ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
It's no secret that America is a car country. Most U.S. households have access to a car, and almost 80% of Americans drive to work. In fact, fewer than 1% of workers use a bicycle to commute. Where the Biden administration helped fund hundreds of miles of bike lanes and trails across the U.S., under President Trump, the Department of Transportation has reversed course.
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SEAN DUFFY: At one point, we have to look at, what are the roads for? And how do we use our roads?
SCHMITZ: That's transportation secretary Sean Duffy speaking at an economic conference in Washington last year.
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DUFFY: And if we put bikes on roadways and then we get less traffic and we get congestion, it's a really bad experience for a lot of people.
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DUFFY: I do think you see more congestion when you add bike lanes and take away vehicle lanes. I think that's a problem.
SCHMITZ: The administration has slashed funding for new bike lanes and tried to remove existing ones from the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This all piqued the interest of NPR transportation correspondent Joel Rose because biking and bike lanes can be a window into the safety of America's roads.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: The data shows that just the presence of a bike lane can make cars slow down, and lower speeds are safer for everybody. I know. I drive a car. They don't always make drivers happy. I get it. But the evidence says that lower speeds are good for safety.
SCHMITZ: Then this summer came some quiet changes to road safety recommendations on the DOT's website, which Joel was the first to cover. So for today's Reporter's Notebook, I started by asking him what those changes are and why they matter.
ROSE: I guess the place to begin is the beginning of July. The Department of Transportation was announcing a round of grants, about $1.7 billion, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media vowing to end funding for what he called, quote, "DEI bike lanes."
SCHMITZ: Wait, wait a second. What does that mean?
ROSE: Yeah, he has not explained exactly what he meant by that. I think he's...
SCHMITZ: But he's sort of saying, like, bike lanes are woke? Is that kind of what the idea is?
ROSE: I think that's a fair takeaway. I mean, he's trying to draw a contrast with the Biden administration...
SCHMITZ: OK.
ROSE: ...Which had used, like, the same grant program to fund lots of bike lanes and recreational trails and had touted the equity benefits of those projects, including the bike lanes. So Sean Duffy's post says, in all caps, that's over.
I did not think about the post all that much at the time. I'm thinking, this is just a social media post, and it's not the first time that the Trump administration had shown hostility to bike lanes, but this post led in some directions that I was not expecting. The Department of Transportation quietly stripped some safety recommendations and safety tools that mention bikes or bike lanes off of federal websites - where, in some cases, they had been for, you know, many, many years - apparently because they were contradicting the Trump administration's preferred policy on bike lanes.
SCHMITZ: Interesting. So this is, like, a coordinated effort, almost like a war on bikes.
ROSE: That is how some people have described it. Yeah.
SCHMITZ: Wow. Why?
ROSE: The Trump administration would argue that bike lanes are basically a hindrance to cars, that they slow the flow of traffic and that bike lanes, in their words, contribute to congestion. I will note, they do not have any evidence that they have presented to back up the congestion point. They would probably argue that it's common sense. And at the same time, I think a big part of this seems to be messaging, a chance to score political points against their perceived enemies. I want to read a bit of this statement that I got from the Department of Transportation 'cause it...
SCHMITZ: Yeah, please.
ROSE: It's pretty striking. Quote, "this is a common-sense approach despite the left's belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony..."
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
ROSE: ..."Climate agenda."
SCHMITZ: To eat crickets?
ROSE: To eat crickets.
SCHMITZ: Wait, wait a second.
ROSE: Yeah. No, it got all the way to crickets.
SCHMITZ: (Laughter).
ROSE: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: OK.
ROSE: So I don't think that all the career staff at DOT are thinking like that, but that is the political message.
SCHMITZ: So if this war on bikes is ongoing - and I mean, it sounds like it's happening - what about cities and towns that have established bike infrastructure already? Will this lead to these cities and towns taking bike lanes away? Or will it just make it harder to get bike lanes installed in the first place?
ROSE: Yeah. That's a good question. I think bike lanes are, by and large, local decisions - right? - you know, state or even - you know, or city level. I think part of the concern that safety advocates have about what's going on with the Trump administration is that they have removed some pretty influential safety recommendations - a list of what are called Proven Safety Countermeasures - from the Federal Highway Administration's website. And I apologize for getting into the nitty-gritty. I will confess, I had no idea what a Proven Safety Countermeasure was either before I did this story. But basically, these are, like, best practices that the state and local authorities can use to make their roads safer. Five of those were...
SCHMITZ: So those - wait, safer for bicyclists, right?
ROSE: Safer for everybody.
SCHMITZ: Safer for everyone. OK.
ROSE: This is a list of just best practices for how to design your road in your town.
SCHMITZ: Got it.
ROSE: But the administration removed five things from this list, including bike lanes, including speed cameras, you know, a couple of other things that are intended to get cars to slow down. There was no public explanation. They just kind of quietly took them away after Secretary Duffy's tweet about bike lanes.
SCHMITZ: So you've spoken to plenty of people within the DOT and elsewhere about a lot of the moves that they're making. You know, what stood out to you about what they told you?
ROSE: Yeah, I've talked to some former DOT officials, also a source inside the Department of Transportation currently who is not happy about these changes and kind of reached out to us after they saw our first story with more details about what was going on behind the scenes. I mean, I guess nobody is particularly surprised that the policy has changed from administration to administration or that the Trump administration wants to cut funding for bike lanes. Like, I think that was sort of expected. But this goes beyond funding, what we're talking about, right? The Transportation Department is removing evidence-based safety measures and tools from these websites, and advocates are troubled. They say that's really a new development.
I'm going to give you another example. The Department of Transportation has taken down a tool called the Pedestrian Bike Crash Analysis Tool. Again, I confess - did not know about it before, but it helps researchers and planners understand what happened in crashes that involve cars and bikes and pedestrians. And almost 20% of the fatalities on U.S. roads are pedestrians or cyclists.
I talked to the researcher who originally led the development of that tool more than two decades ago, a man named David Harkey. Today, he is the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is a big nonprofit that's funded by the auto insurance industry, and he's not happy that this tool is no longer available.
DAVID HARKEY: Safety involves everyone on the roadway. And so if you really truly believe as an agency that your job is to make sure safety is a priority, then you cannot remove tools and resources that are there to help you address those 20% of the fatalities on our roadways.
SCHMITZ: Let's be clear here. This is not a bicycle advocate saying this here.
ROSE: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: I'm curious, the current administration - how are they dealing with this issue as opposed to, you know, the last administration, the Biden administration?
ROSE: I mean, it's a really sharp contrast. You know, under the Biden administration, the DOT supported options other than driving, right? The...
SCHMITZ: Right.
ROSE: ...Trump administration is swinging back to cars in a big way. I mean, the administration sent a list of its top priorities for the next surface transportation bill to a few key senators a couple of weeks ago, and one of them is, quote, "prioritize motor vehicle travel over bicycle lanes," unquote, which - couldn't be much more clear where they stand, right?
SCHMITZ: Yeah.
ROSE: I mean, they're asking Congress to cut funding for anything that reduces motor vehicle lanes. I mean, and the Trump administration would argue that 80% of Americans use their cars to drive to work, so the administration should be putting resources into what people have shown that they want. I think what safety advocates and bicycle advocates would say back is most Americans don't have good options...
SCHMITZ: Right.
ROSE: ...Other than driving.
SCHMITZ: And if you built it, maybe they would actually bike. And...
ROSE: If they had alternatives that were actually convenient and safe.
SCHMITZ: Right. Curious from your perspective - as someone who covers this often, is there a big thing that you'd like people to understand about bike infrastructure in the United States that they might not know?
ROSE: I just wish we paid - I just wish we talked about it more, you know? I think we spend so much energy on other forms of transportation and sort of just accept that there's going to be tens of thousands of fatalities every year on our roads. And we tolerate an enormous amount of carnage on our roads, and most of the time, we just kind of shrug and accept it as the cost of mobility. That's why I think it's important. I want to pay more attention to road safety.
SCHMITZ: And you are in the position to do that. That is NPR's Joel Rose, our transportation reporter. Thanks so much.
ROSE: Welcome.
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