Alex Beckmann, Author at Transportation For America

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.

Member Weekly News Bulletin 12-16-2016

Nat’l & policy

Infrastructure may take a back seat to Obamacare, taxes–Politico Morning Transportation

“LOWER ON THE PRIORITY LIST: Investment in infrastructure may take a back seat to Republicans’ plans to repeal Obamacare and overhaul the tax code during the first nine months of President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. When asked Wednesday about how large of a stimulus Trump wants to propose, Reince Priebus pivoted to talking about the GOP’s health care and tax ambitions, which he said will come first”

Trump’s Infrastructure Strategy Has Produced Uneven Results in States–Governing Magazine

“In late-October, before a restless crowd in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Republican-elect Donald Trump laid out the closing argument of his campaign. “What follows is my 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again,” he declared, enumerating legislative and executive actions that were punctuated by applause from the crowd. His agenda rested on the familiar pillars of his campaign — building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, renegotiating trade deals and repealing the Affordable Care Act. It also touched on his ambitious infrastructure proposal, the “American Energy and Infrastructure Act.”

Mayors: Trump pledged partnership on infrastructure and public safety–Washington Examiner

“President-elect Donald Trump met Thursday with the mayors of Columbia, S.C., New Orleans, La., Oklahoma City, Okla., and other members of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.”

Mayors startled when Trump promises to keep tax-exempt bonds–Politico

“Tax exemptions on municipal bonds are hardly the sexiest political issue surrounding Donald Trump’s transition. But a group of mayors, meeting with the president-elect at Trump Tower on Thursday, were surprised with welcome news when they pressed Trump to keep the exemptions.”

U.S. DOT releases final MPO Coordination Rule–U.S. DOT Fastlane

“Today, USDOT is announcing a final rule aimed at ensuring that regional planning truly takes place on regional scale. The rule, issued jointly by FHWA and FTA, aligns practice with the statutory definition of “Metropolitan Planning Area” (MPA) and requires that MPO planning takes place at this regional level – encompassing the entire Urbanized area (UZA) and the surrounding area forecast to become urbanized in the next 20 years.”

American Developers Are Building Less Parking Per Bedroom–Streetsblog USA

“For decades the number of parking spaces built for each new residence in America has marched steadily upward. But now we may have reached a turning point.”

Local & state funding

GOP leaders says some type of tax hike needed for Indiana roads–Indianapolis Business Journal

“Key Republican leaders said Wednesday that Indiana lawmakers must consider some kind of tax increase if they’re going to move forward on plans to improve the state’s infrastructure.”

Local & state news

Feds Will Investigate Charge That CDOT’s I-70 Widening Violates Civil Rights–Streetsblog Denver

“The Federal Highway Administration will follow-up on a civil rights complaint against CDOT’s massive I-70 expansion through north Denver that opponents of the project filed last month [PDF].”

Transit

TEX Rail secures $499 million federal grant for Fort Worth-DFW trains–Texas Star-Telegram

“TEX Rail is no longer a commuter train project that is — forgive the cliche — on track to be opened by late 2018. It’s now barreling full-steam ahead (sorry again) in that direction.”

Shared-use mobility & tech

Uber launches self-driving cars in San Francisco–The Hill

“Uber’s self-driving cars are hitting the road in San Francisco as part of the company’s expanded public test of autonomous vehicle technology.”

California DMV Calls Uber’s Autonomous Autos ‘Illegal’–Wall Street Journal

“Uber Technologies Inc. is barreling ahead with testing autonomous cars in San Francisco despite stiff opposition from the state of California, which called the company’s experiment illegal and threatened to sue.”

Amazon is secretly building an ‘Uber for trucking’ app, setting its sights on a massive $800 billion market–Business Insider

“Amazon is building an app that matches truck drivers with shippers, a new service that would deepen its presence in the $800 billion trucking industry, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told Business Insider.”

Member Weekly News Bulletin 12-9-2016

Nat’l & policy

House passes stop-gap funding bill amid shutdown fears–Talk Media News

“The House voted to approve a continuing resolution (CR) on Thursday that maintains current funding for federal agencies until late April to avoid the possibility of a government shutdown. The measure passed the House 326-96 Thursday afternoon and is expected to come to the Senate floor by Friday afternoon.”

Shutdown looms as Senate Dems oppose short-term spending bill– Politico

“Coal-state Senate Democrats are not backing off their resistance to a short-term government funding measure, raising a major threat of a shutdown at midnight Friday if the standoff over coalminer’s benefits drags on.”

Transportation funding boost on hold-The Hill

“An infrastructure funding boost that was approved and paid for by Congress last year is once again on hold because of a short-term spending bill.”

Local & state funding

Why voters said ‘yes’ to public transportation on Nov. 8–The Hill Op-Ed

“In the wake of Election Day 2016, at least one clear winner has emerged: public transportation. There were a historic number of transit-related funding initiatives on ballots across the nation (49), of which about 70 percent passed. This impressive result means that there will be about $170 billion in new funding for systems that provide Americans with mobility options ranging from commuter and light-rail trains to subways, buses, and other transit services.”

Scott outlines plan to manage transportation needs–Rutland Herald

“Gov.-elect Phil Scott (Vermont) is pledging to focus on the state’s transportation needs without increasing the state’s debt or raising taxes and fees.”

Tennessee legislature poised next year to debate transportation funding, including a gas tax raise–Nashville Public Radio

“Tennessee Republicans are setting the wheels in motion for a debate — at last — over raising the state’s gas tax. The tax pays for roads, and lawmakers say congestion, especially in Middle Tennessee, shows the state’s old rate isn’t keeping up. Gov. Bill Haslam has been hinting at a need to raise the gas tax for two years, and recently he’s been turning to the topic again.”

Wisconsin State House Speaker: No Easy Solution for 1 billion dollar transportation funding gap – Fox 6 Milwaukee

“Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos wants to make it clear that there are “No Easy Answers” for solving the state’s $1 billion transportation budget deficit.”

New Democratic supermajority in California State Legislature raises hopes of transportation funding package in 2017-Sacramento Bee

“Broadening the path to long-sought deals on affordable housing, transportation infrastructure and climate change, California Democrats have again captured a two-thirds supermajority in both houses of the Legislature.”

Local & state news

RI, city leaders unveil final 6/10 Connector plan-WPRI

“State and city leaders on Thursday unveiled their final plan for fixing the decaying Route 6/10 Connector bridges, arguing the revamped $400-million proposal will improve highway safety while enhancing the neighborhoods around the 1.6-mile expressway.

Massachusetts DOT Says Move to Electronic Tolling is Saving Time Commuting–Boston Globe

“The move to electronic tolling on the Massachusetts Turnpike has shaved about 12 minutes off morning commutes, state transportation officials said Wednesday.”

Rail

FRA releases new train safety design guidelines that could let U.S. railroads run faster, more efficient trains-Streetsblog USA

“Why are American trains so expensive and yet so slow? One factor that rail advocates often point to is the Federal Railroad Administration and its rail safety regulations — rules that are finally on the verge of changing.”

FRA releases latest data on progress on positive train control implementation-FRA

“The Federal Railroad Administration today released third quarter 2016 data submitted by railroads on their progress in implementing Positive Train Control (PTC). The data show uneven progress across the country and across railroads toward activating the life-saving technology.

Transit

Cambridge Massachusetts is planning to use innovative roundabout design to increase bicycle safety-Boston Cyclists Union

“Just imagine: instead of gritting your teeth as you attempt to navigate the vehicular minefield that is present-day Inman Square, you could soon be circulating pleasantly along the rim of a traffic-calmed motoring peanut, a point of genuine interest lending harmony to this key crossroads.

Texas transit agencies eye bus changes after ridership jump in Houston–Texas Tribune

-“Houston’s bus overhaul, planned for years but rolled out literally overnight in 2015, has led to an increase in bus ridership, bucking state and national trends. Many are taking notice.”

Shared-use mobility & tech

Ohio plans to turn part of a local highway into a “smart road” – Columbus Dispatch

“Gov. John Kasich bristles — becomes a tad defensive, in fact — when the term “Rust Belt” is applied to Ohio. Standing in Dublin, in front of a “driverless” tractor-trailer and the section of Route 33 it soon traversed, Kasich announced a planned $15 million state investment on Wednesday to create a “smart mobility corridor.”

Uber, Lyft, and the future of transportation in Austin–Curbed

“Business travelers arriving at any major airport in the United States, regardless of the time of day, climate, or even city, will, almost on cue, do the exact same thing: They’ll open Uber or Lyft, looking for a ride before they walk out the door, sometimes even before they get off the plane. These two companies alone accounted for 52 percent of all ground transportation costs (including car rentals) during a three-month period this fall, according to a recent study by Certify, an expense management software tool. In this context, the experience of getting a ride at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin, Texas, is odd.”

UPS debuts delivery by electric bike in Portland–Oregon Live

“UPS will be swapping one of its big brown trucks for a big brown bike. The Atlanta logistics company said Wednesday that it’s testing delivery by electric bicycle in Portland, a first for the company in the United States. UPS, which started as a bicycle messenger service in Seattle, began testing e-bike delivery in Europe in 2012.”

Without a good transportation network, employees can’t work, employers can’t employ

A core function of our transportation network is to give everyone access to economic opportunity by making sure they’re easily connected to jobs. T4America director James Corless is participating in a policy roundtable later this week discussing the challenge for employers and employees alike, how some companies are responding, and how we can do better.

For those of you who live near Boston, register to join James and other experts for the related policy breakfast we’re cosponsoring this Thursday, November 19^th in Foxborough, Massachusetts, entitled “How Top Employers are Getting People to Work.” The roundtable will feature speakers discussing what top employers including Lyft and Google are doing and how we can all build a system that provides more opportunity to a greater range of people. T4America is cosponsoring the event with Transportation for Massachusetts, MassCommute, 495/MetroWest Partnership and the Neponset Valley TMA.

Role of transportation

Even though we may take ten or more other trips per day, our trip to and from work is the defining one — the trip that largely determines our economic prospects.

Many communities are struggling to attract and retain talented workers. Many American workers often face grueling or expensive commutes to get to jobs. And too many others lack reasonable, affordable access to jobs, cutting them off from economic opportunity.

An efficient and complete transportation network means businesses can recruit from every corner of their region, and lure new talent to town. It ensures workers of all wage levels can reach their jobs with the lowest possible cost and stress, improving retention for employers. A smarter, 21st century approach to transportation can help expand the earning potential of individuals, boosting the bottom line for business, and strengthening the economic power of regions.

By making smart decisions to better connect employees and employers, we can make our businesses more productive and competitive in today’s global economy while reducing the stark income inequality and racial wealth disparity that exists today.

Locating near transit options is a smart, competitive bet

Businesses are increasingly moving away from the old model of locating in a suburban office park that is only accessible by driving alone. One reason they’re doing this is because their employees — or the employees they desperately want to attract — want to work in places that are accessible via multiple modes of transportation. Because millennials are now the largest generation in the workforce, employers have to pay attention to their preferences to remain competitive in the global economy. And they do indeed have different preferences than preceding generations.

Millennials overall express far more interest in living and working in communities with more transit choices in a recent survey we conducted in conjunction with the Rockefeller Foundation:

4 in 5 millennials want to live where they have a variety of options to get to jobs, school or daily needs
3 in 4 millennials say it is likely they will live in a place where they don’t need a car
66% of millennials say that access to high quality public transportation is one of the top three criteria for deciding where to live next.

Not surprisingly then, when corporations re-locate these days, many are choosing locations that are easily accessible through multiple forms of transit to attract a new generation of workers. State Farm is consolidating multiple offices into new, expanded hubs in three cities, and all three have one common denominator: they’re all incredibly close to quality rail transit service.

Smart Growth America chronicled this phenomenon in their Core Values report that looked at 500 companies that have relocated to downtown locations over the last few years, and how access to transit and other transportation options were a deciding factor.

The change in walk, transit and bike scores before and after the 500 companies relocated in the Smart Growth America Core Values report

Increase in inequality

One of the challenges facing public policymakers is the stark increase in inequality that has occurred over the past 40 years in American society. People and families at the top end of the income scale have seen an increase in their earnings while the middle class and people living in poverty have seen their incomes stagnate or even decline since 1979.

Unfortunately, this growing wealth gap also has stark racial dimensions as well. White families have ten times the household wealth as Hispanics and 13x the wealth of African Americans and this wealth gap has not diminished over the last 30 years and, since the Great Recession, the gap has actually increased.

Pew Research Center (2014, 12/12), From http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/

Declining numbers of reachable jobs for many residents

One of the main contributors to the widening income inequality gap has been a decline over the past decade in the ability for workers, especially poor workers, to reach jobs near where they live. Fewer jobs within a realistic commuting distance equals less chance at economic opportunity and less upward mobility for lower-income residents. That comes with unseen costs that we all have to pay indirectly, whether we realize it or not.

Brookings Institute, (2015, March 24th). From: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2015/03/24-job-proximity/srvy_jobsproximity.pdf

How can we change the status quo?

Transportation for America has been pushing for two policy solutions in the surface transportation reauthorization bill Congress is currently considering.

Allow local communities to apply for grants for targeted transportation services and connections to job centers, particularly those with a concentration of low-wage workers; and
Provide the technical assistance and tools to encourage local communities, companies and employees to work together to craft a compelling and helpful suite of commuter benefits, incentives, and options that not only gets employees to jobs, but also helps relieve over-burdened transportation networks and supports the economy.

In addition, communities and businesses should adopt and encourage new (and emerging) methods for employees to get to work, such as new public transit links, employer shuttles, safer bicycle and pedestrian pathways, or car-sharing options.

The good news is that many communities are already making progress on this front. We profiled eight places that are doing innovative things to give more people greater access to economic opportunity:

Improving health and access to opportunity

Whether voting to expand transit service to underserved communities or selecting transportation projects partially based on the health benefits they could bring, innovative leaders in the public and private sectors are finding new ways to utilize transportation dollars to improve the health of their residents and give them access to greater opportunities — bringing tangible economic benefits to their communities along the way.

Read the eight profiles

It’s critical that we continue making progress toward providing everyone who wants to work with ample transportation options to choose from that can get them to a good range of well-paying jobs. It’s foundational to prospering regional economies.

For those of you near Boston, please join James this Thursday on 11/19 by registering here.

Visionary group in Montana tells us their rural transit success story

This group we visited with last week in Montana, Opportunity Link, received a welcome shot in the arm, announced just this morning: they received a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of the 2011 Sustainable Communities regional planning grant program. 468 applications requesting more than $500 million in funding were received by HUD, and only 56 communities and regions were selected for the grants.

If you ever doubt the need for public transit in rural areas, or need reaffirmation of the resilience and ingenuity of frontier America, make a trip to Havre, Montana (or second best, watch the short video below.) We had a chance to make that trip this week and, man, was it inspiring.

A group of us from T4America and the American Public Health Association traveled to Montana to meet with people working in health, transportation and local government in the state’s small cities and rural areas. They are vitally interested in the federal transportation bill because in many cases it literally could determine whether these places live, thrive or die.

One of those places is Havre, Montana, a town of about 10,000 roughly 30 miles from the Canadian border, nestled between two Native American reservations, Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy’s. There we met Barbara Stiffarm, the executive director of a scrappy organization called Opportunity Link. The aptly named group’s mission is to connect people in the isolated communities of north central Montana to jobs, job training, affordable housing, medical care and other services that help residents of small towns and reservations “achieve independence, prosperity and a better way of life.”

“We quickly discovered that we can’t do any of that without transportation service,” Stiffarm told us. Working with numerous local communities and the reservations, Opportunity Link has cobbled together federal resources, private grants and scant local funds to connect several different transportation services into an integrated network. To fill gaps in service, Opportunity Link two years ago led the creation of North Central Montana Transit.

NCMT is miraculous for a number of reasons.

First, it offers fixed-route service. Many rural transit services are “on demand” – covering the vast distances separating communities from employment, education and health care centers.

“Every day we cover an area about the size of the state Maryland,” said Jim Lyons, the director of NCMT. They started the service with modest expectations for ridership, but have been blown away by the unmet demand they discovered. Rather than riders in the low hundreds per month, they are instead into the thousands; one in ten is an elderly person who simply could not get to health care, activities and other services without it.

IMG_4340 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America to Flickr.

The Dean of Montana State University-Northern shows off some of the seeds used to make the biodiesel for the NCMT buses during last week’s tour in Montana. They hope to use these seeds to help refuel trains passing through Havre from Seattle to Minneapolis.

Second, they also discovered they were being eaten alive by fuel costs, and they were disturbed by the effect that burning all that fuel had on their desire to be a “green” operation.

That led to an exciting research and development project with Montana State University-Northern to grow their own biodiesel fuel. The idea is to get local wheat growers to rotate in crops of an oil-seed plant known as camelina. A recent break-through in the local research effort has raised hopes that camelina, which has the advantage of being an extremely hardy, non-food crop, can produce biodiesel that can fuel buses as well as the freight trains that use Havre as a refueling stop between Seattle and Minneapolis. More exciting still, a by-product of that process could also be a component in jet fuel.

And all because an ingenious local group set out to connect people to opportunities through rural transit!

As inspiring as it was, an eye-opening aspect of our trip was to see just how vulnerable these communities are, and how large a role the federal transportation bill plays in their operation.

The local leaders and service providers we met in Montana are mindful that changes to programs being considered in Congress could strengthen such services, and lead to greater coordination and efficiencies, or throttle them altogether. As one tangible example, the HUD Sustainable Communities program that awarded Opportunity Link the $1.5 million grant today was axed last week in the budget for 2012. They also are deeply concerned that changes to programs such as transportation enhancements, now being considered in the Senate’s MAP-21 version of the bill, could leave them no way to fund the community projects that have been vital to economic development and safety.

Further changes would reduce the input that these communities have into how the state sets transportation priorities and allocates funding. The level of alarm was high, and it served to strengthen our commitment as a coalition to continue to emphasize the needs of rural and frontier America and push for measures that will help them, as the bill makes its way through the House and Senate.