(The Center Square) – The Transportation Department has approved close to $5 billion in infrastructure funding since the change in administration, chipping away at an inherited backlog of more than 3,200 unobligated grants, the department announced Wednesday.
The nearly $5 billion is spread among 405 infrastructure grants – about 13% of what the administration called the “Biden-Buttigieg backlog” – including 76 just-approved grants totaling more than $607 million.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, America is building again,” said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
Duffy attributed the “unprecedented” backlog of grants to some of the previous administration’s social and climate priorities.
“The last administration claimed to ‘build back better,’ but they didn’t build back anything. Instead, they inserted wasteful social justice and green mandates into grants that drove up construction costs and delayed projects. We’ll continue to move at lightning speed to get shovels in the ground and projects up and running,” Duffy said.
The department said it had eliminated many of the programs that “Congress deliberately did not mandate” that were slowing projects down, like greenhouse gas emission reporting and diversity, equity and inclusion workforce requirements. As part of its announcement, it attached documents showing some of the climate and environmental justice considerations the Biden administration looked for in grant applicants.
“The recipient or a project partner used environmental justice tools, such as the EJSCREEN, to minimize adverse impacts of the Project on environmental justice communities,” one document reads.
Incorporating electrification infrastructure for electric vehicles or serving the renewable supply chain were some other considerations.
“Removing these requirements will save taxpayers millions. Road construction costs skyrocketed roughly 70% under the last administration,” the department said in a news release. “The greenhouse gas reporting burden alone increased project costs and added months to the permitting process.”
The largest single grant of $550 million went to the Alabama Department of Transportation for a bridge and bayway multimodal project.
