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USDOT’s new memo requires a review of competitive grant awards

A leaked policy memo from leadership at USDOT will add a new layer of extra-legal review of all awarded competitive grant projects without fully signed federal funding obligations, calling for bicycle infrastructure, green infrastructure, and EV chargers to be cut from projects.

What’s in USDOT’s new memo? 

Drawing authority from the President’s inaugural slate of executive orders and the Secretary of Transportation’s first round of policy memos, the Department of Transportation Secretary’s office has, according to a leaked policy memo, issued another round of unprecedented orders, calling for the removal of all elements of projects related to bike infrastructure, charging infrastructure, climate change or those that take equity into account competitive grant funding. The memo specifically applies to competitive grants that have not yet completed grant agreements or obligated the funding, including those that have only been partially obligated. Projects with existing and executed grant agreements are not subject to additional review, but any new federal dollars made out to those projects would be. 

What’s the difference between funding that is announced or obligated?

When the federal government announces an award, the awardee does not get that funding as a grant. First, the federal government and the awardee have to negotiate and sign a funding agreement, which lays out the project scope, schedule, and budget and demonstrates the availability of required nonfederal funding match.

Funds can be canceled or reclaimed until they are obligated, which is a binding commitment to pay out money. Funding cannot be obligated until the grant agreement is signed and all permitting and relevant regulations are complied with. Planning grants that don’t have those regulatory requirements are obligated once there is a signed grant agreement. However, capital (ie, construction) projects would need to complete regulatory review and permitting before being obligated.

Once there is a grant agreement and funds are obligated, an awardee must spend their own funding and file for reimbursement from the federal government.

This memo instructs USDOT operating administrations, like The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), to conduct a project-by-project analysis to identify any activities that include primary elements of “equity, climate change, environmental justice, green infrastructure, bicycle infrastructure, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure.” Once projects are identified for non-compliance with the administration’s priorities, they will be subject to individual scrutiny for a final decision on whether they will be canceled, modified, or continue as planned. Projects that contain “flagged activities” could be revised, even if they meet all requirements of law, to comply with this administration’s agenda. This comes full circle from the “Woke Rescission” memo, which we unpacked in a previous blog, and follows the episode of STIP and TIP review of obligated projects that were recently walked back (though the new burdensome review remains an issue for environmental permits, according to a recent letter from AASHTO). 

While it is normal for a new administration to set its own agenda, it has always applied to spending and policy going forward. This administration is setting the precedent that any project not underway can be undone when there is a new president.  This memo furthers the agenda laid out in the “Unleashing American Energy” memo, which calls for increased reliance on fossil fuel consumption.

Under this approach, USDOT will reach back to 2022 to defund many projects that Congress specifically defined as eligible activities in the text of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Congress defines the scope of what federal programs can fund. Even under the Biden administration—despite its commitments to advancing zero-emission transportation—USDOT still followed congressional intent by awarding the statutorily required 25% of funds to more emitting fossil fuel buses under the Low or No Emission bus program, despite strong demand for zero-emission buses from applicants. 

By nature of being eligible for funding, the bike, green infrastructure, and EV chargers elements of projects already got the okay for funding from Congress on a bipartisan basis. If this becomes precedent, future presidents could make unilateral decisions to freeze funding for any project that does not align with their own priorities. Allowing the pendulum to swing back and forth every four years undermines the rationale of the supposedly stable highway trust fund—perhaps further evidence that the model is no longer sustainable. If funding appropriated years in advance can be arbitrarily revoked, why even plan beyond the next fiscal year?

For an administration that has spoken at length about the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse, even absent the hugely dangerous and detrimental impact this will have on people’s health, safety, and long-term environmental sustainability of the transportation system, these reviews are going to slow down projects they would want to proceed. Actions like these continue to sow confusion and are inefficient, waste staff time, and squander funds and resources at the federal and local levels. 

What’s at stake

Nearly $2.9 billion in funding was announced for the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program for projects in over 1,700 communities. Only $515 million has been obligated across 979 grant,s according to a search of USASpending data. The vast majority of this program’s funding, $2.4 billion, and hundreds of communities receiving assistance through this program would now be subject to review and renegotiation due to this memo. 

About $7.6 billion was announced under the RAISE/BUILD program for federal fiscal years 2022 through 2025. Still, only $1.25 billion, or less, of funding has been secured and obligated, leaving the rest of the announced funds, representing potentially hundreds of projects, stuck once again in the grant review process. 

Zooming out to the whole program, based on data last updated by the USDOT on January 31, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, and the Federal Railroad Administration have a combined $51 billion in funds unobligated for non-formula programs. Much of these funds are now likely subject to review, cuts, and delays.

It likely will not stop there

While the current memo applies to competitive grants, there is good reason to expect that this administration will expand this review to cover other programs, too, if they find they don’t agree with how states, regions, localities, and transit agencies are using the funds. 

For example, new, flexible formula programs created in the IIJA designed to address infrastructure resiliency, greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, and build out the national network of electric vehicle infrastructure remain at risk and could be the next target for politicized review and freezes. Further, if Congress decides to rescind funds for impounded or frozen climate-related programs, the impacts would disproportionately hit rural states, likely disrupting planned projects of all types. Carbon Reduction Program and PROTECT funds have been programmed for anything from new highway lighting to tunnel rehabilitation. Members of Congress should be aware of how cuts to these programs may fall hardest on whose constituents. 

A new program to help communities thrive

For the Biden administration to achieve its goals, all communities will need to be able to take advantage of federal funds. But some cities, towns, and territories with limited resources face a steeper hurdle to accessing these dollars. The Thriving Communities Program is a small step in the right direction to ensure every community is set up for success.

All communities deserve an equal opportunity to obtain federal funds. Flickr photo by Ken Lund.

The 2021 infrastructure law, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or IIJA, provides a wide range of funding opportunities for communities to access and leverage at their discretion. Given this structure, the IIJA has the potential to increase direct funding to local, tribal, and regional government entities. Direct access to funds could empower communities to pursue dedicated funding for projects most important to them at the local level, such as advancing equity, sustainability, safety, and connected communities. 

There are various requirements to be eligible to access the IIJA’s funds. These requirements are intended to ensure federal funds are used responsibly and with accountability. However, they also cause grant applications to be costly and time-consuming tasks.

This rigorous application process can exclude the very communities that need federal funding the most. That poses a challenge for the Biden administration, particularly in their ability to reach their goal laid out under the Justice40 initiative, which states that 40 percent of the benefits of certain federal investments will go to communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.

Even if a disadvantaged community is able to overcome the barriers of federal grant applications, having the resources to execute the funded project is a second hurdle to overcome. When a disadvantaged community lacks the resources to effectively administer their awarded grant, they risk being disqualified for future funding opportunities due to poor grant management. 

In order to make good on its goals for the transportation system, how is the administration closing these funding gaps?

Enter the Thriving Communities Program

To address the inequities in the grant applications process, the Biden administration created the Thriving Communities Program. Funded with $25 million through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s new Thriving Communities Program (TCP) aims to ensure that disadvantaged communities adversely or disproportionately affected by environmental, climate, economic, and human health policy outcomes have the technical tools and organizational capacity to compete for federal aid and deliver quality infrastructure projects that enable their communities and neighborhoods to thrive.

In addition to assisting with writing IIJA grant applications, the TCP will provide technical assistance, planning, and capacity building support to teams of communities who have historically experienced underinvestment and are awarded a grant. This will provide underinvested communities with the staffing or technical expertise required to scope, fund, and develop infrastructure projects that advance the community’s needs. The TCP will provide two years of deep-dive assistance to communities awarded IIJA funds. 

In total, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) anticipates that its Thriving Communities Program will be able to fund and assist a minimum of 30 disadvantaged communities. The White House Council on Environmental Quality indicates that 30 percent of America’s population resides in what is defined as disadvantaged communities, based on socioeconomic, environmental, health, climate, energy, and infrastructure indicators.

The professional services offered by the TCP to selected communities would help community partners to plan and develop a pipeline of comprehensive transportation, housing, and community revitalization activities. There is no cost to receive these professional services and project planning support. However,  interested applicants must identify community partners and submit a Letter of Interest (LOI) by December 6, 2022 to be considered for selection.

The bottom line

The minimum 30 communities the USDOT anticipates funding through the TCP would only be a drop in the bucket, but it’s a small step in a positive direction for our nation’s communities. To build on these small beginnings, future federal appropriations should be allocated to expand upon this progress.

Without programs such as the TCP, the federal government would be unable to count on communities to help achieve fundamental goals, like Justice40. But in four years, the IIJA will expire, and the TCP could expire with it. To sustain local capacity building, the TCP should be permanently absorbed into the federal transportation program as part of the next infrastructure law. This will help ensure that federal funding is distributed equitably—not skewed to the communities with the most resources.

Transportation for America members have access to exclusive resources that provide further detail on this topic. To view memos and other members-only resources, visit the Member Hub located at t4america.org/members. (Search “Member Hub” in your inbox for the password, or new members can reach out to chris.rall@t4america.org for login details.) Learn more about membership at t4america.org/membership.

SMART grants could make transportation smarter, or not

The Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) competitive grant program offers communities funds to apply new technologies to solve their transportation challenges. How smart this program ends up being depends on whether it treats the application of new technology as a tactic, or as a goal in and of itself.

Flickr photo

In the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Congress authorized $1 billion over five years for the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) grant program. This program seeks to fund pilot projects where smart technologies and systems are innovatively used to solve transportation problems by guiding applicants through a two-stage process. In the grant’s first stage, selected applicants will receive funds to do planning and build the partnerships necessary to create a “scaled-up demonstration of the concept” with funds from the grant’s second stage. 

The SMART grant is another chapter in an age-old story: looking to technology to solve our transportation challenges. However, in the materials introducing the grant, we can see that there are two perspectives to tell this story from: one from the driver’s seat of a personal vehicle, the other from the sidewalk, bike lane, bus stop, and train station. The first perspective can be found in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), and the second in the illustrative use cases listed on the grant’s website. 

From the first point of view, the SMART grant will improve transportation by advancing unproven technologies that ignore the root causes of our safety, state of repair, and emissions difficulties. From the second, this grant can use well-tested solutions that complement efforts to redesign streets and invest in modes of transportation besides cars to improve how we all get around.

Eligible projects vs. illustrative use cases

The eligible projects listed in the NOFO center around technological advancements for automobiles. Based on section titles like “Coordinated Automation,” “Connected Vehicles,” and “Smart Technology Traffic Signals,” you might be forgiven for thinking that the only projects DOT would entertain are those that intend to pave the way for fleets of self-driving vehicles. Thankfully, you would be mistaken.

The illustrative use cases harness technology to improve the experience of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users. They are broken up by benefits, such as improving safety and reliability, lowering emissions and improving resiliency, and integrating data and sensors into signaling and decision making systems.

On-demand right-of-way conversions could give pedestrians and cyclists more opportunities to safely cross the street. Flickr photo by James Schwartz.

For a safer, more reliable transportation system, USDOT suggests giving transit and emergency vehicles priority signals at traffic lights, automating street sweeping vehicles for sidewalks, and implementing active detection technology for railroad crossings. Technology can reduce emissions and enhance resiliency by making room for modes of travel beyond personal vehicles, through actions like improving last-mile delivery and sidewalk accessibility. USDOT also proposes ways technology can help make streets safer and more accessible for all road users. On-demand right-of-way conversions could give pedestrians and cyclists more opportunities to cross the street, and sensors can monitor the quality of signage and crosswalks to help transportation planners make needed changes.

When combined with possible projects to improve equity and access—such as more efficiently delivering reduced-fare transit to those who qualify and adding automated wheelchair securement systems to transit vehicles—these illustrative cases would increase the reliability, frequency, and accessibility of transit trips. Efforts like these could also improve the safety of everybody walking and rolling, by changing both the physical infrastructure of our streets and sidewalks, as well as the signals that guide how we walk, roll, and drive through them.

What could be

These are also by no means a constrictive list of potential applications. By applying the spirit of the illustrative use cases, the categories of eligible projects have a bounty of opportunities for bettering the everyday experiences of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders. 

Retractable bollards in Cambridge, England. Photo by Clarence Eckerson.

People walking and rolling to their destinations could especially benefit from what the USDOT calls “Intelligent, Sensor-Based Infrastructure.” By looking at examples from across the country and the world, we can see how this technology can be used to improve the safety of vulnerable users instead of reasserting the dominance of cars. This type of eligible project could include retractable bollards that support shared streets (check out this Streetsblog article for examples of retractable and moveable bollards in New Orleans, LA and Cambridge, England).

That same category of eligible project might also cover speed governors, a technology that has been available for over a century to limit the speed of cars and will soon be mandatory in some way, shape, or form in all vehicles on the road in the European Union. Furthermore, the requirement that vehicles retrofitted as part of the SMART grant be publicly owned or controlled sets up perfectly those who control public fleets to install such technology in their vehicles. New York City is soon to implement this strategy on thousands of non-emergency vehicles under its control. Combined, these applications of the grant would make walking and biking safer through design of both streets themselves and the vehicles on them.

Transit and rail could also see significant benefits from SMART technologies. “Coordinated Automation” could cover the type of fully automated subway systems—both built from scratch and renovated lines over a century old—that are in operation and under construction around the globe. In addition, this automation requires upgrading signals and sensor systems to ensure that individual trains are more closely connected to one another, a potential application of the “Connected Vehicles” and “Intelligent, Sensor-Based Infrastructure” sections. The “Smart Grid” category could apply to the electrification of rail lines, and given that freight trains carry a significant portion of goods in the United States, their electrification would reduce emissions and the length of the supply chain.

The bottom line: It’s not the tech, it’s how we use it

All of these potential applications are no less innovative technologies than the auto-oriented ones described as eligible activities in the NOFO. In fact, their effective implementation in a wide variety of settings might point to them being more groundbreaking. As reflected in the NOFO’s selection criteria, “revolutionizing transportation” is about not just novelty. It is about proof of concept, scalability, and being appropriately aimed at the particular problem. By these measures, adequately-funded incremental solutions like the signal improvements being installed to more than double speeds on parts of New York City’s subway are exactly the kind of projects applicants should be submitting and USDOT should be encouraging. (For the system’s millions of users per day, speeds are more than doubling in some cases, all at a fraction of the cost it would take to do so for any segment of road.)

And yet, the NOFO’s listed eligible activities reflect the last century’s status quo of transportation policy in the United States. Instead of centering communities’ transportation goals and asking what technologies and other policies could help achieve them, these “technological areas” presuppose that hypothetical fleets of connected, autonomous, battery-electric cars will solve all potential problems.

The effectiveness of the SMART grant will depend on whether or not DOT continues to view cars as the unimpeachable mobility solution without actually asking what problem it is trying to solve. Per the eligible activities listed in the grant’s NOFO, DOT is still not asking this question. But based on the illustrative use cases, DOT knows that achieving tangible benefits from the SMART program won’t come from trying to move more personal vehicles, but using technology to improve the mobility of all road users, especially people outside of a car.

Because this is the first year that the grant is being administered, and USDOT will require Stage 2 applicants to be recipients of Stage 1 grants, only Stage 1 grants will be accepted this year. Applications for these planning, prototyping, and partnership-building grants are due by 5 p.m. on November 18, 2022. Their tentative maximum size is $2,000,000, depending on the number and quality of applications submitted, with up to $100,000,000 and no less than $98,000,000 available to distribute.

Transportation for America members have access to exclusive resources that provide further detail on this topic. To view memos and other members-only resources, visit the Member Hub located at t4america.org/members. (Search “Member Hub” in your inbox for the password, or new members can reach out to chris.rall@t4america.org for login details.) Learn more about membership at t4america.org/membership.

Positioning for competitive grant application success

A conference room filled with diverse people taking notes

With scores of competitive, surface transportation grant programs to administer, USDOT faces a heavy lift to get these programs off the ground, on top of administering the legacy programs that already existed. How should prospective grant applicants start preparing for success?

A conference room filled with diverse people taking notes
Image from Inner City Capital Connection
promo graphic for a guide to the IIJA

This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.

The USDOT will have to find ways to administer and harmonize nearly five dozen programs with other Biden administration goals, like the Justice40 initiative that emphasizes equitable distribution of resources, especially towards historically marginalized communities. They’ve got a lot of work to do. But communities don’t need to wait on USDOT to begin preparing their projects that emphasize the state of repair of their transportation system, advance safety for all users, and improve mobility and access for all people.

Here are three pivotal strategies that communities can use to better position themselves to win competitive grants.

1) Match project objectives to the program criteria

The most successful projects clearly define the problem or need of your community, and tailor the project to clearly address these needs—and those needs match the criteria that USDOT has laid out for evaluating projects. This means collecting and utilizing data, observations, and community feedback that affirm the problem or need. 

It also means putting the project in context. Remember those reviewing your application may not be familiar with your project or your challenges and may never have been to your community at all. So start your application by clearly stating what the project is, why it is needed in the community, what will be accomplished by building it, and other efforts in the area (past and current) that will support those results. It is also helpful to include maps, pictures, and sketches to help those reviewing your application fully understand what is at stake and what could be accomplished. 

For example, depending on the context of the grant, USDOT looks favorably upon projects that are well-integrated into the development of their adjacent built environment and region, and that have broad support from everyone involved or affected. While transportation projects can have specific goals like cutting down on traffic or creating economic development, they should not do these at the expense of other goals like equity, housing affordability, or environmental health. USDOT recognizes this and rewards projects that form diverse coalitions, have buy-in from local businesses, and best meet the broader needs of the surrounding community. 

Projects will be filtered for eligibility but evaluated first and foremost on how well they address the criteria included in the notice of funding opportunity. Everything else is secondary. Your project does not need to knock it out of the park on all of the criteria (rarely does any project do that), but it should produce impressive results in two or three areas.

2) Build a strong, broad coalition of support

Projects with a broad base of supporters will always do better. This means support from the community, civic leaders and local elected leaders. It also helps to have support from your state, especially if you need your state department of transportation to manage the money or help with the project. But USDOT will understand if you are dealing with a state that does not share your (and USDOT’s) priorities. If that is the case, state it outright.

When building a coalition for a project, consider who else would care about a potential project? Who else is a logical partner and stakeholder that you could collaborate with? Perhaps a neighboring community is also pursuing a similar priority, presenting a chance to pool resources together. Explore partnerships with the private sector. Advocacy to state legislatures to set aside funding to support state and local matches to grant programs, like what Colorado is doing, can go a long way in making grant applications more competitive. And even better is to build or develop projects from the beginning with partners and stakeholders who will be automatic champions as that project moves forward, rather than trying to gather support for a completed project idea.

A broad range of supporters can help you put together a local match, which most competitive grant programs still require. State and local project sponsors must bring some amount of non-federal funding to match the federal dollars. Any funding that does not originate with the federal government will do, including local, state, philanthropic, business and even some in-kind contributions. A broad number of contributors is often more impressive than a larger single source of funding. This is important because projects often run into trouble along the way. Maybe bids come back high or construction finds an unexpected utility or artifact. When such problems occur, projects are more likely to proceed and be successful with a broad range of support.(It’s nearly a decade old, but our primer on local revenue best practices is still a good starting point to learn about the available options.)

Finally, support from your congressional delegation is good too. It won’t help if your project doesn’t match the program criteria, but USDOT might use this support as a tie breaker. If there are a few equally good projects, it just makes sense for USDOT to choose the one that has support from the Congressional delegation. Letters are a good starting point, but phone calls and meetings with USDOT are better.

3) Know the funding program parameters

Choosing and applying to the right competitive grant program is necessary for most effectively coordinating the above strategies. If you would like to know the breadth of options available, check out our funding briefs. You can view all the various programs by the projects they can fund and for which jurisdictional level. Note: many grants have wide flexibility that may not be immediately obvious. We did our best in these funding briefs to describe these flexibilities, so read closely. 

Once an applicant selects a program, applicants must identify what USDOT requires for that funding. The Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO) for each program explicitly states the requirements (such as the 2022 RAISE grants NOFO that was released on January 28th). Past NOFOs and grant applications—even from other applicants!—available in the public record, are a useful resource for understanding what successful applications look like. Applicants who are willing to put in more time can dig into the US Code (23 or 49 USC) or the Code of Federal Regulations (23 or 49 CFR). 

Applicants will also need to set up the necessary administrative steps. For instance, they will need to know or request a Unique Entity Identifier through SAM.gov. If your organization has been using a DUNS number, a unique identifier has already been assigned since the federal government is migrating away from DUNS by April 4, 2022. These steps are more numerous than we can easily include here, but we can direct you to some resources that can help: 1) The USDOT maintains a website on how to do business with the FHWA, which contains a specific page on FHWA terms and conditions, 2) FTA has its own website outlining the The Transit Award Management System (TrAMS), its hub for federal transit grants, and 3) the General Services Administration maintains a site for live grant opportunity listings. 

Read and pay close attention to who is eligible to apply, what projects are eligible for funding, as well as when and how to apply. And get to work on all of these requirements early. Get your Unique Entity Identifier as soon as you can, as this will take weeks if you don’t already have one. In fact, you do not have to wait to apply for a grant to set this up. Also, Grants.gov requires you to set up an account, and it can get overloaded by very popular programs close to the deadline. Don’t risk it! Do everything you can in advance. Apply a week early because you will not get more time if the system goes down at the last minute.

Still unsure on program parameters or if your project is eligible? Each NOFO lists a webinar to get an overview of the funding opportunity, ask questions, and learn the process to follow up with additional questions. You can also contact your FHWA Division HQ or Regional FTA HQ and ask questions of them over email or phone. In addition, T4A members gain access to our staff and our knowledge of federal programs. 

Want access to in-depth analysis of what your community needs to do to tap into federal funding? Consider joining as a T4A Member.

USDOT controls $200+ billion in competitive grants for states and metros

Bag of money
Bag of money
Via pxhere

While the bulk of the $643 billion for surface transportation in the infrastructure bill goes out to state DOTs, more than $200 billion stays with USDOT to be awarded via competitive grants to states, metro areas, and tribal governments—through dozens of newly created, updated, and existing competitive grant programs.

We’ve been following the money since the infrastructure bill passed back in November 2021, highlighting the most important things you need to know about the deal, actions the administration could take to accomplish their broader goals, some of the positives contained in the bill, and then precisely how much money there is for transportation in this unprecedented windfall.

In this post, we want to provide a brief high-level overview of how much competitive funding there is, why it matters that USDOT has some control over which projects get funding, and a few notable programs to pay attention to for various reasons—good and bad alike.

promo graphic for a guide to the IIJA

This post is part of T4America’s suite of materials explaining the 2021 $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which governs all federal transportation policy and funding through 2026. What do you need to know about the new infrastructure law? We know that federal transportation policy can be intimidating and confusing. Our hub for the new law will walk you through it, from the basics all the way to more complex details.

First, what are competitive grant programs, and why does it matter that USDOT has some control over them?

Unlike the much larger formula programs that dole out a fixed amount of money to states or metro areas based on factors like population and miles driven, projects are selected for funding by USDOT in competitive grant programs based on how they will perform in priority areas, and USDOT often has wide discretion for establishing those criteria. As one example, President Trump’s USDOT dramatically shifted the BUILD (formerly TIGER) program from more innovative, multimodal projects to one focused mostly on building and expanding roads. (This program still exists and is now called RAISE.)

For the Biden administration to fulfill their ambitious pledges to improve state of repair and safety, eliminate inequities, and reduce emissions from transportation that are fueling climate change, they will have to use every bit of discretion at their disposal within these competitive programs to ensure the projects they fund contribute to those priority goals.

A high level look at overall funding for the deal’s competitive grant programs

The infrastructure law contains funding for multiple competitive grant programs. Some are new to this bill, addressing emerging and poignant issues in transportation. Within these USDOT-administered programs, just north of $103 billion is set aside for the Federal Highway Administration, $30 billion is for the Federal Transit Administration, $59 billion is for the Federal Railroad Administration, and $6 billion is for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. This funding breakdown is notable because each modal administration operates within parallel but often different policy frameworks, which influences how the grant programs get administered. 

To help you best utilize them, T4America has organized a high-level list of the various competitive grant programs by topic area. Two caveats: These many programs overlap in purpose, and many are created to move the needle in multiple areas. I.e., TIGER was a multimodal program, a freight program, a safety program, a bike/ped program—all squished into one. Also, this list is not exhaustive by any stretch, though we are producing a complete list like that for our T4America members to equip them to take advantage of the funding that best meets the challenges and context of their communities.

The lion’s share goes to multimodal grant programs

Approximately $116 billion of the $200 billion allocated to competitive grant programs is aimed towards planning for, advancing, building, and implementing multimodal connections in our communities. This broad category is typically highly competitive, considering that it typically funds notable but neglected local or regional priorities that elected officials love to cut the ribbons on. More specifically, this category includes:

$31.25 billion towards larger national, state, and local project assistance programs

  • RAISE grants: $30 billion over five years for a competitive grant process towards roads, rail, transit, and port projects that help achieve national, state, and/or regional objectives. (For comparison’s sake the old TIGER/BUILD program it replaced invested only $4 billion since 2009.) As with the program it replaces, the criteria USDOT writes and how they administer the selection process will have an enormous impact on whether or not these projects advance the administration’s goals.
  • TIFIA: $1.25 billion over five years to help finance large transportation projects with direct loans, loan guarantees, and credit risk assistance. It’s first-come, first-serve, though some make a compelling case we’d get far better projects if it was discretionary.

$27.5 billion in transit grants

  • Capital Investment Grants: $23 billion over five years for expanding or building new transit, 
  • Bus and bus facilities grants: $2 billion over five years to procure, repair, and/or enhance buses as well as construct, enhance, and/or bring to a state of repair bus-related facilities, and 
  • Ferry grants: $2.5 billion over five years, of which $0.5 billion is for the procurement, repair, and/or enhancement of ferries to low to no emissions, and $2 billion is for rural essential ferry services.

$54 billion for rail-focused programs

  • Consolidated Railroad Infrastructure Safety Improvement (CRISI) ($10 billion over 5 years), which focuses to improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of intercity passenger and freight rail,
  • The new Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail ($43.5 billion) which allows the expansion of or construction on new intercity passenger rail routes in addition to capital projects that address state-of-good repair, and 
  • Railroad Improvement Financing (RRIF) program ($600 million) which helps to finance railroad projects with direct loans, loan guarantees, and credit risk assistance.

However, there are a few programs in this broad category that are new but unfunded and therefore subject to annual appropriations. That includes the Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program, authorizing $1 billion towards active transportation networks in communities, as well as the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation grant program, authorizing $1 billion towards piloting innovative technologies that improves safety and system operation efficiency.

Repair

Approximately $50 billion worth of competitive programs are aimed towards prioritizing the state of repair in our communities. The bulk of that (~$43 billion) is directed towards the new Bridge Investment Program, which is a program to repair, rehabilitate, replace or protect bridges that are in disrepair. (Not to be confused with funding for bridge repair flowing through a new formula program announced just this week.) There is also just shy of $2.5 billion directed towards transit state of good repair grants that targets heavy rail transit and a station retrofits program for compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Additionally, $250 million is directed towards rail Restoration and Enhancement grants for passenger rail infrastructure repair. 

While it’s laudable for the infrastructure law to have discretionary grant programs dedicated to various aspects of the state of transportation repair, the fact that repair priorities are not central to the much larger, massive state-controlled formula programs (other than a strong encouragement memo from FHWA) leaves much to be desired.

Safety

Approximately $12 billion of the competitive grant programs are predominantly aimed towards prioritizing safety. Of that money, $6 billion is focused on the new Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program. That notable new program focuses on improving street safety and reorienting it towards people focus and is exclusively intended for non-state government entities (think counties, cities, towns, tribal communities, regional organizations like MPOs). Additionally, $5 billion in grant funding is focused on eliminating rail crossings. 

However, there’s also a clear, stated emphasis on improving safety woven through the majority of many competitive grant programs—including big ticket programs like RAISE—so the administration has a real opportunity to make safety a tangible priority in how they stand up the projects and run the selection processes.

Climate and environmental mitigation

Approximately $15 billion of the competitive grant programs are aimed towards making an impact on climate change and the environment, thought the biggest single pot under this umbrella is for electrifying the transportation system (i.e, electric cars and trucks), which is a high priority for Biden’s USDOT, which is already seeking implementation guidance. Within this category, there is:

  • $7.5 billion aimed towards electrification of our transportation system (focused extensively but not exclusively on cars and roads).
  • Complementary to a related $7.3 billion formula grant program, the new $1.4 billion PROTECT competitive grant program has tiered layers of funding opportunities focused on planning, capacity building, and targeted climate mitigation and/or resiliency infrastructure funding.
  • $5 billion is set aside for culvert restoration, removal, or replacement, so as to reduce the impact on wetland environments and fishery.
  • $400 million in grants are aimed to curb freight emissions at ports.
  • $500 million authorized (but unfunded) for Healthy Streets, which looks at streetscape treatments to reduce the urban heat island effect in communities.

Equity

One of the most exciting additions in the infrastructure bill is the $1 billion for the new Reconnecting Communities program focused on tearing down or bridging transportation infrastructure that divides communities and promoting community connections that are people- versus vehicle-focused. The program is notable in working to redress the socioeconomic damage to marginalized communities, though the funding in the infrastructure law is only seed money towards a significant need in the US. Additionally, the Healthy Streets program, noted above, would bring numerous environmental benefits, and could be deployed to target the urban heat island effects that disproportionately impact marginalized communities.

Rural needs

While there is $3.25 billion set aside for rural surface transportation grants, T4America is disappointed that $1.5 billion of that is aimed at just building more highways in Appalachia, as if highways were the sole cure to all rural transportation needs. Rural America desperately deserves a more complete vision for transportation. (We have some ideas.)

Positioning for competitive grant application success

With about five dozen competitive, surface transportation grant programs to administer, USDOT faces a heavy lift to get these programs off the ground, on top of administering the legacy programs that already existed. However, that doesn’t mean communities can’t start to position themselves for success. There’s opportunity to think about not only what projects to pursue, but also contemplate identifying and leveraging  supplemental funding sources.

BUILDing a better competitive grant program, in 5 steps

Under President Trump, USDOT has hijacked the TIGER/BUILD competitive grant program, taking it far from its intended function. After a decade of experience with the program there are a number of simple steps that lawmakers could take to get it back on track and even improve it.


This is the second post in a series about the BUILD program. Learn more about the Trump administration’s dramatic changes to the BUILD program in the first post. Read the third post or download the full analysis. 

The BUILD program’s greatest strengths lie in its differences from other federal transportation funding programs, which should be reinforced, rather than diminished in order to award funding to the same kind of projects as core federal transportation programs. BUILD has the potential to continue to fund great projects only if Congress stays diligent and ensures that USDOT executes the program as intended. BUILD is not a roads program, it is not a rural funding program, and it is not another vehicle for funneling more money without any accountability to state DOTs.

Recommendations to improve BUILD

1. Eliminate the $25 million cap on awards.

Even though the program is now larger (average of $967 million during the Trump administration) than it was in most years of the Obama administration ($596 million per year on average), the most recent appropriations bill included a $25 million cap on BUILD grant awards. This has the unintended consequence of making it more difficult to advance innovative, multimodal, and far more transformative or nationally significant projects. For such projects, $25 million simply isn’t enough.1

The maximum award of $25 million was an informal practice established by USDOT early on when the program was funded at substantially lower levels, in order to help them equitably distribute a small amount of funds across the country, as mandated by Congress. However, with Congress providing larger amounts of funding for BUILD, this unnecessary cap serves only to limit the program’s ability to support larger projects that also bring more benefits.

2. Award planning grants, particularly for transit-oriented development and transit projects.

While recent appropriations bills have made planning grants eligible for funding, no such grants have been awarded. Many local communities desire investments in transit, transit-oriented development, and other multimodal infrastructure, but lack the resources or expertise to adequately plan for such investments.

Congress authorized planning grants within TIGER/BUILD four times—in 2010, 2014, 2018, and again in 2019, and USDOT awarded a combined 64 planning grants in 2010 and 2014. These grants helped local communities advance projects that were ultimately funded by a subsequent TIGER/BUILD construction grant, or other sources. For example, the 2014 funding of the San Francisco Bay Area Core Capacity Transit Study helped enable the advancement of the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity project in the federal transit capital program. In Indiana, another 2014 planning grant helped locals to advance the Red Line BRT project which also successfully received funds from the transit capital program and is currently under construction.

Innovative projects can struggle to get off the ground because transportation agencies can be hesitant to spend money on planning a project if there isn’t going to be any funding available to build it. But a program like BUILD can’t cover the capital costs of a project if no basic planning has been done. That’s why these BUILD planning funds are so important. USDOT should use its authority to make planning awards where appropriate, and Congress should also encourage USDOT to use this authority as well.

3. Strengthen requirements for modal parity.

This administration has made a dramatic shift to use the BUILD program to fund traditional road projects which can already be easily funded without restriction through a variety of conventional federal programs. This misuse of the program should prompt Congress to strengthen requirements to allocate funding to multimodal projects, including transit and passenger rail. Alternatively, Congress should consider dedicating more trust fund money to these modes if BUILD funding is not going to be made available to them.

4. Require a more equitable urban/rural funding split.

Congress should make clear that a more equitable urban-rural split is appropriate and provide more clear guidance to USDOT about how they are expected to consider the needs of both urban and rural America. Currently, USDOT awards grants to either urban or rural projects, with a set-aside for rural projects. This creates a false choice between the two.

For example, the CREATE project in Illinois, which will relieve freight rail bottlenecks and allow goods to more easily move to market through the country, is considered an “urban” project. This, despite the fact that about 25 percent of rail traffic in the United States travels through the Chicago region, and farmers and businesses from rural areas will benefit from reduced freight congestion. The benefits of an urban or rural project are not limited only to the jurisdiction where construction will take place. USDOT should consider the full impact of a project, on both urban and rural areas when determining a projects classification.

5. Authorize the BUILD program in long-term transportation policy.

The TIGER/BUILD program stands out as the only major federal transportation program that has not been authorized by the FAST Act and previous authorizing legislation, leaving its fate in limbo each year. While Congress has continued to fund it through the annual appropriations process, authorizing the program over multiple years at $1.5 billion annually would provide some certainty to potential applicants and allow Congress to establish more policy guardrails to ensure it operates as intended.

Many of these recommendations currently have support in Congress. In particular, 20 members of Congress recently signed a letter led by Representative Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11) to USDOT expressing concern about how they have been facilitating the BUILD program. That letter endorsed some of these recommendations.

The BUILD program has long been a bipartisan winner because it is so flexible. It gives communities a unique opportunity (and in some cases the only opportunity) to win direct federal assistance for a priority transportation project that would otherwise be hard or impossible to fund. However, the dramatic shift in focus underway at USDOT seriously undermines the utility of the program by directing dollars away from innovative, multimodal projects and instead heavily favoring conventional road projects that can already be more easily funded.

The recommendations above will help Congress keep TIGER roaring (or BUILD building) as the program enters its second decade.

Up next, lessons from the past 10 years of TIGER/BUILD that should inform federal transportation policy at large. Read the final post or download the full analysis.

Sean Doyle was the primary author of this report for Transportation for America, with contributions from Beth Osborne, Scott Goldstein, Jordan Chafetz, and Stephen Lee Davis.

Taming the TIGER: Trump turns innovative grant program into another roads program

Under President Trump, the U.S. Department of Transportation has effectively turned the formerly innovative BUILD program—created to advance complex, hard-to-fund projects—into little more than a rural roads program, dramatically undercutting both its intent and utility.

Following this week’s announcement of an 11th round in BUILD competitive grants ($900 million) available to almost any public entity for transportation projects, Transportation for America is releasing this new comparative and constructive critique of USDOT’s BUILD program (formerly known as TIGER) in three parts. Up first today, what we found after examining ten years of awards. Read the second post in the series or download the full analysis.

The Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) program has been one of the most popular and impactful transportation programs in the federal arsenal. Conceived during the first few months of the Obama administration at the height of the financial crisis in 2009, the program originally bore the name TIGER: Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery.

This unique program was powerful precisely because of how it differed from most other federal transportation programs.

The program is uniquely popular because of its flexibility.
Funds can be awarded to any public entity—like a city government, public university, or tribal government—and can fund almost any kind of transportation project—roads, bridges, transit, freight, ports, bike, pedestrian, or any combination—in a wide variety of contexts. Given that most federal transportation programs award funding to state DOTs and restrict funding to one particular mode, the BUILD program has provided a much needed avenue for local entities to finance multimodal or complicated projects that cross numerous jurisdictional lines.

The program’s competition resulted in projects with greater benefits.
Unlike nearly all federal transportation dollars that are awarded automatically by formulas based on population, lane-miles, or other simple criteria, USDOT receives, scores, and awards BUILD funding based on the extent to which projects improve safety, state of repair, economic competitiveness, quality of life, and environmental sustainability. If you have a great project that’s multimodal, crosses city lines, and includes multiple partners, BUILD is an opportunity to fund it—and often the only way to do so with direct federal resources. Over the 10 rounds of the program so far, USDOT received more than 8,443 applications from all 50 states and U.S. territories requesting more than $156 billion in funding.2

The program encouraged more non-federal investment in transportation.
Since 2009, the program has awarded nearly $7.1 billion to 554 projects across the nation, leveraging billions more in non-BUILD funding. Over the first eight rounds, on average, projects attracted more than 3.6 additional, non-federal dollars for every TIGER grant dollar.

The focus has shifted since the Trump administration took over the program

A program which once heavily funded multimodal, transformative projects of regional and national significance which would otherwise be difficult to fund is now focused on expanding road capacity with an extreme bias for projects in rural areas. By comparing the projects selected for funding over the last 10 years and their level of funding, we identified four dramatic shifts in the program.

More roads, less multimodal

In the two most recent rounds of TIGER/BUILD awards—the first two years the program was managed by the Trump administration—only about 10 percent of funding went to transit projects. This is a big departure from the previous eight years when transit projects received between 28 and 40 percent of funding. Conversely, the share of funding dedicated to traditional road projects has grown to all-time highs; in 2018, road projects—most of which are eligible to receive normal formula dollars from their state—received more than 60 percent of the funding for the first time, after hovering below 30 percent for years.

While the name of the program may have been changed to BUILD in 2018, the congressional intent did not change. The small amount of funding for multimodal projects is inconsistent with the law which directs USDOT to invest “in a variety of transportation modes.”3 TIGER was created in part because most federal transportation dollars are already focused on roads via the highway formulas.

If a road project didn’t rank high enough to be funded from a state’s share of the $42 billion guaranteed to be spent annually from the Highway Trust Fund, it likely isn’t essential and shouldn’t displace other more creative projects that can’t be funded through conventional federal transportation programs.

More capacity, less repair

A closer look at the road projects selected over the years shows that the Trump administration has focused more heavily on capacity expansion (i.e. new roads and road widenings) versus repair and bridge replacement. The first year of BUILD (round X) set two records: not only was a record share of total funding devoted to roads, a record percentage of that funding (70 percent) was dedicated to capacity expansion.

Note: this graphic only includes projects that were categorized as “roads” in the first graphic above. It does not include complete streets projects.

While policymakers of all stripes echo the constant refrain of “repairing our crumbling roads and bridges,” the Trump administration has prioritized doing the exact opposite with the BUILD program, largely opting to build new infrastructure (increasing the amount of infrastructure that needs to be maintained) rather than focusing on caring for our existing assets.

More rural, less urban

The past two of years of awards have disproportionately favored rural areas. While rural areas certainly deserve transportation investments, they should be proportional. The U.S. Census Bureau found that in 2016, approximately 19 percent of Americans lived in rural areas while 81 percent of Americans lived in urban areas.4 Reflecting where most Americans live, during the first eight years of the TIGER program (2009-2016) projects in urban areas received, on average, 75 percent of funding. Yet in the past two rounds of the program, projects in urban areas have only received an average of 33 percent of funding.

When providing BUILD funding in the last two appropriation bills, Congress directed USDOT to fund projects in rural and urban areas “to ensure an equitable geographic distribution of funds.”5 Disproportionately awarding grants to projects in rural areas is hardly equitable and is inconsistent with the intent and letter of the law.

Critics often complained during the earlier years of the program that it was too urban-focused based solely on the location of the chosen projects. However, many projects classified as urban were actually projects of national significance that have great utility and benefits for rural areas. For example, Port of New Orleans Rail Yard Improvements were funded during TIGER II “to reduce congestion, facilitate the movement of marine and rail cargo, stimulate international commerce, and maintain an essential port.” This project brings immense benefits for the city, the rural areas around it, and the country even though it was classified as an “urban project.” It creates jobs in New Orleans at the port and moves exports like poultry, paper, and pulp to market, a critical need for farmers and manufacturers across the country.

While the Trump administration has made investment in rural communities a key talking point, USDOT’s project selection reflects a very narrow and overly simplistic understanding of what can actually help those communities. Projects that get goods from rural America to market are left off the table just because they might be located in an urban area.

A new rail flyover at 63rd and State in Chicago that eliminated an at-grade crossing. TIGER I provided $100 million to a package of rail infrastructure projects in the Chicago region known as CREATE. While classified as an urban project, CREATE is addressing a series of bottlenecks that result in passenger delays in Chicago and freight delays throughout the country, bringing benefits to urban and rural communities alike across the region, state, and country. Photo by Mark Llanuza.

More funding for state DOTs, less for anyone else

One of the greatest strengths of the BUILD program is that it’s one of the few ways for local governments (or any public entity) to directly receive transportation funding from the federal government to advance their own priority projects, without having to go hat-in-hand to the state. If a municipality or public transit agency conceives of a great project that ticks the required boxes under the law—and if they can identify a local matching contribution—BUILD funding is an option.

Most other federal transportation funds are directed to and controlled by state DOTs. (A smaller share goes to regional metropolitan planning organizations.) As most mayors or other local elected leaders know from firsthand experience, a state DOT’s priorities for spending within their community’s borders are often not the same.

Under the Trump administration, more funds have been going to state DOTs—an average of 37.5 percent awarded to state DOTs compared to 28 percent under the Obama administration.6

Up next, our recommendations for re-BUILDing the program in the second post. Or download the full analysis.

Want to get updates on reports like this? Sign up for email from T4America.

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Sean Doyle was the primary author of this report for Transportation for America, with contributions from Beth Osborne, Scott Goldstein and Stephen Lee Davis.

Elected officials and local organizations: Support TIGER & public transit funding

Facing the prospect of severe cuts from the Trump administration and Congress, T4America is looking for elected officials and organizations to show their support for investing in smart projects to move goods, move people and support the local economies that our nation’s prosperity is built on.

Updated 9/6/2017 9:00 a.m. — The letter is closed. We’ll publish the final letter and share the signatories soon. Thanks!

Calling all elected officials, local, civic and business leaders, and local, regional or state organizations! Sign a letter urging those currently assembling the federal transportation budget for the upcoming year (FY 2018) to prioritize funding for TIGER competitive grants, new transit construction, and passenger rail programs.

Read the full letter and sign it today — we’re aiming to deliver it before the end of August. Ed note: This letter is intended for organizations and is not open for individuals, other than elected officials at any level.

(letter is closed)

Where do we stand in the budget process?

For these three programs, this simple chart below shows four things: the current funding levels for this year, what the President proposed in his budget earlier this year, and what was recently approved by appropriations committees in the House and the Senate.

Enacted 2017 levelsPresident Trump's request for 2018House 2018 AppropriationsSenate 2018 Appropriations
TIGER Grants$500 million$0$0$550 million
Transit Capital Grants$2.4 billion$0$1.75 billion$2.133 billion
Amtrak & passenger rail$1.495 billion$795 million

(All cuts come from eliminating federal funding for all long-distance routes)		$1.4 billion$1.6 billion
TOTAL THUD FUNDING$57.65 billion$47.4 billion$56.5 billion$60.058 billion

As you can see, while committees in the Senate ignored the president’s call to eliminate TIGER and funding for new transit construction outright, those final decisions will be made by Congress as they debate the budget on the floor and then try to reconcile their different versions. (Worth noting: The House proposed eliminating TIGER funding and a barebones budget for keeping in-progress transit projects moving, which means that’s their starting point on negotiations.)

What we’re asking for is for Congress to approve a budget that fully funds the FAST Act, the current transportation authorization, already agreed to by Congress and approved by a bipartisan vote back in 2015.

More background is below:

TIGER

The majority of all federal transportation dollars are awarded to states and metro areas in a way to ensure everyone gets a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars or how well-conceived their projects are. TIGER operates differently.

The TIGER program has illustrated a productive way to use a small amount of money (about $500 million annually since 2009) to incentivize smarter projects based on their merits. This fiercely competitive program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to spend the dollars more effectively. They also bring more private, local, or state dollars to the table. Through the first seven rounds, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars, in contrast to federal money for building new roads, for example, which only bring in about 20 state/local cents for each 80 federal cents.

Transit Capital Investment Grants

The Transit Capital Investment Grants program (often broadly referred to as New Starts) supports metro areas of all sizes that are investing their own money in building or expanding transit service.

While making the case for eliminating the program, the Trump Administration recently stated that “localities should fund these localized projects,” but local voters and leaders are doing that already, putting their own skin in the game to meet the growing demand for well-connected locations served by transit. At the ballot box last November alone, voters approved more than $200 billion dollars in tax increases to invest in these projects. But cities of all sizes are counting on the federal government to continue supporting these bottom-up efforts, as they’ve done for decades. Eliminating this program or even just reducing its funding will threaten their economic prospects and their ability to satisfy the booming demand from residents and employers alike for well-connected locations served by transit.

Passenger rail

President Trump proposed cutting Amtrak’s budget nearly in half, with nearly all cuts coming from eliminating long-distance passenger rail service. Funding for the Northeast Corridor would survive, as would the funding for state-supported routes.

But neither chamber heeded this call from the administration: the House approved slightly less funding compared to last year, while the Senate provided the full amount outlined in the FAST Act, allocating competitive funds for safety, state of good repair for the Northeast Corridor, and operating and capital support for restored or new passenger service throughout the rest of the country.

Though the program’s future is uncertain, $500 million in TIGER grants are now available

Though the future of the program could be in doubt, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced yesterday that $500 million is now available for the best local projects in the next round of the TIGER competitive grant program.

Sec. Foxx making the TIGER announcement at the NACO conference. Photo from the USDOT Fast Lane blog.

Sec. Foxx making the TIGER announcement at the NACO conference. Photo from the USDOT Fast Lane blog.

Projects hoping to win TIGER funds compete against each other and are selected on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible. The program has funded an incredible multimodal station in Normal, Illinois, an overhaul of the downtown street network in Dubuque, IA that helped expand the tax base by $77 million and an improvement to the West Memphis port to boost cargo capacity by 2,000 percent, among hundreds of others.

It’s one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation project, spurring innovation, leveraging federal funding by matching it with greater local dollars and targeting projects that provide a high return on investment.

The program is open and available, with grant applications due on April 29th.

We’ve got a special members-only webinar coming up on March 3rd with our TIGER grant expert Beth Osborne, T4A’s Senior Policy Advisor. T4America members can find a link to register below.

[member_content]Members: Interested in applying for this round of TIGER grants? Join T4A and TIGER grant expert Beth Osborne, T4A’s Senior Policy Advisor, for an informative session on March 3, 2016 at 4pm EST. Register here. [/member_content]

While this eighth round of TIGER is open for business now, will there be a ninth? Don’t forget that congressional appropriators will soon be deciding TIGER’s future, along with that of other important transportation programs. Do you represent a city, county, metro planning organization, or other group? We’re looking for these sorts of groups to sign a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee in support of these programs.

Join us for a discussion on the TIGER grant program and what you need to know before applying

T4America is hosting a webinar this Thursday at 3 p.m. to help municipalities and states interested in applying for this year’s $500 million in grants available in the latest round of TIGER grant funding.

Join us on Thursday, April 23, at 2 p.m. for a discussion with Beth Osborne, T4America’s Senior Policy Advisor, on the ins and outs of the federal TIGER grant program, examples of past winners, and how to best craft a winning application. Communities across the country have benefitted from over $4 billion in grants for innovative, multimodal projects over the last six rounds of funding dating back to February 2010, and you can see them all here on our TIGER map.

Before coming to T4America, Osborne was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy at USDOT, where she ran the TIGER program. Almost no one inside or outside of USDOT knows more about the program or how it works, and she will outline the basic information, show examples of previous winners and share tips you need to put together a smart application.

The 7th round of the TIGER competitive grant application period is currently open, which includes a pre-application deadline of May 4, 2015 and a final application deadline of June 5, 2015.

Register Today

Could a national TIGER program co-exist along with a version in each state? Yes, says U.S. DOT

As momentum builds for a proposal to give local communities of all sizes direct access to a share of federal transportation dollars via statewide competitive grant programs, a USDOT official affirmed that it would complement the existing national grant program and help meet more of the pressing needs in these communities.

Senator Wicker asks a question during this week's hearing.

Senator Wicker asks a question during this week’s hearing.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) is a sponsor of the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, which would create the state programs. During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week, he asked Peter Rogoff, under secretary for policy at USDOT, whether a statewide grant program similar to TIGER could work in tandem with it. As a prelude, he gave an example of the good that grants to local communities can do:

I want to give you an example. There were three small counties in Southwest Mississippi that came together in a project called Tri-Mississippi; Claiborne County, Jefferson, and Franklin County. They submitted a TIGER application in 2014 to fund the replacement of 22 failing bridges and the repair of 40 miles of roadway. This grant was awarded to Tri-Mississippi, and through this project we were able to create, we believe, 262 additional jobs in an area that was highly distressed economically.

The booming demand for the TIGER program underscores two points: There is far more demand for the grants than currently supplied, and locals are clamoring for more direct access to fund smart projects that are often neglected by their states. Sen. Wicker continues:

So, good news for these three small counties; bad news for the counties that submitted equally excellent applications and weren’t chosen. In this system we have learned that nationwide nearly 6,100 applications have been submitted and only 343 receive funds. This represents a project award rate of less than 6 percent. Last year’s competition alone had projects requesting funding 15 times the amount authorized in the [TIGER] program. As one of our witnesses mentioned the needs are out there, and we are simply not meeting the needs.

TIGER grants often go toward bigger projects and it can be a challenge for a small community to compete with big metro areas or joint projects from multiple states to win funding, as well as handling the complications of preparing an application for a small community with limited staff. Meanwhile, their state controls almost all of the federal formula funding that comes to their state, and locals have little control or say over where it gets spent. Sen. Wicker added:

That is why Senator Booker and I have developed a state-based competitive grant program that you might call state-based TIGER, or TIGER-esque program for states. We introduced it last year. We’ve reintroduced it again this year in the form of the Innovation and Surface Transportation Act. Discuss this concept of a certain portion of funds being set-aside for competitive, merit-based applications, so more of these local communities are able to utilize funds in a way where they could not possibly submit a match.”

Mr. Rogoff answered:

“I think there is certainly room for both, but I think there is value in a federal program where we can disseminate best practices, and if Mississippi also wants to mirror that with a competitive, innovative program that can go to local communities, more the better.”

The more the better, indeed.

The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act would give local communities more access to, and control over, a share of the federal transportation dollars that flow into their states. Just like TIGER, it would be competitive and projects would compete on the merits. But unlike TIGER, the selection panel would be made up of state and local representatives. Rather than compete against every community in the country, applicants would pursue funds along with their peers within the state.

Rallying support for this measure may be the best chance we have this year to get federal dollars closer to taxpayers’ communities.

Just this week, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) indicated he believes the current system giving states all the control is sufficiently “local”, Congressional Quarterly reported. Rep. Shuster needs to hear from his fellow representatives that the status quo isn’t cutting it in their communities. Now is the time to remind them all that communities need more access to federal dollars, not less.

Send a message to your representative and senators and urge them to support this bill.

Innovation in Surface Transportation Act featured

Competitive grant programs in PA and OR provide a blueprint for a different approach

There’s strong support for a plan in Congress to give locals more access to their transportation dollars, but two states are already leading the way on the idea of competitive grants for smart projects — and Pennsylvania took a big step today.

Drexel Master Plan before after
A photo of current conditions and a rendering from the campus master plan for Drexel University around 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, one of the grantees. More info below.

The Pennsylvania DOT today announced the initial winners of a new statewide competitive grant program specifically for multimodal projects and the impressive list shows just how much demand there is at the local level for these types of innovative projects.

Pennsylvania was one of 12 states that managed to successfully raise new transportation revenue over the last couple of years, but they went a step beyond just raising funds to pour into the same old projects or plug budget gaps. After changing their transportation funding structure, they directed a portion of the new money raised each year into a new, statewide, multimodal grant program.

The first round of winners totaling $84 million is an impressive collection of roadway, freight and passenger rail, aviation, port and waterway, bicycle and pedestrian safety, and other projects. Every single applicant has their own financial skin in the game, bringing significant local or private money to the table.

That last detail is important — applicants are required to have 30 percent of the total cost in hand from other sources to even be considered for receiving state funds. By contrast, traditional federal formula funds only require a 20 percent match. And unlike most other grant programs, private entities can apply and win funding (more on one of those below), which means private money can be brought to bear on improving the transportation system.

Pennsylvania is not the first to create a program like this. In 2005, Oregon successfully created a program called ConnectOregon, which has received more than 528 applications and awarded $482 million in grants since the program’s inception. In just the first four rounds of competitive grants, $340 million in grants for multimodal projects leveraged an additional $500 million in non-state funds.

One thing that local elected officials like to hear is that these programs in PA or OR (or the potential programs in every state that Congress’ Innovation in Surface Transportation Act would create) are equally accessible to rural and urban areas.

Even if you’re a smaller city, the eligibility is the same: Do you have a good project that hits all the competitive criteria from the state? Does your project bring a strong return on investment? Are you bringing your own money to the table? Then you’ve got as good a chance to win funding as a big project in Philadelphia.

Mayors and elected officials throughout the country are looking for an opportunity to compete for funds — especially those that are too often left out of the decision-making process. Representatives in both chambers of Congress have taken these concerns to heart and incorporated some of the best qualities of these two state programs into The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act, which has strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

Pore over the list of winners in Pennsylvania announced today and it’s obvious just how much pent-up demand there is to get funding for smart, innovative local projects. One project in Pittsburgh stands out from the typical winners you see in TIGER, because it’s a private entity. The Oxford Development Company received $2.2 million to augment a development project that will bring tangible benefits to the transportation network in the neighborhood and for the city. Oxford has a $130 million plan to develop Three Crossings, a mixed-use development in the Strip District that will include a multimodal transportation facility on-site and improved bike and pedestrian connections into that historic walkable neighborhood just north of downtown.

A few others worth noting:

  • Port Authority of Allegheny County, McKeesport – $1 million to demolish the existing McKeesport Transportation Center and build a new multimodal terminal that will bring together regional and local buses, vans, and ACCESS paratransit, a park-and-ride lot, and a major bicycle trail. (Photos of the current station)
  • Drexel University, Philadelphia – $2.5 million to create an integrated plan to address transportation, commercial opportunities and the station and facilities in the area around Philadelphia’s bustling 30th Street Station. (Photo from the Drexel Master Plan below)
  • Erie Regional Airport Authority, Millcreek Township – $700,000 for improvements to the Erie International Airport terminal building.
  • Economic Progress Alliance of Crawford County, Greenwood Township – $1 million to construct an 85-car unit train loop track in the Keystone Regional Industrial Park that will allow a an 85-car train to be serviced, unloaded and turned around at the Keystone Regional Industrial Park without having to uncouple its engine or cars. The state’s $1 million contribution will make it possible for this $7.2 million project to proceed. Story.
  • Big Spring School District, West Pennsboro Township – $525,000 to complete pedestrian safety improvements, including the design of a pedestrian tunnel connecting Big Spring High School with the fitness center and middle school located across the street in this small town.

The details on a new bill giving locals greater access to their federal dollars

Updated 3/18/15: This bill was reintroduced in the 114th Congress on 3/17/15 in both the House and the Senate with new bill numbers, H.R. 1393 and S.762. It is identical to the version released in 2014 detailed below and this post still serves as an explainer for what the new bill would do. -Ed.

Last week we reported on the introduction of an important bill to expand local access to federal transportation dollars, the Innovation in Surface Transportation Act. Today we want to provide a little more detail about how the proposed new grant program would work.

First, a reminder of the need: Local leaders are the ones who feel the heat when crumbling infrastructure stalls traffic, when workers can’t connect to jobs, streets are unsafe or goods get stuck in congestion. But they lack the access to federal funds that could help them fix those problems and boost their economies, and they have little say in how their state’s federal allocation gets spent.

That’s gotten worse in recent years, not better. When Congress adopted the current federal program, MAP-21, in 2012, it was touted as providing more “local control”. But while states did get more latitude, local communities actually lost access, to the point that only a fraction of the available dollars flow to the cities, towns and suburbs in the metro areas where 85 percent of us live.

The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act would make good on the promise of local control by reserving a small share of transportation dollars in each state to make grants for local projects. (In the 114th Congress, the bill was introduced on 3/17/15 by Senators Wicker (R-MS), Booker (D-NJ), Casey (D-PA) and Murkowski (R-AK) in the Senate, and Representatives Rodney Davis (R-IL), Dina Titus (D-NV) Gregg Harper, (R-MS), Cheri Bustos (D-IL), Dan Lipinski (D-IL) and Matt Cartwright (D-PA) in the House. See updated bill numbers in first paragraph above. -Ed.)

Q: How would projects be selected?

Grants would be awarded based on the strength of the proposal: Will the project result in the highest return on investment? Does it improve safety and reliability? Does the community have their own funds committed to the plan?

Projects would be selected by a statewide jury of local “peers” – other stakeholders who also understand local needs – in collaboration with state DOT representatives. This is critical, because while it ensures DOT involvement, it also makes sure the vision for state progress belongs not just to the bureaucracy but includes regional and local planning organizations, stakeholders from local chambers of commerce, the active transportation community, transit agencies, air quality boards, ports and others.

While each state can tailor their program to suit their needs, the bill outlines a range of selection criteria that should be considered, including improving safety and reliability for all users, promoting multimodal connectivity, improving access to jobs and opportunity, strengthening the overall return on investment, and contributing to a more efficient national multimodal freight network, to name just a few.

Q: Why competitive grants rather than doling out specific amounts to every community by formula?

For one, when projects compete against each other, the sponsoring communities work harder to develop better projects and stretch to make the most of every dollar. And that’s where the “innovation” from the act’s title comes in: Such projects are more likely to solve multiple problems at once and prompt the creation of new partnerships among public and private actors. The innovative, cost-effective and economically important projects will rise to the top, and applicants will learn to sharpen their thinking, planning and inclusiveness around transportation.

Q: What about the handful of states already providing local access to their federal dollars?

H.R. 4726 would allow states that already hold statewide competitions or allocate a majority of federal highway funds to metropolitan or local communities to certify out of the program altogether. If a state is already doing a good job directing money to the best local projects, their efforts would be recognized and rewarded. Additionally, along these same lines, any funds that are currently directed — competitively or otherwise — to metropolitan or local communities would be exempt from inclusion in the new program. These provisions ensure that the bill doesn’t negatively impact states currently providing local control, or require them to re-create the wheel.

For example, read about existing grant programs in Oregon and Pennsylvania.

As we travel the country meeting with local elected, business and civic leaders, we see community after community developing exciting, forward-looking plans to squeeze efficiencies out of road networks expected to move cars, pedestrians, transit riders, bicycles and freight. We hear about unmet repair needs with little help in sight. We see economic opportunities seized upon, or by-passed, based on the ability to invest in a high-quality transportation network.

For them and their constituents, this proposal is the most hopeful sign to come out D.C. in a long time. It could use a lot more co-sponsors to show just how important it is. Urge your representatives to sign on as a cosponsor today by clicking here and sending them a message.

Did you already send your letters and ask your representatives to cosponsor? Then help spread the word! Use the links to share on Twitter and Facebook below, OR, cut and paste the message in the box to send a message to your friends via email.

Shouldn’t the level of government closest to the people have more control over how transportation dollars get spent in their local communities? And shouldn’t they have more access to federal transportation funds?

I think so, and I asked my representatives to cosponsor this bipartisan bill that would give local communities more access to federal transportation funds that they can invest in homegrown transportation plans and projects, and more control over how those dollars get spent.

Will you join me and send a letter? It only takes a moment.

http://action.smartgrowthamerica.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=19843

 

New bill would give local communities greater access to federal transportation funds

A bill introduced yesterday would give local communities across the country greater access to federal transportation funds to invest in their homegrown transportation plans and projects — answering one of the most consistent requests we hear from our coalition of local leaders and officials across the country.

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL)

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), speaking at a briefing on Capitol Hill in February, introduced the new Innovation in Surface Transportation Act with Rep. Dina Titus this week.

The Innovation in Surface Transportation Act (HR 4726), introduced yesterday in the House of Representatives by Reps. Rodney Davis (R-IL) and Dina Titus (D-NV), would provide improved decision-making, responsibility and greater access to federal transportation funds for local communities. It would carve out dollars within each state for competitive grants to be awarded to local communities by a diverse selection panel that includes representatives from the state DOT and local jurisdictions.

A constant refrain from the many local elected and business officials we’ve met with over the last few years is that they have little to no access to funds, or, no seats at the decision-making table. This bill would fix exactly that while also spurring innovation, collaboration and efficiency through competition. Awarding funds through a panel of stakeholders and DOT experts will help steer investment toward projects with the greatest bang for the buck.

“Competition spurs innovation that formula funds never ever will,” as T4’s Beth Osborne wrote about this type of competition in the Atlantic Cities a few weeks ago. “Competition generates incredible excitement and a desire to outdo your neighbor. As a result, federal dollars are made to go farther, more non-federal funds are brought in from both public and private sources, and every penny is targeted to accomplish multiple goals.”

We know that the civic leaders in communities across the country are more than willing to compete and be held accountable for the results of their investments, but they currently just don’t get enough access to the funds they need to meet their communities’ needs. This bill would require that some of the money flow down to communities — a great way to make good on Congress’s promise of more local control in MAP-21.

Eligible projects for the in-state grant competition would include all projects currently appropriate for the Surface Transportation Program — such as bridge repair or improvement, highway projects, freight movement, bike and pedestrian safety and transit, to name a few.

This proposal — along with its Senate companion discussed last week by Senators Booker and Wicker — would take a major step toward bringing funds down to the local level to ensure that the people who know the needs of their community best will help decide how transportation dollars should be spent.

We’ll have much more on the details of this program next week, so stay tuned.

Urge your Rep and your Senators to cosponsor this bill today. Send them a message today.

T4America thanks Senators Cory Booker and Roger Wicker for their proposal to give local communities greater access to transportation funds

Earlier today, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved a bill to reauthorize the nation’s surface transportation bill. During debate over that bill, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) discussed an amendment to create an in-state competitive grant program to give local leaders greater access to federal transportation funds. That access is greatly restricted under the federal transportation bill, known as Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), with local communities controlling less than 15 percent of all funding.

“On behalf of Transportation for America, its members and affiliates and local elected and business leaders, I want to thank Sen. Wicker and Sen. Booker for their leadership today in fighting for the transportation priorities of cities and towns across the country,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America.

“We know that local leaders are more than willing to compete and be held accountable for results, but they need access to resources to meet their communities’ needs. Sen. Wicker and Sen. Booker’s proposal would take a major step toward restoring funding for local needs to ensure that those closest to the heart-beat of a community will be making decisions on how transportation dollars should be spent, while promoting innovation and efficiency.”