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Tag: federal transit administration

FTA helps deliver more buses for less

The Federal Transit Administration is working hard to ensure that the next rounds of the Low or No Emissions Grant Program and Buses and Bus Facilities Program do the most for riders—and the climate. Here’s how.

Read our original letter and our thank you to the FTA.

A bus rolls to a stop on a bustling city street as pedestrians walk down a wide sidewalk in the background

The Federal Transit Administration (FTA)’s Low or No Emissions Grant Program (Low No) and Buses and Bus Facilities Program have been delivering new transit vehicles to communities across the country since 2016. But when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, or the 2021 infrastructure law) passed, the bill supercharged the program. Funding for the Low No program increased over five times the previous levels, growing from $182 million for 49 awardees in fiscal year 2021 to $1.22 billion across 130 grant winners in fiscal year 2023. With all that money flowing into communities, the transition to zero emission transit systems should be accelerating at scale.

However, funding isn’t everything. Without proper policy in place, the way that funding is spent could mean less transit service per dollar, not more. According to the Eno Center for Transportation, zero emission buses purchased with federal funding cost more per bus than buses purchased without federal dollars.

Under the previous structure for the Low No program, transit agencies had flexibility to use federal dollars to customize their purchases nearly as much as they wanted, without sharing costs for extra features or preferences. And this doesn’t just create a nuisance—combined with other economic forces, this cost has worked to outweigh the benefits of historic funding increases. In battery electric bus manufacturer Proterra’s 2023 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings, they claimed that excessive customization and long lead times for payments from transit agency customers played a role in their fall.

While some customization to meet performance needs is warranted, at the end of the day, a bus is a bus—frequency and network coverage matters above all for riders. So CHARGE, supported by the National Campaign for Transit Justice, sent a letter to the FTA urging for reforms to ensure that the IIJA’s historic funding is used more effectively to deploy clean buses in communities across the country.

In line with the administration’s equity and domestic industry goals, the FTA responded to our letter and updated the Low No and Buses and Bus Facility program to help ensure riders will get more buses, for less money, faster, while also making sure local manufacturing can work at scale. Along with new guidance, the FTA has made new changes to this year’s notice of funding, incentivizing applicants to minimize vehicle customization and reform procurement processes, helping more clean buses get out to communities faster than ever.

We thank the FTA for their responsiveness and willingness to pivot in its implementation of the IIJA to maximize the benefits it can provide, getting more buses to more people for fewer dollars.

Transportation for America co-leads the Coalition Helping America Rebuild and Go Electric (CHARGE). Learn more about the coalition here.

Transit projects slowly leaving the station

A Route 603 bus parked in Ogden, UtahRoute 603 runs between Ogden Union Station and Weber State University in Utah which will eventually be served by a BRT route funded in part through a federal grant. 

After the Trump administration took office, long-planned transit projects applying for federal grants began to run into administrative roadblocks, unexplained delays, and other difficulties that put the future of these projects at risk. In response, Transportation for America launched Stuck in the Station to call attention to these inexcusable delays and slowly USDOT began to respond to the pressure. Now, in light of that progress, our focus will be on policy solutions—changing the law—to make transit easier to build in America.

Nearly two years ago—in August of 2018—Transportation for America started ringing alarm bells. Under the Trump administration, “the pipeline of new transit projects has effectively ground to a halt,” we wrote at the time when we released our Stuck in the Station tool to track the administration’s (lack of) action on transit grants. Seventeen transit projects in 14 communities were waiting for funding; they’d followed all the rules over multiple years to get to the point where a federal grant was finally in sight, “and yet still the administration does nothing.” 

As we directed the public’s attention to the unexplained hold ups at USDOT, media outlets started writing about it. Members of Congress started asking questions and holding hearings. The funding delays were the talk of transit conferences where administration officials were speaking. And slowly, our work to hold the administration accountable began to show results. Today the situation is markedly better. Twenty transit projects have been awarded funding and moved forward in the last two years.

That’s not to say everything is perfect—public transparency at the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has plummeted. The FTA is still failing to release project rankings (a key component in eligibility for a grant) and their annual reports continue to include less information than under past administrations. But the situation has changed over the last couple years and there are other ways that we can continue to hold the administration accountable and help transit projects get built: policy reform.

Policy is our bread and butter

Right now, Congress is writing legislation that will govern all of federal surface transportation policy for the next five years, including the Capital Investment Grants program. At the same time, the COVID-19 crisis has devastated local transit budgets, putting transit projects in line for federal grants at risk of ever coming to fruition because of financing, not administrative obstruction. Both of these offer opportunities for us to improve the program by changing the law—to streamline it, to reorient the priorities, to increase transparency, and to make it easier to build transit in America.

And that’s already bearing fruit. The long-term policy proposal from the U.S. House—the INVEST in America Act—would change policy to delay the repayment of local funding matches and authorizes the federal government to cover more of a project’s total cost.

As our focus shifts more to policy reform, it’s our hope that Stuck in the Station will become wildly out of date as new transit projects are funded and the pile of cash for new projects that FTA is sitting on continues to dwindle. We’ll still be keeping an eye on this administration’s actions and be ready to ring the alarm again if fishy business starts anew. But until then it looks like transit projects are slowly leaving the station. All aboard!

House oversight hearing on transit grants left unanswered questions

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held an oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16, to question the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) about its ongoing failure to release billions of congressionally-appropriated funds for local transit construction projects in a timely fashion. We still have questions. 

A platform at Los Angeles’ Union Station, with a subway train arriving in the distance. LA Metro’s Purple Line has been waiting for allocated funding from the FTA since November 2018.

While Acting FTA Administrator K. Jane Williams provided some answers to the numerous good questions from members of Congress about the impacts of FTA’s slow-walking of construction grant agreements, we came away from the hearing with more questions than answers about the FTA’s process.

What’s causing the delays?

In our last blog post on the hearing, we noted that Williams was asked very directly about delays for transit projects. She gave a carefully-worded answer,  stating “there is not one single project waiting for my action as I sit here today.”

It may be true that there’s nothing sitting on her desk at this moment. But projects are certainly being held up at various stages in the pipeline; local communities, Congress, and the public just don’t know why. While projects sponsors have to turn in paperwork correctly and on time, it’s literally FTA’s job to do everything they can to help projects progress efficiently through the pipeline. If there are significant delays, it’s unlikely that it’s resulting from every single project sponsor failing to turn in their homework. At some point the spotlight has to shine on FTA’s role with the delays.

There are many ways that the FTA could be slowing down a project that prevents it from even getting to the point where it would be waiting for the Acting Administrator’s signature. That’s really just the last step before it goes to the Secretary for approval.1 In addition, local communities have told us about poor or non-existent communication, unexplained delays, and bizarre requests for information from the FTA, all of which could be slowing projects down. 

The FTA has also changed a small but significant rule in the middle of the game, upending historical precedent that quite logically allowed local funds used to repay federal loans to count toward the local contribution to the project. That makes sense: For the handful of transit projects partially financed by a federal loan from another program, the federal government gets repaid and the local dollars are the ones actually spent. Now communities will have to  scramble to come up with more cash to pay back federal loans and also fulfill their local matches.  

How long should a project have to wait after FTA’s “allocation” announcements to sign a grant agreement?

Both the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Red and Blue Line Platform Extensions and the Minneapolis Orange Line BRT received an allocation for their project back in November 2018. But as we’ve repeatedly pointed out,  these misleading allocation announcements do not mean that these communities received funds for their projects or signed a grant agreement. 

In the hearing, Acting Administrator Williams claimed that an allocation was their way of signaling that the project would receive a grant. But how long should communities be expected to wait after an allocation? Dallas and Minneapolis eventually received their grants this summer, three quarters of a year after the allocation. The money was just sitting there for them, waiting to be given out.  The Tempe Streetcar project in Arizona and the LA Westside Purple Line also received allocations in November 2018, but still haven’t received their grant agreements. There should be a deadline for the FTA to sign a grant agreement after an allocation, as well as clear communication about what to expect, so communities can plan for when they’ll receive their money.

And what about that $500 million for new projects?

This administration made their feelings about funding transit known when they tried to eliminate the program outright in consecutive years by requesting $0 for new projects and suggested that transit was only a local concern. In his most recent budget request, President Trump requested just $500 million for new projects. Asked to justify this seemingly arbitrary figure at the hearing, Acting Administrator Williams responded by explaining that the FTA only expected $500 million-worth of projects would be ready for funding. 

The FTA controls when projects will be ready. If the FTA is only expecting $500 million worth of new projects, then FTA is just failing to do its job.

Just $500 million? Seems like a strangely round number. In reality, there are dozens of projects in the pipeline waiting for funding that, collectively, are seeking a lot more than $500 million.  As we explained above, the FTA has an immense amount of control over when projects will be ready, and if the FTA is only expecting $500 million worth of new projects, then FTA is just failing to do its job. 

The FTA certainly has some idea of which projects will be ready for a grant agreement and when, but they are failing to publicize this information. The FTA has broken with precedent and no longer provides Congress and the public with annual reports clearly detailing which new projects will receive funding that year and when. This makes it impossible for communities, the public, or their representatives in Congress to know where their projects stand and makes it nearly impossible to hold FTA accountable for keeping to their timeline. 

The hearing underscored the fact that this administration at FTA needs to be far more transparent about this lone federal program dedicated to building new transit systems and expanding/improving existing ones. FTA should do so without having to be called before Congress to answer questions that they should be answering via clear public reports, easily accessible information on their website about each project, and detailed reports to Congress about where projects are in the process on the way to being approved and getting underway.

Federal transit funding delays cause real harm

USDOT has been slow-walking federal transit funding since the Trump administration took office and the U.S. House is finally undertaking an oversight hearing to hold them accountable. Here’s a look at one major way USDOT is misleading the public about their lack of progress and some of the impact it’s had on local communities.

Today at 10 a.m., the U.S. House is holding its first oversight hearing on the US Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) efforts to undermine federal transit funding. (Live stream available at the above link.) Since taking office, the administration has inexplicably delayed federal grants for major transit projects, become less responsive, helpful and timely in shepherding projects through the application process, and radically scaled back the amount of information it releases publicly. And the information USDOT does release regarding capital transit grants is often very misleading, designed to make it look like the agency is doing its job when it’s actually not.

Decrypting USDOT

To understand how USDOT is misleading the public it’s important to understand how these capital grant works.

Under previous administrations, USDOT would publish a list of projects it anticipated funding in the following year (it’s a multi-year grant process) and then Congress would fund the program with the requisite amount intended for those projects. As grant applications were tweaked and finalized, USDOT would allocate funding to particular projects before a final grant agreement was signed—which usually happened soon afterward—and money was officially out the door to the project.

Under the current administration, USDOT has stopped publishing a list of projects it anticipates funding next year because they’re ideologically opposed to funding any transit projects. But the transit capital program has bipartisan support and Congress has continued to appropriate funds for it—three times during this administration. Now USDOT—specifically the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) within USDOT—”allocates” funding to projects, they put out a press release lauding their work, newspapers announce USDOT has funded a project (they haven’t), yet no money has changed hands. Getting an “allocation” today just means USDOT moved numbers around on internal spreadsheet, nothing more.

Communities experience real harm

The whole application process is designed to insulate the federal government from losses. Before signing a grant agreement everything has to be in order: local funding must be secured, land acquired, project design finalized, etc. But what happens when communities get their ducks in a row, have put out bids for construction, and then wait…and wait…and wait for a federal agency that doesn’t want to do its job? Materials don’t get less expensive with time (they get more expensive) and bids come with expiration dates; when they expire, the whole bidding process which can take multiple months has to be repeated. While dozens of projects are still waiting for federal funding, here is the impact on three different transit projects, each of which USDOT has “allocated” funds for but which have not received a grant agreement.

The Bay Area
The Transbay Core Capacity Project is a $3.5 billion package of improvements that will help purchase new rail cars for BART and increase capacity in the transbay tube that connects San Francisco and Oakland. According to Railway Age:

BART is ready to move the Transbay Corridor Core Capacity Project into the Engineering phase, and [BART General Manager Grace] Crunican said the agency cannot proceed without FTA funding. She said the project has been delayed by FTA for more than a year, and every year of delay will cost taxpayers an estimated $120 million. BART had been anticipating FTA approval for entry into the Engineering phase by late 2018.

FTA has recently “allocated” $300 million for the Transbay Core Capacity Project from 2018 funds—an unusually high amount—but this does not supply the agency with any funding. Annual grants usually top out at around $100 million (this is a multi-year grant), but FTA has broken with that practice, likely to avoid having to fund other transit projects with the other $200 million.

Los Angeles
The Purple Line Subway Extension, Phase III is the final extension of this subway line that is planned to be completed in time for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. It will connect the Veterans Administration Medical Center and UCLA (which will host the Olympic Village) to the rest of the Los Angeles rail system. According to an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, the LA Metro was up against a clock last year with construction bids set to expire:

The construction bid expires Oct. 3 [2018]. If Metro doesn’t get the funding commitment by then, the agency will have to rebid the contract. That could delay the project by nearly two years and increase the cost by $200 million, Metro officials say.

LA Metro did not receive a construction agreement by October 3, but they did get what’s known as a Letter of No Prejudice (or LONP) just before the deadline that allowed them to begin construction using local funds (and with no guarantee of future federal funding). The project has since received two separate “allocation” of $100 million, one from FY 2018 funding and one from FY 2019 funding. While construction has begun, there is still no funding agreement in place.

Twin Cities
The Southwest Light Rail Extension will extend the Green Line—which connects downtown St. Paul & Minneapolis—from downtown Minneapolis to the southeast suburbs, connecting some major employment centers. After unexplained delays and approaching deadlines, the Star Tribune penned an editorial urging USDOT to act:

The Met Council pleaded for Federal Transit Administration (FTA) action before Sept. 30 [2018], when two key civil contractor bids were set to expire and while sufficient time remained in the current construction season for preliminary work to begin. Those pleas went unheeded, with no explanation. This week, Met Council officials asked bidders for a 45-day extension. Only the low bidder, Lunda/C.S. McCrossan at $799 million, agreed. That leaves Ames/Kraemer, which had bid $812 million, out of contention.

Due to federal delays, Minneapolis was left with only one bidder willing to build its light rail line. But USDOT still failed to act. With only days left before the bid expired—after the extension— Minneapolis received a Letter of No Prejudice and was able to begin construction. Like Los Angeles, there is still no grant agreement in place, which means zero guarantee of federal funding.

These are just three examples of how USDOT is harming communities and undermining their progress on the ground. While many others have experienced similar frustrations and unexplained delays, they are reluctant to speak out publicly for fear of drawing the administration’s ire and further jeopardizing their funding.

These unexpected, unexplained, and unnecessary delays from USDOT are inexcusable and it’s heartening that the U.S. House is holding an oversight hearing. Unfortunately, the hearing won’t feature agency heads from any of those three cities or any other city that has been measurably harmed by these delays. It will feature a representative from the American Public Transportation Association, which represents agencies that must work with the USDOT, a representative from a road builders’ association, and the director of the Kansas City Streetcar Authority, which has not experienced any delays from this administration (yet).

While we’re hopeful that members of Congress will ask probing questions and hold USDOT accountable, the witnesses and their prepared testimony do not inspire confidence.

A new countdown for USDOT transit funding

As Congress enters negotiations for the next long-term transportation bill and works to pass a new annual budget, our Stuck in the Station resource has been updated to provide a complete list of transit projects awaiting funding in 2019 and track USDOT’s progress towards meeting hard and fast deadlines imposed by an impatient Congress.

Last August, we launched Stuck in the Station to catalogue the Trump administration’s efforts to hamstring federal transit funding. From day one, the administration has proposed to defund the largest federal grant program for new transit projects and system expansions. Congress said “no” and gave them more than $2.3 billion dedicated to getting new projects off the ground, and the political appointees over at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) decided they just wouldn’t spend any of that money. Maybe they thought no one would notice. Except we did, and we called out their foot dragging with Stuck in the Station.

That was six months ago, at which point the administration had not signed a single new full funding grant agreement in a year, despite being flush with funds appropriated by Congress. Now, after months of increasing pressure from Congress, the public, and inquisitive media outlets in scores of metro areas, USDOT has signed 10 grants, accounting for about 45 percent of their available funds.

That’s progress, but it’s still woefully inadequate. After updating Stuck in the Station to add additional projects in the transit pipeline that have been rated “medium” or higher and are therefore eligible for funding, there are at least 26 projects in 20 communities that are waiting for a piece of the $1.1 billion available right now. And once a new transportation appropriations bill is signed (it’s among the funding bills being held up in the current government shutdown/funding standoff), USDOT will likely receive even more money to get these project rolling—perhaps another $2 billion or more.

Update: a new government spending bill signed by the president on Friday, February 15 adds another $1,491,505,856 in funding for new transportation projects. The new total is reflected in Stuck in the Station.

Every delay means that bulldozers and heavy machinery are sitting idle. Steel and other materials are getting more expensive. Potential construction workers are still waiting to hear about jobs that should have materialized yesterday. And everyday travelers counting on improved transit service are left wondering if their government will ever start doing its job.

Congress took unprecedented steps to require USDOT to act

The administration’s previous actions to slow roll transit funding proved that it couldn’t be trusted to execute transit grants in good faith, so Congress made a bipartisan move to add strings. In the 2018 transportation funding bill, Congress specified that USDOT must spend at least 80 percent of these transit capital funds by the end of the (calendar year) 2019. While USDOT has made progress as they advanced some projects in 2018, they still have hundreds of millions of dollars left to obligate to meet that statutory requirement.

Our updated Stuck in the Station resource now includes a countdown to the end of 2019 and a tracker showing how much USDOT still needs to award before the clock strikes zero, based on the most up-to-date information available about USDOT’s progress.

View Stuck in the Station

It’s important to note that even if USDOT reaches their 80 percent benchmark—which is an open question—that’s only a ‘B-‘ grade. Satisfactory. Whether the administration is willing to believe it or not, transit is a critical solution for looming crises like climate change and burgeoning inequity in our communities.

Failing to use the funds at their disposal would be a dangerous abdication of responsibility by USDOT leaders to carry out the agency’s mission: “ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.”

Government shutdown previewed a future without federal transit funding

With federal employees at the Federal Transit Administration furloughed during the recent record-length shutdown, transit funding wasn’t being distributed and grant/loan programs ground to a halt. New projects were further delayed and transit providers were faced with hard choices about service cuts, showing the vital importance of federal funding for transit.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has been hostile to federal transit funding. The president’s first and second budget requests both called for eliminating critical programs that provide funding to transit—the competitive TIGER program, Capital Investment Grants (CIG) for building new transit and funding major improvements, and intercity passenger rail funding.

Taken to the extreme, eliminating federal transit funding would require shuttering or at least crippling the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) which awards transit grants and ongoing funding. While such a radical position would almost certainly never pass Congress, it has been analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office as a possible deficit reduction strategy. And last month, we got a preview of a future without federal transit funding when staff at the Federal Transit Administration were furloughed for over a month.

The FTA doles out approximately $250 million a week in payments and reimbursements to local providers and state governments to support transit—payments that halted during the shutdown. After a 35-day shut down, there is a backlog of about $1 billion. Although the government has been reopened it will likely be months before the staff at FTA are able to clear this backlog. (Similar federal payments to states for road-related funding through the Federal Highway Administration were not interrupted because FHWA staff positions funded by the Highway Trust Fund were not furloughed.)

In many communities—particularly smaller and more rural ones—the local transit system watched as an approaching fiscal cliff left them with little option but to cut routes or shutter the system without federal funding. As Politico noted, “The government shutdown is pushing some of the nation’s small, midsize and rural transit systems to an existential crisis, prompting bus agencies to scale back service, prepare for furloughs, or even contemplate closing their doors entirely.”

In the Wilmington, NC area—still recovering from Hurricane Florence last September—Wave Transit faced service cuts and construction projects were suspended. In Frederick County, MD, TransIT Services was faced with a similar dilemma. In Arizona, at least 27 rural transit providers that offer critical lifelines to residents were left high and dry without federal funding; the prospect of shuttering entirely was a possibility for some transit providers. And in Missouri, OATS Transit wasn’t facing a future service reduction; it reduced service to stretch its emergency funds for as long as possible during the shutdown. The Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) has more on the specific impacts for many of those communities.

Some states with the means were able to throw a lifeline to local transit systems by deploying available funding to cover the sudden evaporation of federal funding. But with some federal transit funding already slowed down over the last year, states wouldn’t be able to pick up the slack indefinitely.

For example, the construction of the final leg of the Purple line extension in Los Angeles—which is home to the third largest public transit service by ridership in the country—was impacted by the shutdown as low-interest loans and grants (which would be eliminated if the Trump administration had its way) were held up. And LA Metro had already been waiting for months for a final funding agreement with the FTA for the extension—an agreement that FTA could have signed already—which could not be advanced or signed during the shutdown.

Federal transit funding is critical

Transit is critical to the economies of communities large and small, urban and rural. If residents can’t get to work without transit, then it’s awfully hard to grow a strong local economy. And it’s impossible to build a strong national economy on the backs of weak local economies. Federal transit funding is vital for making this possible.

Furthermore, the construction and maintenance of transit vehicles and facilities supports high-paying, skilled manufacturing jobs across the country. In places like Elkhart, IN and Crookston, MN, the bus and parts manufacturers are a big part of the economy. As we’ve noted, steady federal transit funding is critical to maintain these jobs; they can’t be switched on and off at a whim.

What is clear post-shutdown is that federal funding for transit is critical. This shutdown was a test drive down a path without such funding and that isn’t a future worth pursuing.

With the 2018 fiscal year over, how much money has USDOT obligated to transit projects?

The 2018 fiscal year closed yesterday, wrapping up a year in which USDOT received more than $1.4 billion from Congress to invest in new transit construction and improvement projects across the country. With another infusion of cash for FY 2019 coming (eventually), it’s time for a look at how much USDOT still has on hand from 2018—as well as the unspent funds from FY 2017.

With fiscal 2018 now in the books and 2017 more than a year behind us, USDOT still has nearly $1.8 billion in unspent funds at their disposal from these two years for new transit. They’ve obligated a total of $532 million in 2017-2018 dollars to just eight transit projects, with just $100 million of that from FY 2018.

Perhaps one reason why USDOT has awarded so little of the funding from this year is because they still have almost half of the $925 million that Congress gave them back in May 2017. That fiscal year now closed more than a year ago.

USDOT’s bank account is actually about to get even bigger.

While the 2019 budget is still awaiting final action by Congress, the relevant committees from both chambers have already approved their 2019 budgets for transportation (and housing) programs. And as it stands now, both the House and Senate would infuse the transit capital program with more than $2.5 billion. While about half of that money would be for advancing ongoing multi-year transit projects that USDOT already approved, approximately $1.5 billion would be intended to advance new projects in the pipeline that are expecting to sign agreements with USDOT sometime in 2019 or beyond.

Before the end of the calendar year, without advancing any big-ticket transit projects, USDOT could have more than $3 billion on hand to obligate to transit projects.

If this budget is approved by Congress, it will mark the third straight time that they’ve rejected USDOT’s preference to receive zero dollars to advance new transit projects. Remember, this was their request for the 2019 budget (emphasis ours):

The FY 2019 [budget] proposal limits funding for the CIG Program to projects with existing full funding grant agreements. For the remaining projects in the CIG program, FTA is not requesting or recommending funding. Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.

To hear FTA tell it, they’re wondering what the big fuss is all about. Last week the FTA’s Acting Administrator Jane Williams spoke to the American Public Transportation Association at their annual conference. During her remarks, she expressed surprise at all the hand-wringing about FTA’s signature transit program:

Unfortunately, the administration’s efforts to support our nation’s infrastructure are many times overlooked by the focus on the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program. I know a lot of you in the room have very strong opinions about this administration’s approach toward the CIG program. Even though this program represents less than 20 percent of FTA’s budget, it seems to occupy 80 percent of the attention.

A huge share of FTA’s funds are distributed via formulas—FTA has no discretion to turn off that faucet even if they wanted to. So yes, the public is very interested in the single biggest available federal funding stream to pair with billions raised by local taxpayers to advance new transit projects across the country. Leaders in places like Atlanta might understandably be wondering about the future of their ambitious $2.5 billion transit plan that hinges on receiving funding from a program that USDOT would prefer Congress wind down.

Further on in her remarks, Acting Administrator Williams claims credit for projects that they actually haven’t funded yet:

In fact, in just the last six weeks…

  • Allocated $100 million in funding toward our planned multi-year FFGA for the Seattle Lynnwood Link Extension light rail line, and
  • Allocated $99 million in funding toward our planned FFGA for the Santa Ana, California streetcar project.

USDOT has not yet signed funding agreements nor obligated any funds to the Lynnwood (WA) Link light rail project and the Orange County (CA) Streetcar. Claiming credit for “allocating” funding to them is like telling your kids that they need to write thank-you notes for the presents they might get for Christmas, if they’re good.

Congress isn’t likely to act on the 2019 budget before the November elections—the president signed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through December 7—but when they do, they’ll be filling up the USDOT purse with yet more funding for transit. Stay tuned.

Gov. Accountability Office: The FTA “runs the risk of violating federal law”

With the release last week of Stuck in the Station, we detailed how the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has been delaying the distribution of $1.4 billion to help build and expand transit systems across the country. 153 days (and counting) after Congress handed billions to USDOT and the FTA, they finally spoke up last week.

After the release of Stuck in the Station last week, FTA responded through a spokesperson, disputing our claim that any of the 17 projects on the list are “ready-to-go,” stating that “none of the projects listed have met the requirements in law for receipt of Capital Investment Grants funding.”

Putting aside the obvious point that FTA’s reason for existence is to help shepherd communities through the process and meet the requirements, it’s incredibly unclear—even to the locals trying to build these projects, in many cases—where these projects stand in the process.

“The public and project sponsors have had very little information about what additional steps are required by USDOT to move their projects forward,” said T4America senior policy advisor Beth Osborne, in response to FTA’s comments. “FTA saying only ‘we are reviewing these projects’ does virtually nothing to illuminate their procedure. In the past, the administration would provide information in the budgetary process about which projects are expected to move forward. In a break with that common practice, this administration hasn’t done that, so we pulled from the information available on FTA’s website. If that information is not sufficient to understand where projects stand, it further demonstrates how opaque this process has become.”

To this point, we’ve already heard that several project sponsors are in the dark about the status of their projects or exactly what FTA is waiting to receive from them to move forward.

FTA suggested in their response to reporters that ten projects have received “new” full funding grant agreements (FFGAs) since 2017. But only two of those are actual big ticket New Starts or Core Capacity transit projects: The CalTrain electrification project and the Maryland Purple Line project were both holdovers from the Obama administration that moved forward because of intense political pressure or the resolution of a pending legal dispute, respectively. The other eight projects FTA shared with one reporter were all Small Starts projects, but only one of those received any funding from FY18. All of the rest were funded through money still unobligated from one of the last two fiscal years (FY16-17).

Why isn’t there a clear list published by USDOT with the dates these agreements were signed? And how much money from the previous year (FY17) has USDOT still not obligated at this point? Why is it so hard to find this information?

FTA suggests in their statement that they’re working to advance the rest of these transit projects in the pipeline, but their true position is in fact the opposite, which they’ve made crystal clear elsewhere: transit is not a federal priority and only projects with current grant agreements should receive federal dollars.

Here’s what FTA says in their FY19 Annual Report of Funding Recommendations: (emphasis ours; CIG stands for the transit Capital Investment Grant program.)

The FY 2019 [budget] proposal limits funding for the CIG Program to projects with existing full funding grant agreements. For the remaining projects in the CIG program, FTA is not requesting or recommending funding. Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.

There it is in black and white: USDOT and FTA’s position for next year’s budget is that the pipeline of transit projects should grind to a halt completely, leaving cities and communities on their own to raise yet more local funding than they already have to complete their projects.

In sad attempt at a fig leaf, the FTA also tossed this red herring into their response:

In addition, FTA has made available almost $10 billion in FY18 formula funding and $534 million in funding for other competitive programs.

That’s nice, but those funds have nothing to do with the transit program they are tasked with administering. They are formula dollars, which are awarded by Congress automatically from the Highway Trust Fund. USDOT is merely a pass-through for those funds with some oversight responsibilities.

Lastly, Congress is also concerned that USDOT is slowing down the pipeline and dragging their heels on advancing projects. Two things Congress has done recently suggest this.

1) There’s language in this year’s final approved omnibus budget that says that FTA has to obligate 85 percent of the transit capital program funds by the end of 2019. No one at T4America can remember any language like this from Congress to FTA, probably because FTA has never slow-rolled the process down like this before. And 2) for next year’s funding, in the Senate FY19 transportation and housing bill, the Senate also expressed their concerns about unnecessary delays from FTA with this report language on page 74:

“Project Pipeline.–The (Appropriations) Committee is concerned with unnecessary delays for projects seeking advancement into engineering or a grant agreement. These delays are costly for local project sponsors and create uncertainty for transit planners and providers across the country. The Committee directs the Secretary to continue to advance eligible projects into project development and engineering in the capital investment grant evaluation, rating, and approval process pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 5309 and section 3005(b) of the FAST Act in all cases when projects meet the statutory criteria.”

As that same Senate report says later on, FTA is trying to use the President’s budget request (which has no legal authority and is largely a statement of principles and priorities) to keep from doing what Congress has already mandated that they do — move the pipeline of new projects forward and tell the public what projects will receive funding:

The Committee is particularly concerned that FTA has no immediate plans to address outstanding statutory provisions because the Administration’s budget request does not include any new CIG projects. The Committee is dismayed that FTA is ignoring statutory mandates in order to reflect a budget request that has been consistently rejected by Congress and directs the Department to implement the GAO recommendations within 60 days of the date of enactment of this act.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (pdf) referenced by the Senate committee in the last sentence above is a flaming arrow directed at FTA. (Laura Bliss at CityLab also covered this report today in this superb piece.)

Commissioned by Congress, this report from May reaches some damning conclusions about FTA’s process with the pipeline of transit projects, and intimates that they’re coming dangerously close to failing to follow the law. Most shockingly, the FTA has told the GAO directly that they aren’t planning to do what Congress has directed them to do because the president is trying (and repeatedly failing) to end all transit funding anyway, so why bother. That’s not how the law works, however:

However, as also mentioned earlier, in March 2018 the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, provided the [transit capital] program with more than $2.6 billion, and also directed FTA to continue to administer the Capital Investment Grants program in accordance with the program’s procedural and substantive requirements. Following the enactment of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, FTA officials told us that they are reviewing the law and determining next steps. However, they did not indicate that they have any immediate plans to address those provisions. Moving forward, if FTA does not take steps to address the outstanding provisions, FTA runs the risk of violating federal law.

An administration that has been so publicly focused on speeding up project delivery, cutting red tape, and moving transportation projects along as fast as humanly possible has become the biggest obstacle for the timely delivery of transit projects that scores of local communities are depending on.

Every day that they delay, materials get more expensive, workers and equipment sit idle, and local taxpayers will end up having to pay more than they should have.

It seems that everyone other than our country’s Federal Transit Administration is interested in moving these transit projects forward in a way that’s clear, transparent, and expeditious.

What’s wrong with this picture?

This is the podcast for transit lovers

Cities across the country have been turning to transit-oriented development (TOD) as a way to build communities with greater opportunity for all of their residents. A new podcast from our Smart Growth America colleagues explores some great TOD projects around the country and the lessons that others have learned.

Younger and older Americans alike are seeking out accessible, vibrant, and transit-connected neighborhoods to live, work, or age-in-place. But with a dearth of these types of neighborhoods being provided by a market tilted towards single-use suburban development, renting or buying in these places is often unaffordable for many. And with a housing crisis in full swing across much of America—where a lack of new housing is making large swaths of urban areas unaffordable to low- and middle-income residents—focusing new housing around transit is an obvious solution.

Fortunately, there are a lot of great examples of communities pursuing this as a solution, and their lessons can be informative for other communities considering their own transit-oriented development (TOD) projects or policies.

Building Better Communities with Transit, a podcast produced by Smart Growth America in partnership with the Federal Transit Administration, shares the stories of communities that are addressing the challenges of executing TOD. From novel ways to fund transit lines in Kansas City, MO, to new a ‘smart city’ concept along a commuter rail line in Denver, CO, to equitable development in Somerville, MA, this podcast covers a range of specific topics, and each month a new episodes expands the offerings.

Whether you are an advocate or a practitioner working on these issues in your community, this podcast has something for everyone. Listen and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or wherever you get your podcasts to catch a new episode each month!

Check out the most recent episodes below:

Episode 5: KC Streetcar: A demonstration of the possible

In 2016, Kansas City, MO opened the first streetcar the city has seen in almost 60 years and transformed the city’s downtown. In this episode, we’re joined by the Executive Director of the KC Streetcar Authority, Tom Gerend.  According to Tom, former skeptics of the line are now some of the KC Streetcar’s biggest proponents as businesses have boomed and more people are moving to—and spending money in—the center city. The 2.2 mile KC Streetcar, akin to a downtown circulator, is “a demonstration of the possible.”


Episode 4: Reconnecting Somerville with transit

Somerville, MA sits just north of Boston and Cambridge, but is largely unconnected to the region’s network of capacity rail transit. But health and environmental justice issues in the community have finally pushed the city and region to extend the Green Line from Boston. In this episode, Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone talks about how the community is working together on plans for future transit-oriented development around the Green Line Extension, and how that process can be recreated in the future.


Episode 3: Albuquerque investing in place

Albuquerque, NM is home to the nation’s first gold-standard bus rapid transit (BRT) line which began limited operations late last year. To learn more about the new Albuquerque Rapid Transit line (affectionately known as ART), we spoke with Brian Reilly, one planners for line, about the integration of transportation and land use in Albuquerque. As Reilly explains, ART forms a frequent and reliable backbone for Albuquerque’s entire transportation system and dovetails with the city’s focus on redevelopment along the Central Avenue corridor where ART runs.


Episode 2: Decarbonize the city, a few blocks at a time

In this episode, we explore a new smart city concept taking shape in Denver, CO: Peña Station Next—a new smart city concept on Denver RTD’s A Line commuter rail. Podcast host Jeff Wood talks with George Karayannis, vice president of CityNow, the smart city arm of Panasonic Corporation. Karayannis discusses smart cities, how to think beyond shiny new technology, and what it means for cities thinking about the future. Peña Station Next will eventually include residential, commercial, and retail space.


See the full post announcing the first episode, Taming Pittsburgh’s hostile streets.