For weeks, President Trump has allowed Elon Musk and the “DOGE” team to decimate government’s ability to serve the public good, firing employees and closing offices that protect consumers, safeguard our health, and even provide basic services.
Central to these efforts is attacking federal science and expertise. The administration has fired staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, imperiling our security and economy. It has removed thousands of federal data sources, blocked staff from participating in international climate collaboration, and illegally frozen funds for scores of projects. My colleague Julie McNamara describes this as an effort to destroy “the great American innovation machine” and replace it with “science behind a paywall; knowledge for a fee.”
The cruelty of it has been shocking. But in other ways, I have not been surprised. I began paying close attention to Musk in 2018, when he won a bid to provide high-speed transportation between downtown Chicago and O’Hare airport. Musk tried to sell the city on technology that didn’t exist and disparaged the very concept of public transit; his proposal was never built.
That was one of several incidents that helped urban planners and transportation professionals understand that Musk held few compunctions about lying and lacked regard for the public services that make our society function. We are now seeing the consequences of putting someone like that in a position of power.
By speaking honestly, transportation professionals helped stop the Chicago project. We, and the organizations that speak for our professions, need to be on the record today.
Musk’s foray into Chicago transportation was a fiasco
In 2018, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stood with Musk as Musk described a transportation concept that had not been built anywhere in the world: Autonomous “electric skates,” traveling over 100 miles per hour in underground tunnels drilled by Musk’s Boring Company.
There were two big problems with this.
The first was that Musk was wildly overselling the technology. Within a few months, Musk was backtracking on the concept, saying that rather than autonomous pods, the tunnels would carry modified Tesla cars (traveling at 127 miles per hour). As Costa Samaras, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, pointed out, the proposal was full of “engineering challenges, such as reliability and safety of the [car] elevator” and “loading and unloading times.” UCLA’s Juan Matute, reacting to a similar proposal for Los Angeles, pointed out that congestion at the entry and exit points to the tunnels would be enormous: “If it’s a four minute trip [within the tunnel], but there’s a 20 minute line to get into the tube, you haven’t really done much.”
While Musk’s Boring Company promised multiple cities it could solve congestion, so far it has built very little, with the exception of some tunnels in Las Vegas where cars can drive at a few dozen miles per hour from one parking-garage-like structure to another.
The second problem was who the project was designed to benefit.
As an urban planner who has spent nearly two decades working to improve U.S. transportation, I know we need major changes in how we provide public mobility. I have worked closely with government agencies and fought alongside community advocates to call for changes in how we use technology in our transit systems, how we build projects, and how we fund public transportation, so that we can provide more affordable and abundant bus and rail service for everyone.
Musk’s proposal had nothing to do with any of that. The Boring Company’s “electric skate” was estimated to cost $20-25 per ride. It would carry roughly 2,000 people per hour, about the same number of people that a single lane of highway traffic carries–and far less than a modern bus line or a subway
For those unfamiliar with Chicago, let me point out: You can already take a convenient train to and from the airport. The Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line runs 24 hours a day, connecting O’Hare with multiple neighborhoods and downtown Chicago, for $5. As I wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, Musk was not looking to improve travel for middle-class families; instead, his project would “marginally improve service for a few business travelers.” It was a boutique mobility project and a distraction from improvements in public transportation (like faster bus service across the city) that Chicagoans actually needed. That was not a topic Musk was interested in.
At a Tesla event, he disparaged the whole concept of transit, asking the audience, “Why do you want to get on something with a lot of other people”?
Foreshadowing today’s crisis
Musk’s conduct in Chicago was full of warning signs: Disdain for essential public services, a willingness to flat-out lie, and a vision of technology that benefits a wealthy few.
These are bad qualities in a businessperson trying to win public contracts. With that same person in the White House, the results have been corrosive and deadly. The Trump administration, with Musk’s “DOGE” team as a primary enforcer, has cancelled research and laid off scientists and technology experts who make government more effective and provide us with critical data.
Transportation has not been spared. Federal funding has been pulled from research projects; in the words of one scholar, the Transportation Research Board (a division of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) is now engaged in “a witch hunt of its own committees” to make sure studies are in political compliance. Infrastructure projects in California and New York are coming in for politically-motivated attacks. Funding for a federal electric vehicle infrastructure program has been illegally frozen and hundreds of employees at transportation agencies have been fired, damaging the government’s ability to manage grants, help local communities plan, and conduct transportation research.
Your expertise matters
Many transportation experts and practitioners saw through Musk’s claims in Chicago and elsewhere. Explaining those doubts helped turn political and public opinion against the plan. After Mayor Emanuel left office, his successor Lori Lightfoot declined to follow through, saying the city had higher priorities.
Of course, the risks of speaking out are higher now, with Musk in the White House and controlling a flood of disinformation through his ownership of the social media platform X.
The stakes are higher as well. We are in a constitutional crisis, with Musk one of the most prominent faces in a Trump administration that is ignoring court orders and using its power to punish political enemies. In moments like these, the historian Timothy Snyder has urged experts: “Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important.”
Indeed, the lack of a statement from the Transportation Research Board (and the broader National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) helps normalize attacks on science. So would quiet acceptance of things like a Department of Transportation memo prohibiting grant recipients from imposing vaccine or mask mandates—a requirement that (if enforceable) would have led to more illness and death had it been in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What might it mean to make a professional commitment to just practice? I offer a few suggestions below:
- Call out decisions that are harmful to communities. Five researchers whose work advancing equity lost federal funding publicized the news in an op-ed and have continued to speak with national media.
- Show local media and decisionmakers the impact that administration decisions have on your area – like cost overruns, uncertainty, and lost services or jobs. UCS is also collecting stories (which we may share on social media, with reporters, and in other venues) about how funding freezes and layoffs have impacted you and your community.
- Move from individual to collective action. Work within your professional organizations, including their local chapters, to get them to speak up—just as 48 scientific societies did earlier this month; there’s still time for your organization to add its name. Share expertise, like your knowledge of how illegal funding freezes could impact your community, with grassroots activists and your elected representatives.