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Tag: TIGER

BUILDing Complete Streets

By now it’s well known that the Trump administration is no friend to transit funding. (If this is news to you, see here, here, and here). Even the BUILD grant program—which was originally designed to fund complex, multimodal projects—has been warped by the administration’s focus on roads. Traditional roads and highways have received the most grant dollars since the Trump administration took control of the program in 2017.

Our Taming the TIGER analysis showed how the BUILD program changed after two years with the Trump administration in charge.

The administration recently announced the latest round of BUILD grant recipients (which would be BUILD II if added to the graph above) and the story is much of the same: traditional road projects received the largest share of funding, while transit saw a further decrease—from around 10 percent of funding in 2018 to less than 7 percent. Freight held steady at just under 20 percent.

But there is a bit of a silver lining: Complete Streets & other multimodal projects racked up almost a third of the BUILD funding, the highest percentage such projects have received under the Trump administration. This is also particularly notable given the worrying rise in pedestrian and bicycle fatalities across the country, attributable in large part to the lack of safe infrastructure on our roadways for people without cars.

Among the Complete Streets grants this year is $20 million for the Orange County Local Alternative Mobility Network Project outside Orlando. The project will upgrade existing pedestrian and bicycle paths while constructing “shared mobility lanes,” shelter and naturally shaded environments, new wayfinding, and a transit hub. It will also fund “autonomous vehicle infrastructure facilitating local adoption of AVs.” Another multimodal project, The Underpass Project at Uptown Station in Normal, IL, received a $13 million grant and builds on one of the first projects ever funded through the TIGER program. In 2009, Normal, IL received a grant to build a new Amtrak station and civic space that has been a boon for the entire city. A decade later, this new grant will excavate a path for pedestrians, bicyclists, and passengers under the train tracks and allow a second boarding platform to be constructed.

And while transit only received a tiny sliver of the overall funding, some important projects got a nod, like a new BRT line in Memphis, TN that received $12 million for 28 new stations, nine electric buses, and charging equipment.

The BUILD program is one of the only funding options for innovative, complex, or multi-jurisdictional projects that can be difficult to fund with traditional federal transportation programs. But the Trump administration has made it harder for those projects to receive funding by favoring roads over everything else. Read our full analysis—Taming the TIGER—to see how Congress can help ensure BUILD lives up to its full potential.

Trump’s USDOT BUILDs even more roads

Federal grants for multimodal projects announced this month are decidedly not multimodal. As our research has shown previously, the Trump administration has dramatically undermined this grant program by funding traditional road projects that could otherwise already be funded by states, siphoning resources from other, harder to fund projects—the original intent of the program. But the U.S. House has adopted some policy changes to try and salvage some of what made the BUILD program so popular under the Obama administration.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) announced $900 million in BUILD grants to fund transportation projects around the county. Unlike many federal grant programs, BUILD grants are uniquely flexible—any government entity can apply for funding on almost any kind of transportation project, making worthy multimodal projects and complicated projects that cross jurisdictions easier to pay for. 

The BUILD program was created under the Obama administration—and originally named TIGER—but after taking over, the Trump administration has more or less ignored this unique flexibility and turned the program into a subsidy for run-of-the-mill road projects that could be built with some of the billions states get each year for roads and highways. The awards released two weeks ago are further evidence of this trend. 

We explored these changes last year with an in-depth analysis showing how the Trump administration has dramatically shifted priorities.

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.

2019 is just more of the same. According to a quick analysis of the projects selected, more than 70 percent of the funding went to conventional road and bridge projects—a huge share for a program still billed as an opportunity “to obtain funding for multi-modal, multi-jurisdictional projects that are more difficult to support through traditional DOT programs.”

But these changes haven’t gone unnoticed. In that same analysis—Taming the TIGER—we included some simple policy recommendations for Congress to fix the BUILD/TIGER program specifically and to improve the federal transportation program broadly. Some of these recommendations have been taken up by the U.S. House in their most recent annual transportation funding bill. Among the changes we’ve advocated for are:

  • A set aside of $15 million for planning grants and requiring the USDOT secretary to award planning grants with an emphasis on transit, transit-oriented development, and multi-modal projects.
  • A doubling of the maximum award to $50 million.
  • A consideration of project benefits beyond its physical location in an urban or rural area to the fullest extent to include all relevant geographic areas.

These are good recommendations, but they were not included in the Senate’s version of this annual transportation funding bill. For the House language to be included in the final bill, it needs to be accepted in the conference committee when the House and Senate reconcile the differences in their bills.

When Congress finally passes their funding bills (repeatedly hung up due to disagreement about funding for a border wall), incorporating the House’s proposed changes to the BUILD program will help it accomplish its stated goals despite the administration’s efforts to use it as a way to give states just a little bit more money to spend on the same old projects. 

How TIGER/BUILD can help improve the federal transportation program

The third and final part of our analysis of 10 years of awarding transportation funds competitively through the TIGER/BUILD program illuminates three simple principles that should help guide reform of the federal transportation system.


Read the first two posts in the series (part one, part two) or download the full analysis.

The federal transportation program is in need of a major overhaul. America today is very different than the America of the 1920s. The interstate highway system as envisioned is now complete, new technology is changing the way people move almost daily, there is far greater awareness of the social impacts of car-focused transportation, and climate change is an urgent threat and transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

But the most glaring shortcoming is the total absence of a broader vision of what today’s program should accomplish tomorrow. While Congress has made small tweaks here and there over last few decades, the program as a whole largely fails to meet the needs of the modern day and the basic goal of the program is not clear. Its initial purpose was to build out the interstate system but that has been completed. What now? Is the purpose to keep the current system in a state of good repair? Reduce fatalities on our roadways by half? Ensure that Americans have access to the majority of regional jobs by car and transit?

If we can’t answer these questions of vision, goals, or purpose—if we don’t know why we are spending billions of dollars—it is hard to believe we will accomplish much of anything. Yet Congress is poised to come back to taxpayers and ask for more money, just to accomplish more of the same.

How can this 10-year experiment with awarding a small slice of federal transportation funds competitively to the best possible projects across a range of modes help guide the debate over how to reform the federal transportation program at large? As lawmakers move toward reauthorizing the long-term federal transportation law in 2020, here are three lessons we’ve learned from 10 years of TIGER/BUILD that we could apply to the broader federal program.

Competition for limited funds results in better projects

Competition for funding helps improve projects. The introduction of a flexible, competitive program has pushed applicants to go further, to dream big, collaborate effectively, and design better projects that meet a community’s needs. There are a handful of projects that failed to win funding in one year and came back in another with a stronger application and a recalibrated project and won funding. The BUILD program proves what’s possible when we focus on funding the best possible projects instead of relying on blind formulas to dispense money automatically.

Make funds directly available to local communities

Local governments are generally more in tune with community needs and the land-use implications of transportation projects than statewide entities. The BUILD program has given locals a much needed source of direct federal funding that should be emulated in the broader federal transportation program.

As our colleagues at Smart Growth America have shown, most state departments of transportation (DOTs) were initially created solely to build highways and have that DNA embedded deep in their culture and practice. And they don’t always share the same priorities of their local communities when it comes to choosing how to disburse the funding. Giving locals more of a say with how funds should be spent within their borders results in a transportation system that’s far more responsive to the real needs at a local level.

Incentivize transportation choice

The modern federal transportation program was designed to build the interstate highway system. Today, that system is complete but like a ship with a stuck rudder, federal policy lacks clear new direction and continues to focus primarily on doing the same thing: building roads. The result is a national transportation system that is heavily skewed toward private vehicle travel, often jeopardizing the safety of people walking, biking, and taking transit. But 10 years of BUILD have shown that there is great demand for multimodal infrastructure.

There’s no reason that the federal government should pay for a greater share of a road project than that of a transit project. Federal policy currently stipulates an 80 percent share for roads but a much lower amount for transit—usually around 50 percent. And when it comes to overall funding levels, again, there is no reason we should we should prioritize roads over other transportation options. If anything, transit projects should be prioritized in light of the great demand for more transportation choices, rising inequality, and climate change. The federal program should create more parity between the modes in terms of federal match and the overall funding levels.

Congress has a vital role in BUILD’s future

The greatest strengths of this program have always been found in the numerous ways it is different from other federal transportation funding programs. Over the past decade it has funded numerous projects that have stimulated investment in communities big and small across the country, many of which would have never happened without it. It hypothesized and tested a new model of funding smart projects: funds given directly, allowing more flexibility and innovation in approach, and encouraging teams of multiple partners on complex projects.

While the program still has the potential to continue to fund great projects, it will only do so if Congress stays diligent and ensures that USDOT executes the program as intended.

TIGER is not, nor was it ever intended to be, a roads program, a rural funding program, or just another vehicle for funneling more money without any accountability to state DOTs. It is wildly popular because it is multimodal, advances projects in urban and rural communities alike, funds projects that don’t easily fit in today’s narrowly defined federal funding silos, and is open to any public entity.

We should keep it that way.

Download the full analysis here

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.

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.

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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.

Leveling the playing field: How T4America uses benefit-cost analyses to support multi-modal transportation projects.


As with its predecessor (TIGER), the BUILD competitive grant program requires applicants to include a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) for their project to be considered for an award from the now $1.5 billion program. This post explores what BCAs are, how can they help multi-modal transportation projects compete more effectively on their merits, and how Transportation for America’s (T4America) Technical Assistance program is helping applicants prepare a BCA that accounts for their smart growth principles.

T4America often supports great, locally driven transportation solutions through our Technical Assistance program, launched in 2015. We put our policy, program, and project development expertise to work at the federal, state, and local levels. To help show how T4America can help you make a merit-based case for your multimodal transportation project, we’re going to walk through a BCA we conducted on behalf of Oklahoma City’s transit agency last year.

Developing BCAs is just one of the services that our Technical Assistance team can provide. If you want to know how T4A can help you prepare a BCA for your BUILD project email us for more information.

What is a benefit-cost analysis?

A benefit-cost analysis is a formalized way of comparing a project’s costs against its benefits over a long period of time, typically 30 years for transportation projects.

USDOT requires applicants to include a BCA in all BUILD applications, the specifics of which have not generally changed over the nine rounds of competitively awarded funds, beyond small adjustments to factors like the value of time or the current administration’s removal of greenhouse gas emissions as a benefit.

Costs

BCA costs typically include any capital, operating, or major rehabilitation costs.

When T4Amercia worked with the Central Oklahoma Public Transportation Authority (COPTA) to compare the costs of their proposed nine-mile BRT system to the benefits for a TIGER application, T4Amercia started by looking at three types of costs: up-front capital costs of $20.9 million; the stream of operations & maintenance costs of $35.8 million, which included bus repairs, street repairs to the BRT lanes, and routine maintenance; and major rehabilitation and bus purchases of $4.8 million.

One important part of a BCA to highlight is the concept of residual value, especially for capital projects that have long life cycles exceeding the typical 30-year analysis period. Residual value is the monetary value of your project after the 30-year period has been exceeded and can be counted as a benefit. In the case of the Oklahoma City BRT project, we estimated its residual value to be $935,000.

After combining the costs and crediting back the residual value, we estimated the total cost of the Oklahoma City BRT project to be $60.6 million.

Benefits

One advancement in our understanding of how to level the playing field between traditional and multi-modal transportation projects has come through the BCA’s benefits section. For example, a transit project like Oklahoma City’s BRT can create benefits in several non-traditional yet measurable ways, both broadly and specific to this project.

Broadly, we can estimate that it reduces travel time for existing users of transit as well as for those who switch to transit from single-occupancy vehicles. There are also societal benefits from a reduction in pollutants (other than greenhouse gases) and improved roadway safety that can also be estimated and accounted for. In the case of Oklahoma City’s BRT project, much of the savings we identified are tied to people switching trips from single-occupancy vehicles to the BRT system. This includes factors like the estimated economic benefits of someone’s willingness to pay a fare, the perceived in-vehicle savings, reductions in fuel use and auto operating and maintenance costs. Additionally, we captured the benefit of avoided negative externalities like roadway wear and tear, emissions, and reductions in auto crashes, injuries, and fatalities associated with reduced auto usage.

Finally, each project will have highly specific benefits that reflect the unique nature of individual infrastructure projects. In the case of Oklahoma City’s BCA, substantial intersection safety improvements would be made as part of the construction of the BRT lanes, so we included them. By reducing fatalities and injuries from crashes at these intersections, the BRT project would add an additional $36 million in benefits.

Why your BCA matters

One reason that T4America continues to support the TIGER and now the BUILD program is that local communities are clamoring to build different kinds of transportation projects and the federal transportation programs aren’t set up to accommodate these new projects.

If we want to achieve today’s recipe for successful economic development, we need to think outside of the traditional federal funding siloes and build more places in which people want to live and work, and improve access to opportunity. That requires more investment in multimodal projects including transit, sidewalks, and other infrastructure that can improve safety for everyone.

Benefit-cost analyses are a valuable tool to quantify and evaluate the benefits that come from improved safety for people walking or biking, reduced emissions, and land development projects. BCAs help put transit and other multimodal projects on equal footing with auto-focused projects by demonstrating their value to public.

T4America can help you understand how a benefit-cost analysis would work for your project and can help you write one. If you’re interested in learning more about this and our other technical assistance offerings, you can contact us here.

ICYMI Member Webinar: New round of BUILD Transportation Discretionary Grants now open

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) released the FY 2018 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the program formerly known as Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER). The NOFO declares that USDOT has rebranded TIGER as the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development or “BUILD” program. The criteria for funding under BUILD and TIGER are essentially the same—with one big caveat. Under BUILD, USDOT will now require applicants to provide evidence that they have secured and committed new, non-federal revenue for projects requesting funding. Read more here.

Listen to the exclusive preview of how to make your application stand out here. Our senior policy and transportation expert Beth Osborne, and Robert A. Mariner Deputy Director from the Office of Infrastructure Finance and Innovation at USDOT, went over the timeline, deadlines, and the new requirements of this round of applications.

Also, remember that we are here to help with your application. As a T4America member you get one-on-one time with our experts to discuss your application. Contact me at alicia.orosco@t4america.org to set up your meeting today!

What applicants need to know about TIGER’s replacement program: BUILD

The ever-popular TIGER grant program has returned for a ninth round, but this time with triple the usual amount of funding, a brand new name (and acronym), and new criteria and qualifications that were added to the program by appropriators in the Senate and House. Our resident expert takes a closer look at the changes.

On Friday April 20th, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) released the FY 2018 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development or BUILD program, previously known as the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER). Having worked on Capitol Hill when this program was passed in 2009 through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and then at USDOT where I helped run multiple rounds of competitive grantmaking, I want to take a deeper dive, but also add some context about the changes to this program.

First, to say this program has always been popular is a gross understatement. It was not only the most popular program at USDOT but one of the most popular programs across all of government. USDOT routinely received 10 times the requests for funding than was available and overwhelmed grants.gov, the online portal for federal grant programs.

Flexibility has always been the key to its popularity. While most federal transportation dollars go to state DOTs (with a small amount going to transit agencies and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs)) for specific types of projects written into federal law, TIGER funds could go to any governmental entity, including counties, cities, and rail authorities. This aspect continues in the BUILD program. Likewise, most transportation funds are divided up by “mode”—roadway vs. transit vs. rail vs. waterway. For example, if you have a roadway resurfacing project that includes the replacement of bus stops and the purchase of buses, for conventional federal transportation dollars, you would have to apply separately to different roadway and transit programs, which can involve multiple agencies within your state DOT and also within USDOT.

With BUILD, you can continue to get the necessary funding for your entire project in one application at one time.

As an aside, let me address the name change. I can’t pretend to be happy to see the name TIGER go away. As a proud graduate of Louisiana State University (LSU), I’ve been asked for years if the program was named after my LSU Tigers. The name preceded me but I have always loved the association. Still, as a product of the Recovery Act, TIGER’s focus was on projects that were both ready to go and could provide an economic shot in the arm. In the years since 2009, we have moved beyond the need for the intensive and immediate economic recovery that we sought in 2009, and it is time for a new name too. BUILD is a good one.

What makes BUILD different?

So what makes BUILD different from previous rounds of TIGER? Congress required the administration to keep the 2016 criteria (safety, economic competitiveness, quality of life, environmental sustainability, and state of repair), so the short answer is not a whole lot.

But the changes that were made are still notable.

First, there is a whole lot more money available: $1.5 billion. This is the most that Congress has appropriated to this program since the Recovery Act and triple the $500 million made available in the last round in FY2017. Additionally, up to $15 million of that $1.5 billion may be used for planning, preparation, or design grants for eligible projects (as happened in TIGER’s 2nd and 6th rounds.) USDOT Secretary Elaine Chao has the discretion on whether she wants to award any or all of that $15 million.

Congress also capped individual awards at $25 million. This one is quite a shame. In the first round of TIGER, we were able to fund a piece of the CREATE project in Chicago—a huge multi-billion effort to rationalize rail movement through the region and de-conflict it with transit and roadways—an enormous project with benefits that rippled throughout the country. We were able to fund double-stacking rail projects like the National Gateway Freight Rail Corridor and the replacement of the I-244 bridge in Tulsa. In subsequent rounds, projects tended to top out around $25 million because Congress shrank the overall size of the program but still required geographic equity, modal balance, and a fair rural/urban split. These factors combined to make it incredibly hard to fund any larger projects and still check all of those boxes. With the increase in funding for this round, USDOT had an opportunity to fund more of these larger, transformative projects; but Congress has unfortunately made that option unworkable.

Third, USDOT will now evaluate applicants on how well they secure and commit new, non-federal revenue for projects. This is a major new criterion worth elaborating on. USDOT defines new revenue as “revenue that is not included in current and projected funding levels and results from specific actions taken to increase transportation infrastructure investment.”

It is important to note that USDOT won’t consider any local or state revenue authorized before January 1st, 2015 as new revenue and nor can such revenue be applied as matching funds for BUILD projects. So, for example, if a state increased its gas tax before January 1, 2015, USDOT will not count the resulting revenue raised as new revenue. That includes the 12 states that took the bold step of increasing their state transportation funding between 2012 and 2014. Examples of new revenue according to USDOT are asset recycling, tolling, tax-increment financing, or sales or gas tax increases. Under this definition, bonds do not qualify as a new revenue source.

Fourth, Congress provided a strict timeline for making awards. USDOT must announce the recipients of BUILD grants no later than December 17, 2018. In order to meet that deadline, USDOT released this notice quickly and has set a deadline of 8:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2018 for all applications. Five months to make award decisions may seem like a long time to folks on the outside, but given that USDOT received 451 applications in the most recent round (for just one-third of the amount of funding available here), it will take a lot of hard work from the folks at USDOT to hit their deadlines.

Questions for USDOT

The emphasis on non-federal resources is not new from this administration. For the localities that haven’t raised new funding since January 2015, they’ll be hard-pressed to do so in the next few months before applications are due. And it will be difficult to balance the preference for new funding with USDOT’s other priorities. For example, the Trump administration wants to prioritize rural projects, but rural areas have the least ability to toll or raise new funding. Which of these competing priorities will win out? I tend to think the rural priority will.

If your state has raised the gas tax, do localities within that state get to take credit for it? What if a state prohibits its localities from raising funds? I assume that the administration will excuse state DOTs from this exercise, but will they hold these restrictions against states in their applications?

These are the sort of questions I plan to ask USDOT officials on our members-only webinar, scheduled for May 14 at 4 p.m. EDT. T4A members can email their questions in advance to Program Manager Alicia Orosco.

The last point I will make is that transit was basically locked out of the most recent round of TIGER awards. Many people have asked me whether it is worth the effort to apply for funding for transit projects this time. My answer is an unqualified “yes!” With three times the funding as last year and a cap on the size of awards, we can expect USDOT to fund 2-3 times as many projects. It will be harder for the administration to not select transit projects, especially projects that have some value capture or other funding associated with it. Further, many members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have complained mightily about the lack of transit projects in the last round. If they fail to fund transit reasonably this time, Congress will probably slap another requirement on them, and I think USDOT knows that and would like to avoid it.

Not yet a member? Join T4America today! Already a member? Connect with T4America staff

The TIGER program is no more….in name


A rendering of the Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project (MCORE) in Urbana and Champagne, Illinois is a complex street safety enhancement project that involved two city governments, the local transit agency, the University of Illinois, and the state. It wouldn’t have been possible without a TIGER grant.

Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) released the FY 2018 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the program formerly known as Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER). The NOFO declares that USDOT has rebranded TIGER as the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development or “BUILD” program. The criteria for funding under BUILD and TIGER are essentially the same—with one big caveat. Under BUILD, USDOT is putting a new emphasis on securing and committing new, non-federal revenue for projects requesting funding.

USDOT defines new revenue as “revenue that is not included in current and projected funding levels and results from specific actions taken to increase transportation infrastructure investment.” And any local or state revenue authorized before January 1, 2015 is not considered new revenue and cannot be applied as matching funding for BUILD projects.

Examples of “new revenue” according to USDOT are asset recycling, tolling, tax-increment financing, or sales or gas tax increases. Under this definition, bonds do not qualify as a new revenue source.

If this sounds familiar that is because it is! The criteria for funding consideration under BUILD is a lot like the requirement that the Trump administration included in their proposed infrastructure package earlier this year. As T4America’s analysis of the infrastructure package revealed, this criteria penalizes states and localities who have already raised more local revenue for transportation projects. Why are we penalizing states and cities who acted first?

Since 2012, 31 states have raised new transportation revenues and 12 of those states raised revenue before 2015—mostly by raising or otherwise modifying their gas taxes. Beyond states, many localities like Clayton County, GA and Alameda County, CA raised local funding before 2015 through ballot measures. Even if the taxes or other funding tools are producing new revenue today, if it happened before 2015, the Trump administration doesn’t care. Many of those cities (and the 12 states) would have to raise even more new funding to meet this criteria.

Asking localities to simply kick in more money would do little to guarantee better projects—it’ll just occupy more of the local funding that states or cities could invest elsewhere or spend on long-term maintenance. And the feds shouldn’t be pointing fingers about raising more money. Unlike these states and cities, the federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax (the largest source of federal transportation dollars) since 1993.

Rural communities get shortchanged by BUILD

This is especially problematic for rural communities who already have a difficult time raising new revenue. Many of the sources of new revenue suggested by U.S. DOT—asset recycling, tolling, tax-increment financing—are not feasible in rural areas because there is little to no private demand to finance infrastructure in rural areas because it’s not profitable.

The administration has talked a big game about the need to improve infrastructure in rural areas and this NOFO is on message, saying that’s a priority for this year’s BUILD program. But this new criteria actively makes it harder for rural areas to be competitive for funding because they will struggle to raise new revenue.

With this big change, the BUILD program has already built something: another obstacle to rural communities getting the transportation funding they need.

Background on TIGER

The FY 18 omnibus package enacted into law last month tripled the size of the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program from $500 million to $1.5 billion. The omnibus rejected the president’s proposal to eliminate the TIGER program. This NOFO makes available the $1.5 billion from the omnibus and requires applications to be submitted to USDOT by July 19, 2018.

The TIGER program was one of the only ways that local communities could apply for and directly receive federal dollars for their most needed transportation projects. TIGER enabled the development of complete streets and walkable communities, expanded intermodal access to our nation’s ports, improved our public transit network, made our highway and railway systems more efficient, and helped to strengthen our passenger ferry network. TIGER routinely had requests for three to four times more in funding than was available—making it a very competitive program—and raised $3.6 in additional funding for every dollar appropriated through TIGER. In short, TIGER has been a widely successful and popular program.

T4America members recently got the inside scoop on this next round of TIGER/BUILD via an exclusive webinar with USDOT.

Not yet a member? T4America regularly offers members more in-depth summaries of USDOT actions like this NOFO. In the days ahead, we will be helping members to make their applications more competitive.

Learn more about T4America membership here.

TIGER grants focus on rural areas, recognize the value of complete streets, and ignore transit

Just a month after the Trump administration proposed a budget that would eliminate the competitive TIGER grant program entirely next year, the US Department of Transportation announced the winners of this year’s awards. This year’s winners show a clear shift in priorities — this round is decidedly rural or small town in nature and nearly devoid of transit projects. However, the winners also show that this administration recognizes how smaller-scale complete streets projects bring tremendous value to local communities.

The fiercely competitive but notably small TIGER grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. The federal government has found a smart way to use a small amount of money to incentivize the best projects possible and encourage local investment: TIGER projects brought 3.5 other dollars to the table for each federal dollar awarded through the first five rounds. They’re overwhelmingly multimodal and multi-jurisdictional projects—like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements—that are often challenging to fund through the traditional, narrow transportation formula programs.

This intense competition for funds stands in stark contrast to the majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to ensure that all states or metro areas get a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars. And unlike the old system of congressional earmarks, the projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible.

As we look through this year’s list of awardees—the ninth group of winners since the program was created in the stimulus package of 2009—five clear themes rise to the top. Here’s what you need to know about this year’s TIGER winners and the status of this valuable program.

#1 Reminder: this could be the last of the TIGER program

Though it’s one of the most fiscally responsible transportation programs administered by USDOT and incredibly small when compared to the overall transportation program, the administration’s budget request for next year completely eliminates TIGER. While the Senate has stepped in to save this program numerous times, they’ll only continue to act if the local leaders who depend on it continue to speak up.

Whatever the pros and cons of the winners, as outlined below, local officials across the country depend on this program to invest in ways that traditional state or federal programs either don’t allow or make too difficult. Once again, this round is full of projects that would have been unlikely to receive funding under the traditional program either due to the project type or project sponsor.

#2 The administration rewards the growing local support for complete streets and main street revitalization

If there’s a clear winner in this round of awardees, it’s for projects that are focused on revitalizing main streets, improving pedestrian safety and access to transportation options, and building a better street framework for creating and capturing value. Projects in Carson City, NV; Immokalee, FL (pictured in graphic above); Burlington, IA, Akron, OH; Frankfort, KY; and Mill City, OR, among a few others, all have a strong complete streets or bicycle and pedestrian component. The administration is to be commended for seeing the connection between investing in traditional, people-focused streets and downtowns as not only a viable economic development strategy, but a vital one.

But the administration can’t choose these projects if they’re not in the applicant pool. And the proliferation of these projects is a testament to the growing movement of local officials who understand that improving safety through low-cost interventions, building a sense of place, investing (or reinvesting) in downtown, and focusing on moving people rather than just vehicles brings a strong economic payoff to their communities. Because of that, they’re investing their own dollars heavily in these projects and the administration is making a wise investment by partnering with them.

#3 More funding for rural projects, but with a loose definition of “rural”

While USDOT says that over 60 percent of the awards go toward rural projects—a stated goal of the Trump administration—it’s probably more accurate to say that most of this funding goes to midsized cities. (They count places like Lincoln, NE—pop. 280,000—as rural.) There was also a clear bias in favor of awarding funds to projects in states that are in the middle of the pack in population, and the most populated states that produce an outsize share of the country’s GDP mostly received very low dollar awards—states like California, New York, Texas, and Illinois.

While funding more “rural” projects is a stated goal of the administration, it’s hard to square with the administration’s current plans to make towns and cities and states pick up more of the funding burden. Rural projects usually bring less local or state money to the table, by DOT’s own admission: “Since 2009, the TIGER program has awarded nearly $1.4 billion in federal funding to 171 rural projects across the nation, leveraging an estimated $2.5 billion in non-TIGER funding,” lower than the 3.5 non-federal dollars per TIGER dollar for all projects through the first five rounds. In an ironic twist, these smaller places (and midsized cities, as noted) will be the ones most intensely feeling the squeeze if the administration gets their way on federal transportation funding.

#4 Awards for transit projects were few, keeping with the administration’s overall views on transit

The underlying law’s language (found in the 2017 appropriations bill) requires some level of parity between various modes of transportation:

“…the Secretary shall take such measures so as to ensure an equitable geographic distribution of funds, an appropriate balance in addressing the needs of urban and rural areas, and the investment in a variety of transportation modes”

Contrary to that language in the law, this batch of TIGER grants only includes a few smaller transit projects, leaving out both the quantity and size of larger transit investments we’ve seen in many past rounds. Though it’s not in step with the intention of the program as crafted by lawmakers, it’s certainly hand-in-glove with the administration’s stated belief that localities should fund transit investments all by themselves. The administration has already pledged to end the capital program for building new transit lines or stations, and these awardees largely reflect that view.

#5 The tradeoff for a project in almost every state is the lack of nationally significant projects

It’s nearly impossible to make an award in almost every state while also funding a handful of larger, transformative, nationally significant projects—projects like the CREATE program (rounds I and IV) to address huge national freight rail bottlenecks in Chicago or the Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail project. This has been a struggle for the TIGER program dating back well into the Obama administration, but this is the tradeoff that comes with trying to get an award for nearly everyone: more smaller awards, and less capacity to invest in big nationally significant projects that have benefits for people far outside of a single city, region or state.

TIGER should represent a way forward

The majority of all federal transportation dollars today 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, forcing projects to compete against each other on the merits. Rather than being slated for elimination, this should be a model for the future of transportation funding: formula dollars awarded for repair and maintenance, and then money for any new capacity (of any type) awarded competitively.

Will Congress acquiesce to the administration’s demands to eliminate TIGER? In spite of the administration’s stated opposition to this program, they just funded 41 important projects that would have been difficult to build under the regular program. As stated above, Congress will only continue defending this program as long as local leaders and advocates continue pressing for its survival. Get in touch with your representatives today and urge them to continue supporting this small but vital program.

Eight things to know about the president’s budget and infrastructure plan

After promising the release of an infrastructure plan since the early days of his administration over a year ago, President Trump finally released his long-awaited plan for infrastructure investment. Since he did it on the same day he released his budget request for the next fiscal year, it’s worth considering them together and asking: what do these proposals mean for infrastructure?

Here are eight things worth knowing about both the president’s infrastructure plan and his budget for 2019. Read T4America’s full statement on both proposals here.

1) “One cannot claim to be investing in infrastructure on the one hand while cutting it with the other.”

By only including a modest $200 billion in federal investment over ten years, the president’s so-called $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan isn’t a real plan—it’s a hopeful call for local communities, states, and the private sector to invest $1.3 trillion of their own money in infrastructure while the federal government largely sits on the sidelines. Look even deeper and you’ll discover that the $200 billion in federal investment isn’t actually new money overall—it’s mostly sourced from cuts to other programs, including key transportation programs. The president calls for large investments in infrastructure on the one hand while proposing to cut infrastructure programs in the budget with the other hand. Considered together, the infrastructure plan is like getting a bonus from the boss after their new budget just slashed your salary.

2) If the goal is to repair “crumbling” infrastructure, why not require it?

If our infrastructure is “crumbling,” why advance an infrastructure plan that doesn’t do anything to require that states or cities prioritize repair and maintenance with the new funding? Why give out new money that states can spend on costly new infrastructure with decades of built-in maintenance costs when we can’t afford to maintain what we’ve already built? A proposal meant to address America’s crumbling infrastructure almost never mentions maintenance or repair anywhere within it.

“One of the reasons there’s a break in trust between the taxpayer and the federal government is that there’s only so many times you can come before the taxpayer and say, ‘our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling, please give us more money to fix it,’ and then not dedicate it to fixing it,” noted T4A senior policy advisor Beth Osborne on CBC News on Monday evening. We’ve made this point routinely over the years: Why do we keep spending hefty sums on new roads and new lanes while repair backlogs get ignored?

Little accountability, no performance measures: In addition, though this proposal claims to be outcomes-based, there is almost no mention of actual goals. It proposes to invest new money, but to accomplish what exactly? It includes no requirements to measure how these billions will lead to improved roads, bridges or transit systems, better connect people to jobs and opportunity, or move people and goods more efficiently. There are no requirements to measure performance or hold anyone accountable for accomplishing specific goals with the money.

3) Ends federal support for building or improving public transportation

Just like the president’s first budget proposal released a year ago, this one also calls for an immediate halt to federally supported transit projects by eliminating 100 percent of funding for transit projects in development that don’t already have signed funding agreements with the federal government. This pulls the rug out from under at least 41 cities—many of whom have already raised new transportation revenues from voters at the ballot box—that were fully expecting the federal government to share around 50 percent of the cost. While transit projects could still theoretically compete for funding from the plan’s “incentives” program, they would have to compete against transportation, water, waste, power, and broadband projects for a smaller pool of funding.

Seattle is one of many cities that have raised new transportation revenues for transit at the ballot box with the full expectation of a federal contribution to help complete their projects.

4) Roadway projects will be free of new requirements to create value that would be imposed on transit projects

Value capture is a creative way to finance transit projects by “capturing” some of the increased land value that transit provides and using those anticipated revenues on the front end to pay a share of the costs. It can help fund transit improvements, but it’s not a solution that works everywhere, in part because many states don’t allow it and/or most transit agencies have zero control over land use. This infrastructure proposal treats transit projects differently than all other modes by requiring the use of this financing mechanism. New roads? They won’t even need to create a dime of new value to win funding from new incentive or grant programs, much less capture any of that value to pay for their costs. Like Alabama’s $5.3 billion, 52-mile bypass, known as the Northern Beltline, to be constructed north of Birmingham. At $102 million per mile, the project will be one of the country’s most expensive roadway projects, yet it and projects like it would be exempt from these requirements to create any value to pay a share of the costs.

This top-down requirement would put a burden on new transit projects that is not placed on any other new transportation investment and would essentially halt the development of dozens of smart transit projects across the country. It would also jeopardize funding for capital improvements for more than 400 rural transit providers where value capture is rarely feasible.

5) Cities and states already raising new transportation funding will have to do even more

The federal government hasn’t raised the gas tax since 1993. Since just 2012, 31 states have raised new transportation revenues — mostly by raising or otherwise modifying their fuel taxes. Yet the largest program ($100 billion) in this proposal flips the script and puts the onus on these same local and state taxpayers by changing the federal match on new projects from 80 percent to 20 percent. Asking localities to simply kick in more money would do little to guarantee better projects or even less reliance on federal funding—it’ll just occupy more of the local funding that states or cities could invest elsewhere or spend on long-term maintenance, and could just incentivize huge tolling projects, others with some sort of repayment mechanism, or the sale of public assets.

It either devalues or ignores outright local dollars already raised: This proposal penalizes cities like Indianapolis, Seattle, Raleigh, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, Atlanta and scores of others that have already done the hard work of securing new local funding for transportation. How? Though localities are required to come up with 80 percent of a project’s cost, the plan ignores any funds raised more than three years ago—even if it’s a tax producing new revenue today. And for new funds raised within the last three years, there’s a sliding scale for how much those dollars are worth. The specific percentages aren’t detailed in the plan, but for example, $1.00 raised at the ballot box two years ago might only be worth 0.50¢ toward the 80 percent local share required by this plan. Many of those cities (and the 31 states) would have to raise yet more new funding to qualify.

6) It eliminates TIGER, one of the few competitive programs that exist today

The proposal completely eliminates the fiercely competitive TIGER program. This $500 million grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects and one of the most fiscally responsible transportation programs. TIGER projects brought 3.5 other dollars to the table for each federal dollar awarded through the first five rounds. And the competition for funds is in stark contrast to the majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to ensure that all states or metro areas get a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars. Unlike the old system of congressional earmarks, the projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible. There’s a reason that TIGER remains so popular with local communities even though around 95 percent of applicants lose in every round—it’s one of the only ways to fund the multimodal projects that are difficult to advance through conventional, narrowly-focused federal programs.

7) Money is set aside for rural areas, but governors will still control it

The plan sets aside $50 billion for rural areas, allocated directly to governors and awarded at their discretion to the projects that they choose. Each governor’s share will be determined via a formula that considers only lane miles and population while purporting to build transportation, water, waste, power, and broadband infrastructure. Is lane-miles an adequate metric for the full range of needs that our rural areas have? Block-granting money to states does not guarantee that local communities will get funding to invest in their highest priority infrastructure projects. Incentivizing cities and towns through competition is proven to be more effective in producing long-term results.

Without this money set aside, rural areas (and smaller cities) would have few chances to successfully win funding from the plan’s $100 billion incentives program. As Aarian Marshall wrote in Wired today, it “would favor applicants that can ‘secure and commit’ continuing funds for their project, including future money for operation, maintenance, and rehab. The ventures, in other words, that can pick up most of the tab. That’s a problem for cities that don’t have steady funding streams, or that find themselves in any of the 42 states that restrict locales’ rights to tax their citizens.” And these smaller areas will never be attractive places for the private investment that this plan assumes will materialize to make up that $1.3 trillion funding gap.

8) Makes long-term cuts to overall transportation funding

Buried in the document is a tiny yet significant detail about scaling down overall transportation spending by as much as $21 billion each year by the end of the decade due to the declining value of the gas tax. So in addition to making cuts to core transportation programs and providing no new revenue for transportation in the infrastructure proposal, the budget actually proposes to reduce transportation investment overall year by year, putting the screws to the cities, towns, and transit properties that depend upon formula funding to operate and maintain existing transportation programs or to make critical capital improvements.

Considered with the president’s FY19 budget request, this infrastructure plan will result in a net reduction in transportation spending and investment. It does not require that we first repair the myriad of assets already in a state of disrepair. It punishes communities that have already stepped up to address their own infrastructure challenges. It leaves rural areas without any guarantees and it hollows out the core funding for transportation that has carried the program for more than a generation. We strongly urge Congress to start over and craft a plan that provides real funding, fixes our current infrastructure inventory, funds smart, locally-driven and supported projects, and requires performance measures that enable taxpayers to understand what benefits they will receive for their investments.

Transportation for America’s Principles for Infrastructure Investment

RE: T4America’s Principles for Infrastructure Investment

Dear Transportation for America Members:

Transportation for America shares the goal of the Trump Administration and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle for reinvesting in our nation’s infrastructure.  Transportation systems have a profound impact on our lives and communities. All Americans understand that the deteriorating state of our transportation infrastructure limits economic opportunity.  Expediting the critical rebuilding of infrastructure like roads, bridges, transit systems and other investments that improve shared mobility access and strengthen our diverse, multimodal transportation network will guarantee a prosperous future for all Americans.

Today, we are sharing the following principles essential to developing an infrastructure package with the Administration and members of the 115thCongress.  These principles will foster new opportunities by connecting communities, creating jobs and securing long-term economic growth. Our goal is to move the national conversation beyond the breadth and cost of an infrastructure program to include an examination of which projects we are investing in and why. Our principles are simple and sensible:

  1. Increase real funding
  2. Fix the infrastructure we’ve already built
  3. Make sure that any new infrastructure is selected through competitive processes, is locally driven, and has clear and specific benefits.
  4. Measure the performance of investments to ensure accountability.

These principles will not only serve to help guide investment, they will also help federal, state, and local agencies, as well as taxpayers, judge the success of these investments. Through accountability, we can ensure limited dollars are used wisely.

Please feel free to share these principles through your professional and social media networks.  If you have questions, or would like to discuss these principles, please contact Alicia Orosco, our program manager for membership and outreach at alicia.orosco@t4america.org or at (202) 971-3907.

Sincerely,

Kevin F. Thompson
Director, Transportation for America
  1. Provide real funding

We need real federal funding, not just new ways to borrow money or sell off existing assets, to rebuild our transportation systems. Historically, economic development and opportunity have depended on federal investments in transportation that connect communities and allow businesses to bring goods to market. Direct federal investment funded the construction of our highways, bridges, and transit systems, creating economic opportunities. Today, deteriorating transportation infrastructure—the result of years of reduced federal investment—is a roadblock to continued economic growth. Real funding, invested according to the principles outlined here, will rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure and restore economic opportunity.

  1. Fix the existing system first

We must immediately fix the transportation system we have and fund needed repairs to aging infrastructure. If we have a house with a leaky roof, it’s only prudent to fix the roof before building a new addition. Our transportation systems are no different.

Congress should dedicate federal transportation formula dollars to maintenance to make sure the system is returned to a state of good repair, is resilient, and works for all users; before funding new projects that bring years of additional maintenance costs. The application of federal performance measures to both the state and metro area programs would help prioritize needs and ensure that the greatest of them are addressed first.

  1. Build smart new projects

At a time when transportation resources are scarce, it is critical that funds go only to the best new projects. Competition, local control, and objective evaluation can ensure that federal funds flow to the projects that deliver the greatest benefit to communities. When communities are given the opportunity to compete for federal funds, they work harder to put forward projects that maximize return on investment, provide creative solutions, and involve a diverse range of stakeholders. Congress should direct new federal transportation dollars through competitive processes, such as the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant programs, which are accessible directly to city, county, regional, and state governments. Merely adding new funding into existing and outdated formula funding programs will not deliver the transformative projects that deliver long-term economic growth.

  1. Measure success

Investments in transportation are not an end in and of themselves. They are a means to foster economic development and improve all Americans’ access to jobs and opportunity. Agencies should be held accountable by evaluating how well their investments help achieve their regions’ goals. Newly available data and tools allow agencies to measure—better than ever before—how well transportation networks connect people to jobs and other necessities. The federal government should harness these tools so that state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations can ensure that federally funded investments are effectively connecting people to economic opportunity.

Download these principles as a sharable one-page PDF here. 

Transportation for America’s guiding principles for an infrastructure plan

As we continue to await either broad principles or specifics of the Trump’s administration much-anticipated infrastructure plan, T4America has released these four simple guiding principles to inform and evaluate any such future plan.

It’s past time to elevate the national conversation about infrastructure beyond just the breadth and cost of it. We need an examination of exactly which projects we are investing in and why. Whether the $50 billion we currently spend each year or the $1 trillion originally suggested by the administration, we need to do more than just pour money into the same old system for planning and building transportation projects.

America’s current federal transportation program does not bring us the returns we deserve for the sums we invest. There’s far too little accountability for accomplishing anything measurable and tangible with the billions we spend.

We urgently need a new way of doing business.

To get us there and truly realize the benefits of robust federal transportation infrastructure investments, we need a renewed focus on fixing our existing system first and foremost, on investing new dollars in only the smartest projects, and on creating new mechanisms to measure what we get in return for our money.

In lieu of any substantive details offered by the administration, Transportation for America offers its own set of guiding principles to help inform or evaluate any standalone infrastructure bill, aimed at influencing the national dialogue and encouraging members of Congress and White House officials to talk plainly and honestly about a smart approach to infrastructure planning and funding. They are:

1 – Provide real funding

We need real federal funding, not just new ways to borrow money or sell off existing assets, to rebuild our transportation systems. Historically, economic development and opportunity have depended on federal investments in transportation that connect communities and allow businesses to bring goods to market. Direct federal investment funded the construction of our highways, bridges, and transit systems, creating economic opportunities. Today, deteriorating transportation infrastructure—the result of years of reduced federal investment—is a roadblock to continued economic growth. Real funding, invested according to the principles outlined here, will rebuild the nation’s transportation infrastructure and restore economic opportunity.

2 – Fix the existing system first

We must immediately fix the transportation system we have and fund needed repairs to aging infrastructure. If we have a house with a leaky roof, it’s only prudent to fix the roof before building a new addition. Our transportation systems are no different.

Congress should dedicate federal transportation formula dollars to maintenance to make sure the system is returned to a state of good repair, is resilient, and works for all users; before funding new projects that bring years of additional maintenance costs. The application of federal performance measures to both the state and metro area programs would help prioritize needs and ensure that the greatest of them are addressed first.

3 – Build smart new projects

At a time when transportation resources are scarce, it is critical that funds go only to the best new projects. Competition, local control, and objective evaluation can ensure that federal funds flow to the projects that deliver the greatest benefit to communities. When communities are given the opportunity to compete for federal funds, they work harder to put forward projects that maximize return on investment, provide creative solutions, and involve a diverse range of stakeholders. Congress should direct new federal transportation dollars through competitive processes, such as the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant programs, which are accessible directly to city, county, regional, and state governments. Merely adding new funding into existing and outdated formula funding programs will not deliver the transformative projects that deliver long-term economic growth.

4 – Measure success

Investments in transportation are not an end in and of themselves. They are a means to foster economic development and improve all Americans’ access to jobs and opportunity. Agencies should be held accountable by evaluating how well their investments help achieve their regions’ goals. Newly available data and tools allow agencies to measure—better than ever before—how well transportation networks connect people to jobs and other necessities. The federal government should harness these tools so that state departments of transportation and metropolitan planning organizations can ensure that federally funded investments are effectively connecting people to economic opportunity.

Download these principles as a sharable one-page PDF here or by clicking below:

Recent Congressional Activity Summary-Week of October 23rd

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy. This dedication includes in-depth summaries of what is going on in Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT). Check out what you may have missed this past week in Congress and at U.S. DOT.

Senate Approves FY18 Budget

On October 19th, after a series of amendments the Senate approved H. Con. Res. 71, a concurrent resolution establishing the congressional budget for the United States Government for fiscal year 2018 and setting budgetary levels for fiscal years 2019 through 2027. The proposed budget significantly reduces non-defense discretionary spending, which would likely require cuts to transit Capital Investment Grants, TIGER, and passenger rail programs. The Senate-passed budget must now be reconciled with the budget approved by the House on October 5th. Both chambers must pass identical budgets to utilize reconciliation (a process by which legislation only needs 51 votes in the Senate) to approve tax reform. T4America will provide updates as the House and Senate work to approve a final FY18 budget. It is important to note, however, that additional budget legislation will be necessary to raise the sequester caps set in the Budget Control Act, allowing Congress to complete its FY18 appropriations work.

Senate Environment and Public Works Reschedules Vote on FHWA Nominee

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee postponed an October 18th meeting during which it was planning to vote on Paul Trombino’s nomination to be FHWA Administrator. T4America has been informed that postponing the meeting was unrelated to Mr. Trombino’s nomination. This meeting has been rescheduled for this Wednesday, October 25th and we expect his nomination to be approved.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Holds Infrastructure Hearing

On October 11th, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Highways and Transit held a hearing entitled: “Building a 21st Century Infrastructure for America: Highway and Transit Stakeholders’ Perspectives”. You can watch the full hearing here. In a wide-ranging hearing, the panel of witnesses discussed a variety of issues important to the transportation community. Witnesses and Members agreed on the importance of a long-term solution to the solvency of the highway trust fund. Republicans on the Committee were focused on alternatives to funding the trust fund beside the gas tax. Democrats on the Committee expressed frustration that there have been several hearings about the importance of a long term solution to the trust fund but the Committee has not marked up, or held hearings on, legislation that would raise more funding for the highway trust fund.

Mr. Peter Rogoff, Chief Executive Officer, Sound Transit made a forceful case for transit investment and noted how the President’s budget and House appropriations package actually cuts transit funding, especially the Capital Investment Grant program, and would harm communities like Seattle that have raised billions in local funds for transit investments with the understanding that the Federal government would match the local commitment.

This hearing is part of an effort to prepare Congress to develop an infrastructure package. T4America will provide additional updates as the Administration and Congress work on this issue.

What’s at Stake for Rural Transit Funding in 2018 and Beyond

Federal transit programs for communities of all sizes face unprecedented levels of cuts

Federal transit funding — including the funding on which small and rural transit providers rely — is once again on the chopping block. At risk for smaller cities and rural areas are funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of Small Starts, TIGER and formula funding. Those who operate or depend on transit — whether in small, rural areas or large, urban ones — must band together to convince both Congress and the President of the vital nature of public transportation services.

This detailed memo lays out the threat to rural areas from Congress and the administration’s efforts to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation. Read full memo here.

Also join our experts on October 23, 2017 at 3PM EDT and learn what is at stake for small and rural transit providers and what it means for your local and regional projects. Register here.

Member Policy Report – Week of September 22nd

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes policy updates and summaries to inform your work. Check out the latest on Automated Vehicles and TIGER Notice of Funding Opportunity.

Senate Bill on Automated Vehicles

On Friday, September 8th the Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) released draft legislation to set new federal regulations for automated vehicles (AVs). The bill would set nationwide policy for AVs and preempt state and local requirements; significantly expand the number of test vehicles allowed on the roads; and limit data sharing requirements. AV manufacturers and operators have advocated for a single, national set of rules. T4America and our partners are concerned that this bill cuts out local governments and undermines safety in our communities. T4America has been working with the Senate to ensure local governments preserve their authority to control their roadways, and improve data collection and sharing about autonomous vehicles.

A detailed summary of the draft bill is included below.

Background

On Friday, September 8, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee released a draft of their automated vehicle legislation. Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) have been leading the legislative efforts on automated vehicles in the Senate.

T4America expects the sponsors to release an updated bill draft this week. This revision may address some of the concerns raised by stakeholders, including T4America. The Commerce Committee is expected to markup the revised bill next week.

The release of the Senate discussion draft follows action in the House of Representatives, which on Wednesday, September 7 passed by voice vote their bipartisan automated vehicle legislation, H.R. 3388, the SELF DRIVE Act.

The impetus for both bills comes from a desire from manufacturers and operators of automated vehicles to move away from the current patchwork of state rules and regulations over testing and deployment of automated vehicles, and instead establish a relatively uniform standard at the federal level.

What T4America is Doing

T4America is working with the 16 cities in our Smart City Collaborative (SCC) and a number of partners including the National Association of Transportation Officials (NACTO), the National League of Cities (NLC), and New York City to give feedback to the Senate Commerce Committee on the concerns we have about the discussion draft, and push our proposed legislative language changes. We met with both majority and minority Committee staff on Friday and the Committee seemed receptive to some of our concerns around preemption and data sharing.

Additionally, we have met with staff for numerous Senators on the Commerce Committee about the discussion draft, including staff from Senators Nelson (D-FL), Baldwin (D-WI), Peters (D-MI), Cantwell (D-WA), Duckworth (D-IL), Klobuchar (D-MN), Markey (D-MA), Blumenthal (D-CT), Cortez Masto (D-NV), Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Blunt (R-MO).

What is in the bill

The Senate discussion draft does a number of things including:

  • Delineating the federal and state/local roles when it comes to regulating automated vehicles via a pre-emption clause;
  • Establishing a specific exemption from federal motor vehicle safety standards to test automated vehicles;
  • Raising the number of safety exemptions a manufacturer can get to test vehicles to 100,000 over three years; and
  • Establishing an automated vehicle advisory committee to advise the Secretary of U.S. DOT on a number of issues related to automated vehicles.

Preemption

The Senate draft preempts any state or local government from passing a new, or enforcing an existing, law or regulation in any of the nine categories of data that manufacturers are required to submit to the Secretary of Transportation as part of the Safety Evaluation Report required in section 9 of the draft. The nine areas preempted in the draft bill are:

  • How the AV avoids safety risks, including whether its safety systems are functioning properly;
  • Data collection of an AV’s performance, including its crashes and disengagements;
  • Cybersecurity;
  • Human-machine interface;
  • Crashworthiness;
  • Capabilities of the automated vehicle;
  • Post-crash behavior;
  • Compliance with traffic laws and rules of the road; and
  • The behavior and operation of the AV during on- or off-road testing, including an AV’s crash avoidance capability.

The stated intent is to apply the existing federal-state preemption framework, which mainly deals with the design, construction and performance of vehicles, to automated vehicles. However, as written the preemption language seems to be broader than the existing framework because it would preempt any state or local law and regulation related to the areas listed above, rather than just laws dealing with the design, construction or performance of automated vehicles in those areas.

Safety Evaluation Report

The Senate discussion draft requires that manufacturers must submit a Safety Evaluation Report (SER) to the U.S. DOT Secretary in order to receive the exemption to test AVs. The bill specifies that the manufacturer’s SER should provide a description of how the automated vehicle would address the same nine areas mentioned above.

The discussion draft also requires the Secretary to make this data publicly available. However, the draft requires the Secretary to redact the data considered to be a trade secret or confidential business information The bill prohibits the Secretary from conditioning pre-approval of the testing, deployment, or sale of automated vehicles to consumers on a review or approval of the Safety Evaluation Report submitted by manufacturers.

Data Sharing

Other than the SER that operators must submit to U.S. DOT, the discussion draft includes no requirements that operators or manufacturers of automated vehicles share any data with the states, localities, or law enforcement organizations in the places they are testing or deploying automated vehicles.

Automated vehicle technology has the potential to provide aggregated information about how people and goods move through our streets, but without access to these data, city and state governments will be blind to the impacts of emerging transportation technologies.

Data on vehicle collisions and near-misses allows cities to proactively redesign dangerous intersections and corridors to ensure safety for all street users. Understanding vehicle movement at the corridor level provides immense value for governments and citizens. Real-time data on vehicle speeds, travel times and volumes has the potential to inform speed limits, manage congestion, uncover patterns of excessive speeds, evaluate the success of street redesign projects and ultimately improve productivity and quality of life.

Because of the importance of real-time data, T4America and our partners are urging the Committee to include data sharing requirements which protects the privacy of users and legitimate trade secrets while providing states, municipalities and law enforcement the real time data necessary to ensure the safety of AVs in their communities. Such data would potentially cover areas like the number of crashes and disengagements an AV has had, the types of roads AVs have had problems on and the weather conditions at the time of a crash or disengagement.

Level of Exemptions

The bill would allow manufacturers to apply for an exemption from federal motor vehicle safety rules to test automated vehicles. Over a period of three years, the Senate draft would raise the cap on exemptions per manufacturer for testing automated vehicles forty-fold, from 2,500 to 100,000. There are potentially up to 20 manufacturers interested in testing automated vehicles, so if each manufacturer maximizes the 100,000 exemptions allowed, that could be up to 2 million automated vehicles testing on the road. There are no restrictions in the bill on where automated vehicles could test or restrictions on how many automated vehicles could be tested in a given area. Theoretically, a manufacturer could test all 100,000 vehicles in one city or state.

Automated Vehicle Advisory Committee

The Senate discussion draft proposes a new “Highly Automated Vehicles Technical Safety Committee” to advise the U.S. DOT Secretary on a host of issues related to the safety of automated vehicles. The discussion draft specifies that the Secretary shall select 12 members of the Committee drawing from industry, safety advocates, or state and local government representatives. The bill does not specify committee memberships for specific groups, however. Theoretically, the Secretary could appoint all 12 members from industry and zero from state and local governments or vice versa.

Commercial Vehicles

One issue totally left out of the Senate discussion draft is whether commercial vehicles (defined as motor vehicles over 10,000 pounds) should be included in this bill, which is a controversial topic. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing this past Wednesday specifically to examine whether commercial vehicles should be included in the bill. A number of witnesses, including the American Trucking Association, urged the Committee to include commercial vehicles, so that remains a possibility as the legislative process in the Senate moves forward. From our understanding, Chairman John Thune (R-SD) would like the legislation to include trucks while Democrats, including Senator Gary Peters (D-MI) are vehemently opposed to including automated trucks in this draft. If trucks are included in the draft, staff from Democratic offices have indicated that any chance of bipartisan support for the bill would go away.

Conclusion

There is tremendous interest in Congress in speeding up the testing and deployment of automated vehicles because of the concerns of industry that the U.S. is falling behind other countries because of a lack of a national regulatory framework for AVs. Additionally, Congress is excited about the life-saving and revolutionary benefits AVs can bring in terms of motor vehicle safety and expanding mobility options for the people with disabilities, seniors, and other groups that may not drive or have access to a car. Therefore, legislation in some form around AVs is likely to become law. Right now, Congress is trying to strike the right balance between deploying these AVs as fast as possible while making sure they are tested and deployed in the short term in a safe manner that doesn’t endanger the safety of other persons because of the problems and unforeseen issues that arise when testing a new technology.

TIGER Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)

As a reminder, U.S. DOT recently released the FY 2017 notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the $500 million TIGER program. U.S. DOT will evaluate projects based on the extent to which they benefit safety, economic competitiveness, state of repair, quality of life and environmental sustainability. These are the same selection criteria used in the TIGER rounds from 2014, 2015, and 2016. However, this Administration will emphasize “improved access to reliable, safe, and affordable transportation for communities in rural areas, such as projects that improve infrastructure condition, address public health and safety, promote regional connectivity, or facilitate economic growth or competitiveness.”

Applications are due by 8:00 p.m. E.D.T. on October 16, 2017 through the grants.gov portal. U.S. DOT hosted informational webinars on Wednesday September 13th, Tuesday September 18th, and Wednesday September 19th. You can find recordings and information related to the webinars from U.S. DOT here.

Statement from Transportation for America on House Passage of THUD Appropriations

press release

On Thursday, September 14, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3354, the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018”, which contains the fiscal year 2018 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations. Beth Osborne, interim T4America director, issued the following response:

“We are disappointed and concerned that the House decided to move ahead with a bill that cuts federal appropriations for vital transportation programs, including the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant (CIG) Programs. Local governments and voters are investing their own dollars on innovative transportation, housing, and neighborhood revitalization projects but they need help from these vital federal programs to make these things happen. This spending bill pulls the rug out from under those communities.

“The House-passed THUD spending bill zeroes out funding for TIGER, a crucial program that gives local governments direct access to federal dollars for innovative projects. TIGER projects are overwhelmingly multimodal and multijurisdictional projects — like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements — that are often challenging to fund through the underlying formula programs. In 2016, U.S. DOT received 585 applications totaling over $9.3 billion, reflecting an overwhelming demand across the country for the TIGER program. Through the first seven rounds of grant awards, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars. Given the $500 million appropriated last year by Congress, that’s over $1.5 billion in other critical infrastructure spending that would likely be lost under this bill.

“This bill also appropriates no money for new transit investments through the Small Starts and New Starts programs. These programs provide federal matching funds for communities and regions that are taking the initiative and committing hefty sums of their own local dollars to build or expand transit systems. Without additional federal funding for transit construction, its likely that few, if any, new transit projects will be built.

“This appropriations bill ignores why communities need federal community development and transportation programs. It’s not just that they need money or innovative tools — which, for the record, they do. They also need a reliable partner who can support their work, not austerity measures that punish them for taking action. If the federal government quits being that reliable partner — which this appropriations bill absolutely implies — it will cause lasting damage to American communities and break the President and Congress’s promise to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure. These programs invest in communities across the country, improving mobility, security, and economic opportunity. Now is not the time to slash these investments.

“We urge the Senate to reject the disinvestment this bill represents and instead pass a bill that reinvests and rebuilds America for the future.”

USDOT Seeks Applications for a Ninth Round of TIGER Grants

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy. This information comes straight from the desk of our TIGER expert and T4America Interim Director Beth Osborne.

Dear T4America members,

USDOT is now seeking applications for a ninth round of TIGER grants. USDOT will be awarding a total of $500 million on a competitive basis to transportation projects that “will have a significant impact on the Nation, a metropolitan area, or a region.” While T4America fights for the continued existence of the TIGER program in 2018 and beyond, we wanted to share four quick things about this ninth round of TIGER grants as you consider applying:

1) There’s no need to rethink your existing projects or recast them for the new administration. It may be a surprise, but USDOT is using the same criteria for this round that they were using under President Obama in 2016. If you have a project you think is competitive or have submitted for recent rounds, don’t recast the project or rework the application expecting the criteria to be drastically different.

The one change was an inclusion of a rural focus, but even that emphasizes the typical goals of TIGER: “improved access to reliable, safe, and affordable transportation for communities in rural areas, such as projects that improve infrastructure condition, address public health and safety, promote regional connectivity, or facilitate economic growth or competitiveness.” And though unspoken in this notice of funding, USDOT and the Trump administration have put a big emphasis on public-private partnerships, which surely would be welcomed in the TIGER program as well.

2) Get your applications in quick. Another reason to avoid trying to recast a project or come up with a brand new project is that applications are due very soon. Unlike past rounds with as much as three months to prepare applications, there’s just a little over a month to submit your applications for consideration by October 16th. Therefore, you should choose a project that has a firm scope, budget and partners in order to get those applications in by the deadline.

3) Broad support will be vital. While the criteria may not have changed, the administration is likely to respond better to projects that have the broadest support from other local, state and federal elected leaders as well as business and civic leaders from you area. If you don’t have your congressional delegation on board, set up meetings as soon as possible to garner their support. Ask them to write supportive letters to USDOT and include your project as a topic of conversation at meetings with USDOT and other administration representatives. Having a broad bench of support from all levels of government for their project can have a positive impact on your project’s likelihood of winning an award. Why should USDOT select a project that’s not even supported by all the stakeholders?

4) Don’t forget, members can tap our expertise. As a benefit of membership, you can get free advice and staff time from T4America to answer questions about your application and help you submit the strongest application possible. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, which you can do through outreach director Ranata Reeder: ranata.reeder@t4america.org

We wish you all the best of luck. And we hope to have good news about preserving funding for TIGER in 2018, though we’ll be counting on your continued support and advocacy to buttress those efforts in Congress over the next month or two.

Beth Osborne
Interim Director

Recent Congressional Activity Summary-Week of September 8th

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you the latest information and developments around federal policy. This dedication includes in-depth summaries of what is going on in Congress and the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT). Check out what you may have missed in our member webinar last week. 

House of Representatives Appropriations

Before this Friday, current appropriations for the Federal Government were scheduled to expire September 30th, which is the end of the 2017 fiscal year.

During this past week, the House of Representatives (House) considered H.R. 3354, a mini-omnibus package consisting of 8 appropriations bills, including the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill. The official title of the omnibus package is the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018.”

The four appropriations bills the House considered on Wednesday were 1) Agriculture/Rural Development 2) THUD, 3) Homeland Security and 4) State/Foreign Operations. On Thursday and Friday, the House began consideration of the four remaining appropriations bills which are 5) Interior/Environment, 6) Commerce, Justice, Science, 7) Financial Services and 8) Labor/Health and Human Services.

While a final House vote on the House appropriations package was initially scheduled for Friday, the impending arrival of Hurricane Irma caused the House to delay final consideration and passage of the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018” until this upcoming week. This decision was made in order to give the representatives from Florida, and other states likely to be impacted by Irma, time to get home to their constituents.

After the passage of these 8 bills, the House will have passed all 12 of their appropriations bills that fund the activities of the Federal Government. The House passed their first four appropriations bills before August recess; those bills fund the Defense Department, the Department of Veteran Affairs, Legislative Operations, and Energy and Water.

The House Rules Committee, which is the body of the House that determines the rules for debate on a given bill, advanced for floor consideration roughly 40 amendments out of the 90 amendments that were submitted to the Rules Committee for consideration on the House THUD bill. You can access T4America’s tracker of the amendments T4America was watching closely here.

There were two amendments that were made in order that T4America was concerned about. Those two amendments were the Ted Budd amendment (Republican, North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District) and the Mo Brooks amendment (Republican, Alabama’s 5th Congressional District). Representative Budd’s amendment would have: 1) cut $475 million from the Federal-State Partnership for State of Good Repair grants, which was funding intended in part for the Amtrak gateway project, 2) eliminated the possibility of restoring funding for the TIGER program by applying the savings to deficit reduction and 3) Shifted $400 million in funding from intercity city passenger rail grants to the New Starts Program. Representative Brooks’ amendment would have eliminated federal funding for Amtrak’s national network operations.

Thankfully, the Budd amendment failed to pass by a vote of 159-260 and the Brooks amendment failed to pass by a vote of 128-293.

Debt Ceiling and Continuing Resolution Agreement

On Wednesday, during a meeting with Congressional leaders from both parties, President Trump reached an agreement with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi to extend the debt ceiling and government funding by approximately three months until December 8th, as part of a legislative package that provides federal funding for Hurricane Harvey relief and extends the federal flood insurance program temporarily.  The Senate passed this legislative package on Thursday by a vote of 80-17 and the House of Representatives passed it on Friday by a vote of 316-90, sending the legislation to President Trump, which he signed into law on Friday.

Surprisingly, a majority of Republicans in both Houses voted to pass the package even though Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated they strongly disagreed with the deal President Trump struck with Democrats and the influential House Republican Study Committee and other outside conservative groups opposed the deal as well.

Due to the passage of the legislative package, the debt ceiling and appropriations for the Federal government will now end on December 8th. We expect this deadline to lead to intense, high-stakes negotiations to reach a full year appropriations agreement and a long-term extension of the debt ceiling. Additionally, because of the importance of these negotiations, we expect immense pressure to include other items that are unrelated to appropriations but important to one party or the other. For example, early indications are that Democrats will insist on no discretionary funding spending cuts, the inclusion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and health care insurer payments to stabilize ACA as the price for their votes.

Senate Appropriations 

The Senate Appropriations Committee is still in the process of writing and approving their Appropriations bills. So far, the process in the Senate has been bipartisan and they have rejected cuts to non-defense discretionary spending that the House has adopted in their appropriations bills. Due to the spending cuts, the process in the House has been more partisan than the Senate.

There has been no indication from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that there will be Senate floor time to consider individual appropriations bill. At this point, T4America expects that all 12 of the appropriations bills will be rolled up into a giant omnibus by the new deadline of December 8th after negotiations over top line funding levels are completed with the House and between the two parties.

House and Senate Automated Vehicle Legislation

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed by voice vote their bipartisan automated vehicle legislation, H.R. 3388, the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research In Vehicle Evolution Act” or the “SELF DRIVE Act. Members can see our statement about the bill here. The House Energy and Commerce’s subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection (DCCP) has been examining the issue since late 2016 and actively considering legislation since June.

The legislation that passed the House this past Wednesday was led by DCCP subcommittee Chairman Robert Latta (Republican, Ohio 5th Congressional District) and ranking member Jan Schakowsky (Democrat, Illinois 9th Congressional District). The legislation does a number of things including: 1) delineating the federal and state/local roles when it comes to regulating automated vehicles via a pre-emption clause, 2) establishing a specific exemption from federal motor vehicle safety standards to test automated vehicles, 3) raising the number of safety exemptions a manufacturer can get to test vehicles to 100,000 over three years and 4) establishing an automated vehicle advisory committee to advise the Secretary of U.S. DOT on a number of issues related to automated vehicles.

On Friday, the Senate Commerce Committee released a draft of their automated vehicle legislation. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (Republican, South Dakota) and Senator Gary Peters (Democrat, Michigan) have been leading the legislative efforts in the Senate. The Smart Cities team is currently analyzing the Senate bill and will continue to work with Senators to make improvements to the House AV bill.

TIGER Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)

On Thursday, U.S. DOT released the FY 2017 notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for the $500 million TIGER program. U.S. DOT will evaluate projects based on the extent to which they benefit safety, economic competitiveness, state of repair, quality of life and environmental sustainability. These are the same selection criteria used in the TIGER rounds from 2014, 2015 and 2016. However, this Administration will emphasize “improved access to reliable, safe, and affordable transportation for communities in rural areas, such as projects that improve infrastructure condition, address public health and safety, promote regional connectivity, or facilitate economic growth or competitiveness.”

Applications are due by 8:00 p.m. E.D.T. on October 16, 2017 and U.S. DOT is hosting informational webinars on Wednesday September 13th, Tuesday September 18th, and Wednesday September 19th.

President Trump Nominations to U.S. DOT Agencies

On Friday, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Mr. Howard R. Elliot to be administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) and Mr. Paul Trombino III to be the administrator of the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA). Mr. Elliot most recently served as the Vice President of Public Safety, Health, Environment and Security for Class 1 Railroad CSX Transportation. Mr Trombino is the former director of the Iowa Department of Transportation from 2011 to 2016 under Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and the former President of the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO). The U.S. Senate must confirm both nominees.

With these nominees, President Trump has nominated someone to head FHWA, PHMSA, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the Maritime Administration (MARAD) while the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) still await nominees to lead them.

 

House making final decisions on cuts to TIGER, transit construction & rail this week

With the current federal transportation budget expiring at the end of this month, this week the House is considering a handful of amendments and taking a final vote on the 2018 fiscal year budget. Up for debate are amendments that could improve — or further damage — the House’s already problematic transportation budget for 2018.

With the September 30th deadline rapidly approaching, appropriations committees in both the House and Senate have been debating and setting funding levels for transportation programs for next year, including the discretionary programs that the Trump administration has targeted for cuts (i.e., those not funded by the Highway Trust Fund.)

While the Senate largely rejected the Trump administration’s request for cuts to programs like TIGER, new transit construction, and passenger rail programs (read our detailed breakdown of the current House/Senate bills here), the House’s version of the 2018 budget eliminated TIGER funding and reduced the transit capital program down near levels that would only fund transit projects that already have signed funding agreements in hand.

This week the House is scheduled to consider their final House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill, and there are crucial amendments that could improve the bill by restoring funding for some of these programs — or make the damage far worse.

We’re asking T4America supporters to take action and send a message to their representatives this week urging them to protect and preserve the TIGER competitive grant program, funding for new transit construction, and passenger rail programs that keep towns and cities of all sizes connected to one another. It’s important that the House pass a bill with robust funding for these programs to set their starting point for negotiations with the Senate on the final product.

 

TAKE ACTION

 

Read about the amendments that we’ll be watching closely in the tracker below. Feel free to include information on these amendments as you send emails or make phone calls to your reps, and follow along on Twitter @t4america for updates as the debate begins this week. (Some of these amendments may be rejected by the House Rules Committee before they reach the floor — they are expected to only allow a few amendments for full floor consideration.)

Logged-in T4America members can read our detailed summary of the House THUD appropriations bill and vote below.

[member_content]Members can read T4America’s full members-only memo here.[/member_content]

NumberSponsorDescriptionOutcome
7Maxine Waters (D-CA)Provides $7.5 billion for the TIGER program. Ruled out of order
8Maxine Waters (D-CA)Provides $550 million for the TIGER program, includes the current TIGER project eligibility criteria, specifically requires the Secretary to award the funds using the 2016 NOFO criteria, and requires that the Secretary distributes the grants 225 days after the enactment of the bill. Ruled out of order
13Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) Provides $500 million for the TIGER program. Ruled out of order
66Rod Blum (R-IA)Provides $200 million for the TIGER program and reduces HUD tenant rental assistance by $200 million as an offset. Ruled out of order
46Mark Amodei (R-NV)Requires the Secretary of Transportation to continue administering the current transit Capital Investment Grant Program and enter into a grant agreement with any Small Starts project that has satisfied the current eligibility requirements. Ruled out of order
38Darren Soto (D-FL)Increases the amount of funding for Small Starts funding by $48 million and decreases funding for intercity passenger rail projects by the same amount as an offset. Withdrawn
48Mo Brooks (R-AL)Eliminates funding for Amtrak's National Network only.Failed by a vote of 128-293
50Mo Brooks (R-AL)Eliminates both the funding for Amtrak's Northeast corridor and Amtrak's National Network.Ruled out of order
51Mo Brooks (R-AL)Eliminates funding for Amtrak's Northeast Corridor onlyRuled out of order
54Jim Himes (D-CT)Increases funding for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor account by $30 million and decreases essential air service funding by $30 million as an offset. Ruled out of order
83Ted Budd (R-NC)Eliminates the $900 million allocation for the Amtrak gateway program, increases funding for national New Starts Projects by $400 million and applies savings from the elimination of the TIGER Grant program to deficit reduction.Failed by a vote of 159-260
78Al Green (D-TX)Restores $250,000 in funding for the Department of Transportation Office of Civil Rights and reduces U.S. DOT salary and expenses by $250,000 as an offset.Ruled out of order

TIGER amendments

T4America supports efforts to fund TIGER because it is a crucial program that gives local governments direct access to federal dollars for innovative projects. TIGER projects are overwhelmingly multimodal and multi-jurisdictional projects – like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements – that are often challenging to fund through the traditional, narrow formula programs. However, T4America opposes paying for a TIGER program by cutting other necessary programs like the HUD tenant rental assistance program. Recent appropriations bills show that there is enough resources to sufficiently fund both of these two important programs.

Transit construction grants

T4America supports legislative language that increases the likelihood that the transit capital program will continue operating as it should and also moves future Small Starts projects forward by ensuring these projects get grant agreements when they are ready. T4America opposes proposals to offset funding for Small Starts by taking money from intercity passenger rail.

Passenger rail

T4America opposes eliminating funding for passenger rail, which is crucial to the economy vitality of our nation and communities across our country. The full national network provides mobility options for and acts as an economic catalyst to small and rural communities across the country. For many residents in these communities, the Amtrak connection is their primary way of traveling around the country, especially in areas that are losing Essential Air Service. Similarly, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor is the primary travel option for millions of people traveling that congested corridor every year. Not only does it take cars off our congested roadways, benefiting train and road users alike, but is a huge economic driver for communities located along the Corridor. Cutting funding for Amtrak’s National Network and Northeast Corridor would decrease our nation’s prosperity, harm the economic vitality of communities that Amtrak serves, and greatly lower the amount of personal mobility and freedom that people that use Amtrak currently have. The House of Representatives rightly voted down these amendments two years ago and should do so again.

T4America opposes cutting funding from the Essential Air Service program to pay for the Northeast Corridor. While rail funding is important to the urban communities along the corridor and our nation’s economy as a whole, we need both and T4America opposes amendments that pit one infrastructure priority against another.