How ‘Anti-DEI’ Efforts Impact Sustainable Transportation Studies

In a piece for Streetsblog USA, Kea Wilson outlines the sustainable transportation research programs caught in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s fight against what they term DEI, projects that affect everything from road safety to transit equity and accessibility.

Advocates are still attempting to measure the full scope of the purge, but Nature recently reported that at the National Science Foundation alone — a $10-billion grant-making agency that is among the leading funders of science and engineering research in the country — ‘around 10,000 research grants have been flagged for review’ for possible violations of the executive orders, based in part on searches for broadly-used keywords that frequently arise in papers about the U.S. transportation system.

Nick Ferenchak, director of the US DOT-funded Center for Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety, emphasized the center’s focus on pedestrian safety and said none of their programs have been affected. While “there might be some revised language in the future, … we should continue [our existing projects] as normal for now.”

Wilson explains why equity efforts matter in transportation policy. For example, “People in wheelchairs have at least a 36 percent higher probability to be killed in traffic collisions than people without disabilities, though federally collected data on disability is already so poor that some experts suspect the ratio is far higher.” Making research on these topics itself dangerous will limit efforts to make roads safer for all users. Now, scientists in a variety of disciplines are in a holding pattern, unsure of the future of their projects.