.

Again, not at all impeding anyone

from driving across the county in a car

but giving you another way to do it,

which is actually safe.

And that was one of the ones

where when we called the local government,

they were saying, the sponsors are not giving up

by and large, at least the ones that we talked to.

There are some who, as in the Alabama example,

there's just not an alternative.

There's no money in that city's budget

to do this without the federal help.

And in other cases like McLean,

what they're trying to do is scrounge

anywhere else they can find.

And I think they've already applied

for an Illinois State DOT grant.

So they will be looking for alternatives

but it is completely scrambled in many cases

these efforts that are years in the making

to build this stuff.

One of the things

that the Department of Transportation

said to McLean County was that

they were canceling this

because they needed to ensure

that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently

in ways that maximally benefit the American people

and improve, and this is the important part,

improve their quality of life.

And it's like, what improves your quality of life more

than being able to just hop on a bicycle

or walk across the street?

It's just maddening

that the only definition of quality of life

is your ability to get in an expensive car,

fuel it up with expensive gas

and sit in traffic and go.

And pollute the air of your community

and make your neighbors less safe

and make yourself less healthy.

It's really chilling actually.

And I guess trying to find some hope in this,

you're talking about ways

that communities and municipalities

can try to fight back against this.

What are the mechanisms that states

and cities and towns and counties have

to try to continue these projects?

I'm sure it's case by case,

but what are some of the levers available?

In some cases, it's going to be simply finding the money

at other levels of government that are not hostile

to this kind of infrastructure being built.

So if there's a state DOT that can give you a grant

that can sort of patch together the financing plan,

that way that will be one option.

I'm sure there will be attempts to do fundraising

from the private sector and from foundations

where the loss here can be cobbled together.

There's going to be self-help in some cases.

I think in a lot of cases, there's going to be delay.

You're going to have to postpone stuff

that might otherwise have been in construction,

probably not this year, but in the spring.

It's also the case that going back to January 20th

when this administration came in,

they had hit, they'd started hitting pause

on all sorts of this stuff,

including some of these grants,

some of these recipients had already received a letter

saying, by the way, we're reviewing these seven awards

that you received over the last two years or whatever.

And so in some cases, I'm thinking of Albuquerque here

and the official that we talked to there,

that grant, there was no fully funded grant agreement

because it was being reviewed,

whatever that meant by the DOT.

So everything has just been frozen.

And you can't, without the grant agreement,

you can't start spending money.

You can't start working on the thing.

So the silver lining of this getting clawed back

from Albuquerque is what they told us was,

okay, now we can go get the money somewhere else

and get back to work.

They've just been sitting there for nine months

waiting for something to happen.

So there will be a little of that too.

And I think that some of this,

assuming that the administration doesn't suddenly change,

it's posture here.

Some of this stuff will be built by states

and cities and counties and other entities

without the federal government's help

until there's an administration in power

that isn't opposed to this stuff ideologically.

But isn't there also cases where if a city or a county

has entered into contracts and contractors are working

and those contractors need to be paid,

they've done the work,

can't entities find themselves

in a pretty scary legal situation

where they're not able to pay a contractor's bill

and who's got the legal liability for that?

Oh yeah, certainly.

This is where we've all in the past few months

had to learn a lot about the difference

between obligated and unobligated funds.

I think at least according to the people

we've been talking to,

the administration is on firmer ground

to pull back some of these awards.

Whereas you've essentially one,

you've put in your application,

you've been awarded a grant,

but it's not been obligated yet.

For those that are not obligated yet,

it's gonna be a lot easier for Duffy

to just pull the awards back.

For those that are,

or where there is, as you're saying,

work underway and invoices to be paid,

do you need to look at that response we got from Boston,

which seemed to be essentially saying

we're reserving our right?

I think there will be legal action

if they go through with some of this stuff.

This is gonna upend everything.

Also because if I am one of those contractors,

I own a concrete company or something

and in the future I get some contract

on the government to build a bike lane or a trail,

I'm gonna want that money up front.

I'm not gonna basically sit there and say,

I'll trust the federal government

to reimburse the state or the city,

but I'll do the work in the meantime.

Yeah, I mean, are you gonna bid

if there's an RFP for a bike lane somewhere

and it's counties saying we have a federal grant

to pay for part of it?

Like are you gonna bid watching this?

I don't know.

Or a gateway tunnel project in the billions of dollars,

not a bike lane in the millions of dollars.

One of the biggest factors all over the world

in deciding whether to put investments

into infrastructure is political risk.

And we are in an environment of tremendous political risk.

Yeah, and the fact that the cost of raw materials

is also incredibly volatile

because of the on again off again tariff situation

and that the cost of labor

is also going to probably be changing in unpredictable ways

because the construction industry

is having a huge part of its labor force.

Rounded up and deported.

And deported and put into concentration camps, essentially.

So the uncertainty that you're talking about

in a nation where, you know,

when I started covering these issues 20 years ago,

it was all about, oh, crumbling infrastructure,

and kind of trying to get ahead of the crumble

and try to build some infrastructure

for the new century that's now already a quarter over.

And it seems like it's just going to slow that down again.

Yeah, that's right.

And just to your cost over and point,

I don't have the number in front of me,

but I think it was yesterday at the day before

the Brightline West, my colleague, Martin Braun,

wrote about how their cost estimate for that project

has just soared and their blaming material costs.

That's the LA to Vegas train, yes.

The almost LA to the almost Vegas train.

This is probably the point of any episode

where we would say, what's the hope?

What should people do?

It can feel a little difficult

to really even pose that question

because I don't know what the answer is.

I mean, I guess just off the top of my head,

I think if you are in a red state,

if you are in Florida and you enjoy cycling

on that lovely trail system that they're building

in Texas, in Florida elsewhere,

you call your Congress people

and say, what's up with this project?

Like my health and safety depend on it.

If you're a contractor, same thing.

I actually was wondering, Ted,

I had heard from someone I spoke to

who is from Florida, who is somewhat involved

at the governmental level in this stuff,

who said that actually being in Florida

might be your best bet

because you can make your supplication

directly to the administration

and because they favor the state of Florida,

you might be able to get some of this back again.

Are you hearing any of that?

That is a theme that we are reporting on

about how broadly the pain will be shared

of a lot of their fiscal policy.

The cuts, not just transportation cuts,

but this stuff and lots of other stuff.

And we don't really know yet to what extent

everyone, red state and blue state,

will see things like this happening,

projects being clawed back.

But certainly, if you look at the way

other things are going on in Washington these days,

it seems like there will be states and delegations

that have a better chance of getting their aid restored

or getting their favorite policy

looked kindly upon by the administration.

But that's something where we're just gonna have

to keep reporting on it and watching it

as this year and the next year unfold.

So if you want a good bike trail in your state,

donate a gold-plated bicycle to hang in the new ballroom

that they're constructing next to the White House, I guess.

Which, as someone pointed out to me the other day,

is going to be disrupting traffic

on the 15th Street bike lane

for like the next four years or something.

Our friend, Alyssa Walker, pointed out

that everywhere Trump goes, by the way,

like public transit increases

because he just screws up traffic for everybody else.

So maybe we just need to send Trump

to every part of the country

and we can get people on board

with using public transit and biking.

Or I'm imagining that the mode that will be favored

for transport to the ballroom

will be actually horse and carriage,

a la sort of British royalty,

like the beautiful gold encrusted carriages

with plumed horses.

And whale oil lanterns.

Exactly, for you at the portico of the ballroom.

Right, like how far back do we wanna turn the clock,

actually, is really the question we're talking about here.

I do wish we could end on a more hopeful note.

I do think it's important to lay out the stakes

and your reporting, Ted, has been really valuable

in terms of laying out exactly what these projects are.

And I think to the point of your piece

that this is being felt in red states

and deep red states, like he said,

like Florida, as well as liberal enclaves

like the Northeast is an important point to make here.

So we'll stay on top of it.

Hopefully have you back with better news, I guess.

I would love that.

Yeah, and I think for me, the hopeful part

is that there are reporters like Ted

who are reporting on this as a systemic threat

to the progress that we have been making in this country.

And so, yeah, Ted, keep it up.

We really need what you're doing.

We need good reporting, so thanks.

Well, thank you so much.

Keep up the good fight.

That's it for this episode of The War on Cars.

Another thanks to Ted Mann for joining us here.

You can find Ted's reporting at Bloomberg News.

We'll put a link in the show notes.

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