Published May 15, 2025
Is it “discrimination” to have a transportation policy that focuses on families’ needs? Some San Francisco Democrats apparently think so.
The latest object of their consternation was a recent departmental order from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy that directed his agency to focus more heavily on communities with higher birth and marriage rates, directing the agency to:
Mitigate the unique impacts of DOT programs, policies, and activities on families and family-specific difficulties, such as the accessibility of transportation to families with young children, and give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average (including in administering the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant [CIG] program).
The preference for communities with high marriage and birth rates sparked ire from some of the usual progressive suspects. An article in the Bay Area Reporter captured some of the opposition on identity politics grounds: “SF LGBTQ Dems denounce federal pro-family transit funds policy,” read the headline. Emma Hare, the fourth vice chair of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, introduced a resolution “condemning funding prejudice,” calling Duffy’s memo “a direct attack on communities who, whether by choice or by structural barriers, have lower marriage and childbirth rates.”
The fourth vice chair, like many progressives, like to portray policy disagreements as being grounded in some kind of animus. But Duffy’s recent mandate simply recognizes that areas with above-average population growth are likely to need additional infrastructure spending to accommodate those future residents. Duffy’s order specifically mentioned the Capital Investment Grant, which currently provides federal dollars to fund capital investments, including rail, bus, and streetcars. A quick survey of the array of projects currently receiving grants, or that may receive grants in the future, suggest that incorporating long-run population trends only makes sense. Transit grants don’t turn on a dime—and this matrix of current grants reflects the legacy of Biden as well as Trump administration decisions.
Take a look at how many projects in states with above-average fertility rates are already looking to expand bus rapid transit lines (think Huntsville, AL, Raleigh, NC, Salt Lake City, UT, and Houston, TX). It’s entirely logical for federal grantmakers to prioritize these relatively cheap, more flexible, and easy to scale programs over permanent rail infrastructure in states with lower population trajectories (like streetcar projects in Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle). Indeed, if San Franciscans are choosing to raise more dogs than children, it would be long-term policy malpractice not to ensure federal infrastructure spending goes toward places that will most certainly be needing new buses, light rail, or highway miles before too long.
So the Left’s carping shouldn’t dissuade the Trump administration from factoring in demographics to transit funding policy. But conservative, proactive family policy can do even more to address the actual pain points facing families. After all, there are few daily activities that touch more parents than schlepping kids from point A to point B.
Beyond capital grants, there are other steps the Trump administration could do to make life easier for families, such as leaning into and amplifying the $5 billion for the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Just ask any parent with a stroller or any kid on a bike with training wheels—they’ll tell you that wider sidewalks, better crosswalk lighting, and curb cuts are an essential part of a pro-family transportation agenda.
And this focus doesn’t need to wait for action from Washington. Yes, some initiatives will take much heavy lifting, like safer urban streets or rejiggering transportation funding formulae. But it wouldn’t take a revolution for policymakers to prioritize making our airports and highways more family friendly or pass symbolic steps to ensure families are recognized for their important work of raising the next generation.
One of the easiest ways to tangibly improve parents’ lives would be for states to copy a Rhode Island law that was passed in 2022. The law requires that large parking lots (those with 100 spaces or more) set aside a minimum of two spots near the storefront and designate them as stroller-friendly, reserving them for parents who could benefit from a slightly easier time wrangling young children in a crowded parking lot. Many localities already reserve parking for Wounded Warriors, the elderly, or electric vehicles. Setting aside spaces for parents with young kids would be an easy way to make sure families know they’re welcome, too.
It’s also high time for us to retire the notion of “carpooling” and, as Andreessen Horowitz’s Katherine Boyle first suggested, call high-occupancy vehicle lanes by their proper purpose: “family lanes.” Carpooling has fallen from 19.7% of commutes in 1980 to 8.6% in 2022, and “high occupancy vehicle” is a bloodless technocratism. States already let parents with kids ride in them, so let’s make it official: redubbing “HOV lanes” as “family lanes” might be a symbolic gesture, but it would be an unapologetic signal that policymakers place families first and could be done in red states across America tomorrow.
Such thinking isn’t novel for other countries, Many European airports offer complimentary strollers to help families get from past the security checks to the gate. Why no U.S. airport that I’ve been to does the same is a question that has bedeviled most of the experts I’ve talked to, but best guesses include concerns about legal liability. As a result, tort reform might be surprisingly family-friendly. As Advancing American Freedom’s John Shelton has pointed out, casual dining playspaces—like the one in a McDonalds in Franklin, TN, that was infamously converted into two chairs in front of two iPads—have been slowly phased out due to lawsuits from parents whose kids got injured or sick. More low-cost, low-effort places for kids to burn off some energy on road trips, like jungle gyms and slides located at state-run rest stops, could make those long hours on the interstate slightly less aggravating.
The tendency for some conservative activists is to prescribe how families should get around, promising lower gas prices for parents driving SUVs and minivans is part of pro-family transit policy. However, this can’t be the full menu of options. As Tim Carney’s great book on American parenting points out, walkable and bikeable streets are actually an important tool for lowering the stress on parents, getting them out of “car hell” and letting their children run over to a neighbor’s after school. Most public transit agencies allow young children to ride for free while offering discounted kids’ bus or train fare. A family-friendly approach would be simply stating that all kids with an accompanying parent should ride for free (Los Angeles became the largest transit system to permanently have K-12 students ride free last year).
Other questions of urban design require deeper thinking. An underrated headache in too many parents’ days is the car pickup line from school where lines can stretch over a mile long, often creating viral videos. This will become more, not less common, as shrinking birth rates lead to school consolidation and fewer opportunities to walk or ride a bike to school.
Congress is currently debating if it should increase the Child Tax Credit (it should), and if so, by how much (at least to $2,500, to account for inflation since 2017). But pro-family policy is about more than just spending money, and these kinds of energies are needed just as much as from state capitols as Washington, D.C.—if not more so. A pro-family transportation agenda doesn’t necessarily just mean opening the federal coffers, but it requires placing the needs of families first and foremost in our spending and design decisions. It should be obvious that that’s not discrimination—it’s just old-fashioned common sense.
Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where his work with the Life and Family Initiative focuses on developing a robust pro-family economic agenda and supporting families as the cornerstone of a healthy and flourishing society.
