Trump Administration Takes Aim at Transportation Research

The Trump administration has wasted little time launching a multipronged assault on scientific research across an array of fields. Mass layoffs have roiled the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institutes of Health, and the administration has sought to sharply reduce the federal contribution to universities’ “research overhead,” aiming a staggering blow at US higher education.

Transportation research typically occupies a comparatively nonpartisan and uncontroversial position, but the Trump administration’s early moves have sent shock waves through the field. Federally supported projects have been canceled, experts have been fired, and datasets have disappeared. TRB, a longtime bridge between academia and government, now faces existential questions about its future. The tumult has stunned many transportation veterans, leaving them worried about the US’s ability to ensure that its mobility network — from roads, bridges and rails to maritime and aviation infrastructure — grows more productive, affordable and safe in the years ahead.

“It’s going to have a decimating effect on transportation research — at every level,” said Sandi Rosenbloom, also a planning professor at the University of Texas and a previous chair of the TRB executive committee.

National Academies and TRB did not respond to multiple requests for comment, and as of Feb. 25 the organizations have not issued any public statements about the upheaval in federal transportation research.