TIGER, one of the most important programs that communities depend on to fund innovative local transportation projects, was well funded after the House proposal totally eliminated it in their budget.

Whether repairing a pair of deficient bridges that connect two communities in Michigan, extending transit service into an underserved area in Orlando, improving a busy rail crossroads in Texas to move freight faster cross-country, or bringing different modes of transportation together under a brand new roof in Moline, Illinois, the competitive TIGER grant program has been a huge boon to more than 130 communities, funding many innovative projects that often have a hard time getting funding from the state DOT or federal formulas.

New Starts, the small, oversubscribed program that funds almost all new transit construction across the country, was funded at a little more than $2 billion after being also totally eliminated by the House. It’s a prudent move: transit usage is booming across the country while vehicle miles traveled peaked a few years ago and has been slowly declining ever since — especially among people under age 34.

And the small but very influential Partnership for Sustainable Communities was funded again after receiving no funding last year. This program brings together the federal environmental, housing and transportation agencies to make decisions in concert and make small grants to communities that want to engage in better planning to ensure that their communities become or remain great places to live.

This doesn’t mean that the fight is over for this year — this budget will still have to be reconciled with the House, which is no easy feat. And we’ll have a battle at that point once more. It’s been tougher and tougher in the last few years to pass actual budgets for these individual programs. This year will be no different, especially heading into an election this fall.

The full list of notable programs and their funding levels:

• Highways: $39.1 billion.
• Transit: The summary doesn’t explicitly give an amount but it’s fairly safe to assume that it’s $8.4 billion, in line with MAP-21 levels, just as the above funding for highways matches MAP-21.
• TIGER: $500 million
• New Starts: $2.05 billion. This is the core program that funds construction of new and expanded transit systems.
• Amtrak: $1.45 billion
• Passenger Rail Grants: $100 million
• Partnership for Sustainable Communities: $50 million

Are you confused about the difference between the long-term transportation bill and these yearly budget battles? In short, it’s the difference between “authorizations” and “appropriations.”  The multi-year transportation bill is an authorization, which means the policy is put on paper and the targeted overall funding amounts are determined. We are still working to see that multi-year bill passed with important policy reforms. But in the meantime as we roll along under extension after extension of the old law, it’s still up to appropriators in the House and Senate each year to decide how much money to actually spend on transportation —especially how to divvy up the discretionary money between different programs, like Amtrak, TIGER grants, or high-speed rail, just to name a few.

In case you’re not familiar with TIGER, it’s a relatively small competitive and merit-based grant program for transportation projects that address economic, environmental and travel issues at once. Thousands of applications were received by the USDOT — more than 3,200 for the $2.6 billion total that’s been granted as of today in the last two years — and they announced 46 new grantees for the $527 million in available funding for this round.

The projects span the country and encompass a wide range of projects that improve ports, relieve road, freight or rail congestion, make unsafe streets safer for walking or biking and improve transit connections. Many of the projects accomplish several of these goals at once. The projects that states and localities submit for TIGER applications, usually with broad local and community support, often have a hard time getting funded under the outdated structure of the current federal transportation program.

We’ve added today’s TIGER III grants to our map of TIGER grants from 2010 so you can find grants near you and learn more. The full list of grants is available below a larger version of this map on this page, http://t4america.org/resources/tigermap/, as well as code to embed the map on your own site.

The conference agreement between the two chambers preserves funding for transit and the innovative TIGER grants program, while zeroing out high-speed rail. The Federal Transit Administration is provided a total of $10.608 billion. Amtrak, with $466 million for operating and $952 million for capital, would be funded at a level lower than what the Senate requested but higher than the House-proposed amount. But Amtrak did receive more capital funding than either the House or Senate originally proposed.

$500 million for TIGER constitutes a 5.1 percent cut from current levels, but is a significant improvement over the House proposal to eliminate the program entirely. Every round of grant applications for TIGER has yielded far more interest from communities that USDOT has been able to accommodate, and the program rewards projects that meet local needs. Streetsblog is reporting that the third round of TIGER applications outstrips the available grant amount by 27 to 1.

The New Starts program receives $1.95 billion. New Starts is a key funding source for transit projects across the country, particularly in large metropolitan areas. The WMATA transit system in Washington, DC gets $150 million.

Traditional highway funding under the Federal Highway Administration is funded slightly below current levels, with $39.143 billion.

In a disappointing move, negotiators did not include funding for Partnership for Sustainable Communities grants. The partnership is a joint venture between USDOT, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. While no new grants will be awarded under this agreement, the office will remain open and negotiators notably refused to include House-proposed language that would have disallowed the three departments from working collaboratively.

Both chambers will need to pass the “minibus” agreement by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. With bipartisan sign-off on these funding levels, passage is almost assured.

Check out the chart below, which compares the 2010 budget, 2011 budget and the House/Senate proposals that got us to the proposed 2012 budget.

Federal Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Budget: Highlighted transportation and sustainable communities programs.

“Today’s vote in the Senate to preserve current levels of infrastructure investment is an important signal that there is overwhelming bipartisan support to invest in job-creating transportation projects.

“With this vote, the Senate chose to protect vital funding for Amtrak, which recently announced record-breaking ridership. The Senate also preserves support for the innovative and successful New Starts and TIGER grants programs. Competitive programs like these are already bringing a long-overdue focus on performance to our nation’s transportation system.

“The Senate was wise to defeat amendments aimed at weakening funding for projects to make walking and bicycling safer. We look forward to continuing to work with both parties to make prudent transportation investments without jeopardizing programs that keep Americans safe on our roads.”

The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill, or THUD, as its called, contained similar cuts for transit and road/bridge spending that we saw in Rep. Ryan’s budget earlier this year. Transit and highway spending both get cut proportionally, around 34 percent.

While cuts are proportional in those main two areas, other areas and innovative programs face deeper cuts.The innovative TIGER grants, TIGGER grants and high-speed rail programs are cut entirely.

The New Starts transit program, which essentially funds all new transit system construction, gets cut to $1.55 billion down from $2 billion in FY10. In addition, a policy tweak is made that requires state or local funds to make up more than 50 percent of any new grant agreements. Or put another way, the feds will no longer cover more than half of any New Starts transit project, exacerbating an existing gap between the share the government will pay for transit vs. highway projects. (Highway projects get around 80 percent of their funds from the federal government.)

Existing passenger rail service faces deep cuts of its own. Amtrak’s capital budget (new rolling stock, new lines, equipment, etc.) is cut by $24 million, but the operations budget is where Amtrak takes a big hit, going from $563 million to $227 million. On top of that, an important policy change will prevent Amtrak from using any of their operating funds on state-supported lines — lines where a state has partnered with Amtrak to increase passenger rail service and ridership. To put that change in perspective, in 2010 9 million rides were taken on state-supported routes.

Amtrak State-Supported routes, from the T&I Committee “A New Direction” report (pdf).

Another notable policy change is for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The bill prohibits HUD from using any funding for anything related to the Sustainable Communities Partnership with DOT and the EPA. Essentially, this bill would require HUD to stop coordinating with the other two agencies and go back to the outdated siloed approach on housing, ignoring the effects on and the impacts of transportation and the environment.

The silver lining is that it’s unlikely that this appropriations bill will make it through the full process to passage anytime soon. Instead, Congress will likely pass a continuing resolution (CR) before September 30 to stop the government from shutting down — which means at least for a while, the 2012 funding levels could be more in line with last year’s levels, preventing some of these cuts. Whether it passes or not, it’s important to note that this is the House appropriators opening position on transportation funding for next year.

Here’s a full list with details on the cuts.

• Cuts highway funding from ~$41B to $27B
• Cuts transit funding (excluding New Starts) from $8.3B to $5.3B
• Cuts New Starts from $1.6B to $1.55B and requires that any new grant agreement include at least at 50% non-federal share; Note, FY10 New Starts funding was $2B, separate cuts were made last year.
• Includes funding for Washington’s Metro system – $150M
• No funding for TIGER, HSR, or TIGGER (transit energy efficiency grants)
• Prohibits any new RRIF (a loan program like TIFIA for rail projects) loans or loan guarantees.
• Cuts Amtrak capital funding from $922M to $898M; FY10 funding was $1,002M
• Cuts Amtrak operating funding from $563M to $227M

“Although we can develop cost-effective high-speed rail transportation in this country, I cannot imagine a worse beginning to a U.S. high-speed rail effort,” House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica, the Florida Republican pictured at right, said in a statement earlier this week.

But as Tanya Snyder at Streetsblog Capitol Hill reported, the discrepancies cited by Republicans are largely the result of the two-step awarding process at the U.S. Department of Transportation. The GAO noted that the review team considered a broader range of criteria, including geographic diversity, than the evaluation team, and thus differing results were not unexpected. Snyder wrote:

GAO doesn’t dispute the validity of those decisions but would have liked to see more thorough documentation of why they chose some of the previously lower-ranked projects over higher ones. Draft minutes of meetings shed some light on the decisions but were never published.

Further, the GAO noted that TIGER was a newly-formed program under the Recovery Act and that USDOT “developed a sound set of criteria to evaluate the merits of applications and select grants that would meet the goals of the program.” The GAO went on the write:

By thoroughly documenting how its technical teams considered and applied the criteria, clearly communicating selection criteria to applicants, and publicly disclosing some information on the attributes of the projects that were selected, DOT took important steps to build the framework for future competitive programs and its institutional capacity to administer them.

The GAO also concluded that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), which awarded high-speed rail grants “established a fair and objective approach,” but noted that the “exception is what we view as incomplete documentation of why some applications were chosen and not others, and how FRA decided to distribute the funds at the time those decisions were made.” The FRA later clarified and provided details for most of the GAO’s questions.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood strongly defended the decision-making process, saying the GAO report confirms that “we did everything above-board,” and Streetsblog concluded with:

The GAO reports pointed out room for improvement but were overwhelmingly positive about both the TIGER and high-speed rail programs.

A link to both reports can be found on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee website.

Photo courtesy of the Washington Post.

James Corless, director of Transportation for America, issued this statement in response:

The decision to halt progress on modernizing our world-lagging rail network is emblematic of an overall failure of congressional leadership and vision. Once again, Congress finds itself lurching from appropriations bill to appropriations bill, creating and killing programs and keeping outdated programs on life support, while China and Europe surge forward. The resulting chaos is undermining our ability even to repair and maintain our existing infrastructure, much less build a a 21st century transportation system that will allow us to compete in an increasingly global economy.

The one bright spot is that Congress preserved – though at a slightly lower level – the merit-based TIGER and sustainable communities programs, which promote competition and fund innovative, multi-disciplinary solutions to our transportation challenges. When Congress takes up the next transportation authorization, which is increasingly urgent, it must build on this sort of approach, while resurrecting a vision that can move us ahead of our international competitors.

The budget deal zeroes out high-speed rail funding from $2.5 billion enacted in fiscal year 2010. The one week extension to keep the government running through Friday had cut high-speed rail funds back to $1 billion for fiscal year 2011. Those funds had not been committed to any states because Congress never finalized a budget for fiscal year 2011. In addition to the $1 billion, the budget rescinds $400 million from fiscal year 2010 that had been returned by Florida Governor Rick Scott earlier this year.

Other cuts include:

• The New Starts program, a key source of funding for transit projects, is reduced to $1.6 billion.
• The TIGER program is reduced to $528 million from $600 million, a loss of $72 million.
• The Partnership for Sustainable Communities is reduced from $150 million in FY10 to $100 million.
• $3.1 billion in highway contract authority that has not been obligated to specific projects is also cut.

The total cuts to the New Starts program depends on the comparison. The $1.6 billion figure is $400 million less than fiscal year 2010 levels, but only about $220 million less than what the President requested for this year. Of the savings, $200 million became unobligated after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie chose to cancel his state’s planned ARC tunnel project.  Seven projects are expected to be impacted by the New Starts cuts.

The final figure for New Starts is only slightly more than what the House passed in HR. 1 several weeks ago. HR1 would have also eliminated funding for high-speed rail and TIGER grants.

This Monday, Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, will headline an event in the city of Moline, highlighting how the targeted transportation investments in TIGER have created jobs and revitalized communities.

Illinois has benefited enormously from the TIGER grants program, which would be eliminated completely under the House budget currently being considered. TIGER — an acronym for Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery — was initially created in the Recovery Act and later renewed. The premise was simple: reward the communities pursuing the most innovative projects that integrate transportation, economic development, environmental improvement and quality of life — projects that can have a hard time getting funding under our current outdated federal programs.

We profiled several recipients of the second round of TIGER grants late last year, including a new multimodal transportation hub along the Moline waterfront. The $10 million grant was to be combined with local funds to renovate a historic building in downtown Moline into a multimodal transportation hub bringing together Amtrak, commuter rail, buses and other local transportation services. The hub will also be part of a passenger rail connection from the Quad Cities to Chicago, with connections west to Iowa City and Omaha to be potentially added later. As Kathleen Woodruff, T4 America’s Illinois organizer, described it in October:

The new hub will connect all transit services at one new central location in Moline, bringing together Amtrak, local buses, taxis and bicycle and pedestrian facilities, enhancing this area of Moline’s waterfront and making travel easier for all Quad Cities residents. It is expected to support up to 825 new, permanent jobs and eventually, when the new passenger rail link from Moline to Chicago breaks ground, it will produce 1,600 direct and indirect jobs.

The project is similar to another multimodal hub underway in Normal, Illinois that received $22 million in TIGER funds.

The event with Senator Durbin will be held on Monday, February 21 at 11 a.m. at Moline’s Central Station. The Senator will also be in Peoria, Illinois earlier in the day to highlight transportation projects there. If you’re near Moline, we encourage you to go and show your support for this project and these kinds of transportation investments that TIGER has been making across the country.

Photo: Life Magazine

UPDATE (1/21/11): The Iowa House approved a measure to cut the funding. It will likely move to the Senate. If you live in Iowa, use this link to contact your Rep and Senator today to tell them you support this important line.

Potentially following in the footsteps of Wisconsin and Ohio, the Republicans in the state legislature are considering the possibility of killing Iowa’s portion of a planned higher speed passenger rail line from Chicago to Iowa City that would pass through the Quad Cities and the new Moline (Ill.) multimodal transportation hub funded by a TIGER grant.

Just after the last round of TIGER grants were announced, Iowa and Illinois received a joint $230 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration — separately from the DOT’s high-speed rail program — to start new 110 mph service from Chicago to Iowa City; service that could eventually connect to Des Moines and Omaha and lay the groundwork for a true 220 mph high-speed system connecting Iowa to the hub (Chicago) of the midwest’s high speed network.

The feds have committed $230 million of the $310 million that the two states were asking for on this project, leaving the states to come up with the rest. Iowa had committed around $10 million toward the gap, but state Republicans are currently working on a budget that would cancel that funding and result in all sorts of dilemmas for the project. From the Des Moines Register:

The Republican-sponsored budget package would not provide any state money needed to establish and subsidize operations for the route, almost certainly forcing the Iowa Department of Transportation to return a federal grant of $81.4 million already awarded for the passenger train project.

Where the story on this project differs from similar recent stories in Wisconsin and Ohio of grants going back to Washington is that this project spans two states for an interstate rail line. Illinois will be able to keep their share of the grant, which is larger since the bulk of the route spans their state, but what will happen to the route? Will it simply stop at the border at the new Moline multimodal hub? What about the future of a Omaha/Des Moines/Iowa City connection to Chicago? Will it bypass important Iowa cities?

It’s imperative that the Iowa legislature and Governor Branstad follow through on their state’s commitment to build this valuable new service. Following the path of I-80 and I-88, it would hit all the major population centers of Iowa on it’s way to and from Chicago.

Could this be the new terminal of the line intended to travel into Iowa? Photo of the planned Moline (Illinois) multimodal center.

The silliest comment of the day comes from Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, who somehow manages to compare the benefits of a ditch being dug and filled in to an invaluable direct transportation connection to the economic engine of the Midwest.

“I can hire someone to dig a ditch, hire somebody to fill it in, and somebody would claim it creates a job, but does it really accomplish anything?” McKinley said. “I think that’s the question we have to ask ourselves about passenger rail to Chicago.”

The legislative session hasn’t started yet, so it may be premature to jump to any conclusions yet as the Iowa Chamber said, but as the recent cuts in Wisconsin and Ohio showed us, it’s important that these leaders hear from supporters early and often — long before a decision is made. And incoming Governor Terry Branstad has thus far pledged to keep the issue nonpartisan and examine the project fairly and honestly. He needs to be held to that promise.

Iowa residents: Call and write your state legislators and Governor Branstad and tell them that this project is crucially important to Iowa’s future. You can use this page to look up their phone numbers and emails.

Four lanes reduced to two, and it doesn’t look friendly to walkers, either.

Ann Arbor, home to the flagship University of Michigan campus, is a key economic and educational hub in a state suffering from the second highest unemployment rate in the nation. Many of Michigan’s most innovative business start-ups and research activities happen in the city, and officials have emphasized the importance of connecting Ann Arbor to its neighbors in the rest of the state.

The two East Stadium Boulevard bridges are “functionally obsolete,” meaning they do not comply with today’s design standards. Both lack the required vehicle clearances. The bridge over State Street has a sufficiency rating of 2 out of 100, making it long overdue for repairs or replacement.

More than 48,000 vehicles traverse the bridges each day, but the original 4 lanes of traffic were reduced to just one lane in each direction after a January 2009 inspection revealed a safety hazard in the eastbound direction. The bridges also connect the 109,901 seat Big House, Michigan’s football stadium, as well as 42,000 students and 35,000 University of Michigan staff.

“It’s been a problem for my people in Ann Arbor for as long as I’ve served Ann Arbor,” said Congressman John Dingell at an event last month.

“We have an active interest in seeing these bridges successfully rebuilt,” said Jim Kosteva, director of community relations for the University, in an interview with Michigan Daily. “Being able to move goods and services and people throughout the community is very important to the University.”

In addition to public school buses and commuter traffic, bicyclists, pedestrians and 22 buses each weekday use the bridge. The photos above and below provide an up-close and aerial view of the bridges.

While these funds bring the obvious benefit of relieving a traffic bottleneck for cars and buses and rebuilding a potentially dangerous bridge, city officials also cited the new sidewalks and bike lanes that will make it easier and safer to bike and walk — important in a walkable city full of young students that has high rates of pedestrians and bicyclists.

“The proposed project will provide a sidewalk on the south side of Stadium Boulevard, on-street bike lanes, and a pedestrian connection between State Street and Stadium Boulevard which will work to create a more ‘walkable’ and bicycle-friendly community,” according to the City’s application.

Ann Arbor Ward 2 Councilmember Tony Derezinski described the TIGER II grant to AnnArbor.com as “like an early Christmas.” He added that “we just have a lot to be thankful for — this is a substantial part of the money we need.”

“We’ve been working on this for several years,” Mayor John Hieftje told the Michigan Daily. “It’s just great to get this funding.”

The city’s successful application cites the need for a “safe and cohesive transportation network” so that Ann Arbor can continue to attract new employers. Although the city has fared better than most of Michigan, it has still lost jobs and seen stagnant growth. Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company closed its campus there in 2008.

This project also illustrates that smart investments result in significant savings down the road. According to city estimates, the total savings from the bridge replacements add up to $12.8 million annually, including $106,000 in savings from reduced vehicle-miles traveled, $5 million in savings from reduced delays and $7.7 million in savings from reduced crashes. These kind of savings are what targeted investments and the TIGER program are all about.

Since the announcement of the TIGER II, the Michigan Department of Transportation announced that the East Stadium Boulevard bridges would receive nearly $3 million more in state-level grants.

(Photos courtesy City of Ann Arbor)

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series profiling the winners of the US DOT’s TIGER grants on the T4 America blog. For more information about the TIGER grants, view our interactive map and list of all the winners, read the rest of the posts in the series profiling the winners, and read all TIGER-related stories with the “TIGER” tag from the blog.