Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Minor

Award FRA research dollars on the merits, not to prop up the Pueblo TTC

Not started

637 19. Department of Transportation

“FRA seems determined to direct research to TTC, even when there are better choices with respect to the research in question, in an effort to support TTC financially and justify its decision to change management at TTC. … FRA should make its decisions on where to spend its research dollars solely on the merits of improving the safety and efficiency of the railroad industry.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    Nothing found, and the record runs the other way. No Federal Register document of any type since 2025-01-20 mentions the Transportation Technology Center, no bill in the 119th Congress addresses FRA research awards or the Pueblo facility, and no FRA policy statement changing how research dollars are directed was found on any FRA page. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 funds FRA research and development on the existing basis without conditioning it on the merits or on competition with the Pueblo center. FRA's own live project inventory, published inside the window, shows the concentration continuing: of the **103 project slides** in the Office of Research, Development and Technology's *Current Research Projects* deck of 2026-01-09, **39 name ENSCO, Inc. or the Transportation Technology Center** as a partner or venue, several of them capital works at the site itself ("Curved Adjustable Precision Track Anomaly Test Section at TTC", "TTC Site Survey and Monument System"). That deck is attached under playbook §3b rule 4 as moved-the-other-way Evidence: real, dated, Primary, on the ask's own subject, and contrary to it.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Negative search: Federal Register full-text, quoted, “Transportation Technology Center” - 0 documents since 2025-01-20; “Pueblo, Colorado” - 3, all unrelated (a DEA order, a vaccine-injury petition list, a Federal Reserve change-in-bank-control notice). Corpus bill titles matching railroad or rail research - none.

  • The Pueblo facility is FRA-owned and contractor-operated, so any change in how research is awarded would show up in a contract action rather than in the Federal Register.

  • Corrected 2026-09-03: railroads.dot.gov is not a wall. Its pages open on the full-headers rung of scripts/fetch-page.mjs. The read-queue row is answered, and the answer to “did the share going to the Pueblo centre change” is no; if anything it rose.

  • https://railroads.dot.gov/FRA-transportation-technology-center — a lead, not Evidence: the page states that “ENSCO Inc. currently manages the daily operations of TTC” and closes “FRA works with Congress and other government agencies to continue to expand the testing capabilities at TTC”, which is exactly on point, but the page carries no in-window date and the evidence gate would refuse it. Quoted here instead.

  • Federal contract data says the same and is recorded here as supporting computation rather than Evidence, because api.usaspending.gov’s search endpoints are POST-only and have no citable page URL while usaspending.gov’s own award search is a JavaScript shell. FRA contract obligations to ENSCO Inc. (UEI DP3FAQE2UGT3), against all FRA contract obligations: FY2024 $26.76M of $103.86M (26%); FY2025 $29.44M of $66.29M (44%); FY2026 to 2026-09-02 $28.67M of $75.56M (38%). ENSCO is FRA’s largest contract recipient in each of the three years and its share rose after 2025-01-20. The queries were POST /api/v2/search/spending_by_category/recipient/ and …/awarding_agency/ with filters.agencies=[{type:awarding, tier:subtier, name:"Federal Railroad Administration"}], award_type_codes=["A","B","C","D"] and those three time periods. Caveat stated plainly: ENSCO does work for FRA beyond operating TTC, so this measures the share going to the operator, not to the center. The project deck is the better instrument for the center and points the same way.

  • The dollar concentration inside the deck was not carried into the note. Parsing “Funding: $N” out of a 109-page slide deck gives roughly 56 percent of stated project funding on the ENSCO/TTC slides, but some slides state no figure, some state a fiscal-year figure rather than a project total, and the notation is inconsistent. The 39-of-103 project count is the robust number and is the only one in the Status note.

  • DOT’s press-release full-text search returns zero releases for “Pueblo” (control-tested the same day: ten hits for “safety”, none for a nonsense term).

  • EO 14332 grant-process sweep (2026-09-29). Executive Order 14332 (2025-08-07) puts every agency’s funding announcements and discretionary awards under senior-appointee review and a test of the President’s priorities. Under the playbook §3b rule settled on 2026-09-29, it counts only where an ask’s object is review, clearance or priority-alignment of an agency’s awards. This Quote’s object is where FRA’s research dollars go. The order’s §4(b)(iv) preference against “a select group of repeat players” is close in spirit, but FRA’s research money here flows mostly through contracts, and the order reaches grants and cooperative agreements only (§2(f)). Status unchanged.

Round-15 review 2026-10-14. Transportation Technology Center, Inc. dba MvX Rail v. Neese, N.D. Ill., filed 2026-09-04, is still unread. The docket shows a complaint, a TRO motion, a motion to expedite, an order on 2026-09-18 and a motion to dismiss on 2026-10-01, but none of the documents are on RECAP and the entries carry no text. Brought by the Pueblo center’s operator, it could turn on how FRA awards or ends the center’s work. That needs the complaint, so it stays open, and the not started stands until a document is read. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/74754535/transportation-technology-center-inc-dba-mvx-rail-v-neese/

Action
other
Object
FRA research program and the Transportation Technology Center (TTC)
ID
1755