DOT Directive Raises More Questions Than It Answers

By Sean Jeans-Gail | VP of Gov’t Affairs + Policy

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As one of his first official actions, recently confirmed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy issued a “Department of Transportation (DOT) Order” to administrative offices last week, calling for a complete overhaul of the USDOT’s economic analysis of transportation policies, programs, and activities. Unfortunately, the order contains many provisions that are so broad as to leave the transportation industry confused as to the true scope of the order. Additionally, the order includes several caveats that USDOT officers comply with existing statutes and avoid adding unnecessary delays, directives seemingly in contradiction with the main thrust of the Secretary's order.

Focus of Order Unclear

Secretary Duffy's order focuses on denying that the “the social cost of carbon” is a valid metric for evaluating projects, while centering “benefits for families and communities”. Putting a renewed emphasis on families and communities is a laudable goal, and Rail Passengers can certainly think of ways that USDOT policies could be better tailored to support these objectives. To name only a few of the metrics we would support:

• Health costs of car pollution: researchers have found that “children who live within a block of major roads are one and a half times more likely to report asthma or wheezing than those living four or more blocks away.”
• Cost of motor vehicle deaths: NHTSA projects that an estimated 40,990 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, while the Governor’s Highway Safety Association estimates that drivers struck and killed 7,318 people walking over that same period.
• Cost to communities severed by super-long freight trains: ProPublica released shocking footage in 2023 of children in Indiana having to scramble under stationary trains at blocked railroad crossings just to get to school, a problem that has only gotten worse in the intervening years.
• Benefits of Amtrak service to small and rural communities: Rail Passengers Association’s modeling suggests that Amtrak’s interconnected services in the Northeast Corridor, the long-distance National Network and the dozens of State-supported Amtrak routes together return between $7 billion and $8 billion each year to our Nation’s GDP, much of which flows to rural communities with few transportation alternatives.

These are all potential costs and benefits the USDOT could consider, and we would be eager to work with them to advance passenger rail and transit projects that address these problems to create a better transportation network for America’s families.

So far, however, the provision that has garnered the most media attention has been a line directing USDOT administrators to preference projects to communities with “marriage and birth rates higher than the national average, (including in administering the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program)”. It is unclear how this provision would impact grant selections.

Key Caveats Suggest Limited Scope

It’s important to note that the orders contain language that these directives shall be carried out “to the extent practicable, relevant, appropriate, and consistent with the law”. This suggests that the USDOT’s General Counsel was given the opportunity to review the order to ensure it complies with existing statutes, and that the Trump Administration is learning from early stumbles with Executive Orders that were rushed out the door.

Of course, Rail Passengers understands that Secretary Duffy and the USDOT will have discretion in administering grants. This is the nature of “discretionary grants”, and anyone who thinks professional DOT staff ought to act as a horde of grant application-sorting robots is fooling themselves.

However, Congress was clear in establishing the metrics for evaluating grant applications in the IIJA. To the extent that the USDOT is complying with the law—which the order takes care to say it will—these new directives would presumably serve as nothing more than a tiebreaker for otherwise equally ranked applications.

Secretary Duffy also seems unsure whether he wants a complete overhaul of USDOT programs or the speedy advancement of infrastructure projects. The order calls on USDOT administrative offices to “update and revise all NOFOs, grant agreements, loan agreements, and other program documents” and review “existing grant agreements, loan agreements, and contracts”. However, Secretary Duffy also says his order “should be implemented in a simple, transparent manner that avoids adding unnecessary procedural or regulatory steps or causing undue delay.” There is an obvious contradiction between these two directives, and we can only speculate as to which will win out.

In closing, it’s worth highlighting the following passage from Rail Passengers’ President and CEO Jim Mathews’ letter to President Trump in the wake of his first executive order freezing grant disbursements:

“These rail projects have been thoroughly vetted by career Department of Transportation staff and enjoy broad support from Members of Congress from both parties.

“In tracking the implementation of the IIJA, Rail Passengers has identified more than $28.6 billion in discretionary intercity passenger rail grants issued by the USDOT across 158 passenger rail projects. These grants are located in almost every state in the nation, from Florida to Alaska. They will benefit millions of Americans, in big cities and small towns, urban neighborhoods and rural communities, Red States and Blue.

“The vast majority of the rail projects in question required state and local governments to provide local funding matches to secure these grants. Delaying disbursements will not only endanger tens of thousands of construction jobs, it will introduce costly delays, which will likely be borne by local governments.”