This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
By Jesse Paul and Taylor Dolven, The Colorado Sun
The Trump administration said Tuesday it is canceling $109 million in transportation grants awarded to Colorado for projects with an environmental focus.
The funds were slated to pay for increasing the use of electric vehicles and EV charging options, as well as rail improvements, including research into hydrogen and natural gas-powered trains. Some of the money was slated for a specific transit project in Fort Collins.
“Effective immediately, USDOT has canceled five different projects in Colorado — ranging from woke, zero-emission plans to ‘green’ rail cars,” Danna Almeida, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Transportation, said in a written statement. “These projects did not align with President Trump’s ambitious America First agenda or were redundant.”
The five grant awards that are being slashed are:
- $11.7 million that was slated to go to Fort Collins to electrify its vehicle fleet and expand the city’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure
- $11.7 million that was going to the Colorado State University Pueblo to study how to power rail vehicles with hydrogen and natural gas
- $66.4 million to the Colorado Department of Transportation that was going to pay for rail improvements in northern Colorado, including the installation of positive train control, a safety mechanism aimed at preventing crashes caused by operator error
- $8.34 million awarded to Colorado to help expand and shore up electric vehicle charging options statewide. Gov. Jared Polis’ administration said the money was going to support maintenance for up to 363 electric vehicle charger ports in as many as 197 locations statewide.
- $10.7 million that Fort Collins was expecting to build a transit station and roundabout at the intersection of West Elizabeth Street and South Overland Trail as part of a bus-rapid-transit initiative
The cuts are the latest in a wave of funding clawbacks from the Trump administration to Colorado, many of which are being challenged by Democrats in court.
In a statement, Gov. Jared Polis admonished the Trump administration for the reported cancellations.
“Pulling critical transportation infrastructure funding makes our freight rail corridors, which are critical to commerce, less safe,” he said. “Canceling rail safety funding while claiming to care about ‘core infrastructure’ is like ripping out the seatbelts and calling it efficiency. These are not theoretical projects or political slogans, they are real, awarded grants for real safety and infrastructure improvements that help ensure safety.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, has already sued the Trump administration over its cancellation of clean energy grants.
On Tuesday, Weiser announced a lawsuit seeking to restore funding for two grant programs established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 aimed at bolstering electric vehicle charging networks: the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Program and the Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility Accelerator Program. The EV charging grant money that U.S. DOT canceled Tuesday is part of the “Accelerator” program.
Weiser claims the Trump administration has recently “quietly refused” to approve any new funding under the programs.
“The Department of Law is reviewing the projects and our options,” Lawrence Pacheco, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, said in a statement about the Tuesday cancellations. “The attorney general won’t hesitate to challenge any illegal actions that the administration takes to harm Colorado.”
Colorado Capitol Alliance
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
