This morning, barring heavy rain, hundreds of people around Baltimore will participate in Bike to Work Day 2025, likely navigating controversial slivers of pavement along the way.

Plenty love the bike lanes and other infrastructure that Baltimore and surrounding counties have installed in recent years, and want more. But opposition always flares over new proposals: Don’t take my parking spot, bike lanes are dangerous, nobody uses them, cyclists don’t follow the rules of the road.

In Baltimore, as elsewhere, it’s become another us vs. them culture war issue. But the battle now appears headed to a broader front.

Last month, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy confirmed a pause on all federal funding for bike and pedestrian infrastructure — for review considering the Trump administration’s priorities.

“I’m not opposed to bikes, like, I love bikes,” Duffy said during an interview last month at the Semafor World Economic Summit, after sighing at the mention of bicycles.

But he doesn’t love them enough to reopen the federal spigot yet.

It’s not clear how bikes fit in with President Donald Trump’s vision for Making America Great Again, but the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the Project 2025 policy blueprint, has long opposed federal spending for bike infrastructure.

So as Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott dusts off his helmet for his annual ride to City Hall and state officials promote bikes as a pleasant way to reduce your carbon footprint or beat traffic, local transportation officials are wondering whether any federal money will be available for projects involving bike lanes.

New director in town

“At one point we have to look at ‘What are the roads for, and how do we use our roads?’” Duffy said during that April interview.

For the last four years, transportation planners thought the answer to that question included putting greater focus on transit, bikes and walking.

But this isn’t Mayor Pete’s (Buttigieg, that is) Transportation Department anymore. Roads are Duffy’s domain now, and it seems time to Make America Drive Again.

Baltimore and Maryland made out well under the Biden administration, but the shift in transportation priorities under Trump 2.0 could upend some state plans for federal infrastructure spending, particularly as it relates to safety, said Benito Pérez, policy director at think tank Transportation For America, which generally supports active transportation like biking.

Duffy may “love bikes,” but he also — like most of us — hates congestion. The former Wisconsin congressman railed against New York City’s expanded use of bike lanes, suggesting they are causing more congestion despite some research supporting the opposite.

The day after Congress confirmed Duffy to his post, the Transportation Department put out a news release saying it would eliminate programs that “promote climate change activism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives” and a host of other items of the “far-left agendas.”

Since the directive, local transportation officials around the country have been told to scrub references to equity or climate change within project plans — which used to make grant requests more competitive — or risk losing funding, Pérez said.

There’s been an outsized impact on projects for “Complete Streets,” a philosophy of designing or retrofitting some roadways to prioritize pedestrian and cyclist safety over the throughput of cars. During the Biden years, such proposals often focused on “underserved communities” because data suggested Black and brown neighborhoods had higher rates of pedestrian-involved crashes. Baltimore‘s Complete Streets manual uses the words “equity” and “equitable” a combined 187 times.

Such projects can, but don’t always, involve bike lanes, and also can include things like widening the amount of space for pedestrians at intersections or sprucing up bus stops. Projects that take a lane away from cars in exchange for a bike lane — like what happened on Baltimore’s 28th Street — face particular scrutiny, Pérez said.

For Duffy, the math appears simple — if you add a bike lane and car congestion goes up, that’s bad. But he said he supports bike lanes where they “make sense,” and those decisions should be “data-driven, not ideologically driven.”

Many transportation experts, however, say congestion can be “good” if it costs drivers a couple of minutes but leads to fewer crashes and safer roads. Baltimore City’s transportation department has faced criticism for not showing how it decides to do traffic calming measures or introduce bike lanes, nor quickly offering data showing post-change impact.

“It flies in the face of what’s been tested and tried again,” Pérez said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Republican or Democrat; even under Trump 1.0, they were pushing for safer streets.”

How it could impact locally

“The confusion and uncertainty started very quickly” after Duffy’s January directive went out, said Sean Winkler, senior policy advisor for equity and engagement at the Maryland Department of Transportation.

There was a temporary shutdown of the system MDOT uses to seek federal reimbursement, and mixed signals about whether already announced grants would materialize or new requirements be imposed.

In Baltimore, some plans like a section of the Greenway Trails Network involve federal grants, but most bike-specific projects currently use local or state money. Some federal discretionary grants like one for Druid Park Lake Drive include bike infrastructure as a project element.

Across the state, bike infrastructure is typically sprinkled into larger roadway plans, making a true parsing of spending on bike lanes difficult. The only program just for bike infrastructure with just state dollars represents about 0.1% of annual transportation spending, state budget documents show.

With Complete Streets “so infused into the program,” some of the state’s future work could face greater federal scrutiny, though, Pérez warned.

Maryland is hyper-focused on road safety, said Geoff Anderson, MDOT’s chief of planning and programming. The state’s current six-year budget contains roughly $170 million worth of active projects that include new sidewalks, accessibility upgrades or some kind of bike infrastructure, he said, with more money available for future plans.

Many of those projects are eligible for up to 80% federal reimbursement through “formula funds,” which states largely rely on for road repaving or upgrading. The Trump administration has shown a willingness to pause and scrutinize such funds, not just discretionary grant programs.

“We are committed to the basics of transportation and safety for all road users ... and intend to move forward in a way that’s absolutely consistent with federal law,” Anderson said.

For some local advocates like Bikemore’s Jed Weeks, the new federal funding reality is all the more reason for local officials to lean into building bike lanes with local money unrestricted by the feds.

“We either capitulate to an administration that actively wants to cause harm, or we build infrastructure that we know is safe for Baltimoreans,” Weeks said.

While it’s unlikely that federal grants for bike infrastructure will completely dry up — remember, Duffy “loves bikes” — where the rubber meets the road from now until 2028, he may prefer it on four wheels, not two.