‘DEI Bike Lanes’ – Sacramento City Council Inflates Bicycling Numbers for Federal Taxpayer Grants

Complaint alleges the City of Sacramento used false bike trail-usage figures to win nearly $10 million

Recently, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the end of federal funding for “DEI bike lanes.”

Sacramento didn’t get the memo.

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“Sean Duffy, Mr. Trump’s transportation secretary, has argued that when bike lanes cut into space for cars and trucks, the result is more congestion, ‘longer travel times and wasted fuel,’” The New York Times reported. “But Mr. Duffy and his colleagues have also deployed rhetoric that suggests the bicycle is hopelessly lefty, belonging in the same category as green-haired baristas, Rosie O’Donnell and yard signs professing that love is love.”

At issue in Sacramento, California is construction of an approximately 3.8-mile levee-top multi-use trail for bicycle and pedestrian recreational use and commuter travel between Garcia Bend Park and Zacharias Park in Sacramento’s  Pocket neighborhood. The project will include neighborhood access ramps and pedestrian crossing improvements. The Sacramento City Council approved the preliminary design plan and adopted the Addendum to the 1997 EIR on October 14, 2025.

The Sacramento City Council appears to have boosted the numbers of bicycle riders from the 32-mile American River Parkway and applied them to the more obscure 3.8 mile bike trail atop the levy on the Sacramento River, to land millions in federal transportation funds – funds that are supposed to be used for reducing traffic congestion.

A Sacramento resident recently filed a complaint with the US Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, alleging that the City of Sacramento used false bike trail-usage figures to win nearly $10 million in competitive federal grants for the Sacramento River Parkway trail project.

The Transportation OIG has reviewed the complaint and referred it to the Federal Highway Administration for review.

The Sacramento River Parkway’s grants fall squarely within Secretary Duffy’s “DEI bike lanes” review window, specifically targeting projects that touted “equity” benefits. Sacramento’s applications explicitly invoked Environmental Justice community status to score competitive points, and its funds are not yet fully obligated.

At the core of Sacramento’s “DEI bike lane” project is the city’s projection that the Sacramento River Parkway Bike Trail would have as many users as the region’s American River Parkway – a 32-mile parkway that has beaches, recreational amenities, equestrian trails, and a nature center. It’s a ridiculous and fraudulent comparison. Those numbers presumably helped the city receive millions in competitive grants, while other more deserving projects in the region that would actually reduce congestion received nothing.

The City claims 9,000 average daily trips on the 3.8 mile bike trail, will translate into 15,006 annual auto trips reduced, and 56,871 annual auto Vehicle Miles Traveled reduced.

This is preposterous. Sacramento’s Pocket neighborhood has about 27,000 residents.

From the federal complaint:

THE PATTERN ACROSS BOTH ROUNDS

The misconduct described in this complaint is not an isolated error. It is a documented pattern across two successive competitive grant rounds:

In 2021, the City submitted 13,500 — 100% of the American River Parkway’s daily usage equivalent — as the Average Daily Trips/Traffic (ADT) for a 4.0-mile residential levee trail that terminates before the downtown connection is complete, with the ADT field left blank at zero in the simultaneously submitted PPA tool. The City received $3,120,000.

In 2022/23, the City submitted 9,000 — 67% of the American River Parkway’s daily usage equivalent — implemented by inserting “2/3” into the prior year’s otherwise identical note, with no new study, no new model, and no new analysis. The same application submitted 9,619 in the CMAQ calculation — a different, higher, internally inconsistent figure within the same package. The City received a staff-recommended award of approximately $6,803,000.

In neither round did the City cite a trail demand study, demand model, comparable facility analysis with supporting data, or any other documented basis for the specific Average Daily Trips figure or percentage used. In neither round did the City’s cost-effectiveness ADT figure bear any traceable analytical relationship to the observed transportation characteristics documented in its own required PPA materials. In neither round did SACOG’s program review cross-check the cost-effectiveness ADT figure against the PPA data submitted in the same application package — a systemic gap this complaint asks the OIG to address through program-level recommendations.

Moreover, the harm from the false Average Daily Trips representations extends beyond the federal funds directly awarded to the City of Sacramento. The SACOG Regional Program Transformative Category operates as a competitive zero-sum program with a fixed federal funding pool each cycle. Every dollar awarded to the Sacramento River Parkway Project based on artificially elevated cost-effectiveness scores was a dollar unavailable to other projects competing in the same round.