How is the USDOT Office of the Secretary awarding "flexible" multimodal discretionary grants programs?

The IIJA created many discretionary programs with multimodal project eligibilities and USDOT had the chance to award funds to many different types of projects. One of the most cost-effective ways for USDOT to help fight climate change is to stop funding, to the greatest extent possible, new highway expansion projects. The Office of the Secretary has awarded $2.8 billion to projects that build new routes or widen existing roads. Connecting these figures to published figures of emissions cost-effectiveness, we project these projects to increase cumulative 2022-2040 On-Road transportation CO2e emissions by 2.2 million tons over baseline levels as a result of new tailpipe emissions enabled by induced demand from new capacity.