BUILD Grants Archives - Transportation For America

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.

U.S. Senate passes transportation appropriations bill with robust funding for transit, rail programs

Washington, DC—Today, the United States Senate again rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate or severely cut vital transportation programs that local communities rely on by adopting its FY19 Transportation Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill. In perhaps their strongest rebuke of the president’s disdain for transit, the bill language specifically requests that USDOT manage the BUILD program (formerly TIGER) as it did during the Obama administration.

“Today the United States Senate reaffirmed the importance of investing in transportation and in particular public transit. The Senate’s vote signals that funding public transit is and should remain a federal priority, despite the objections of the current administration,” said Kevin F. Thompson, director of Transportation for America. “Millions of Americans are counting on new or improved transit service to provide options for reaching jobs and opportunity, and local governments are counting on federal funds to leverage local taxpayer revenue and bring these projects to fruition.”

President Trump has twice sent recommended budgets to Capitol Hill that have eliminated most or all funding for public transit.

The Senate THUD appropriations bill funds:

The BUILD (Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development) Grants program at $1 billion. The bill language specifically directs USDOT to administer this program as it was in 2016 (under Obama’s DOT) in response to changes the agency has tried to impose which would have added greater financial and administrative burdens on local communities. The BUILD program is one of the most popular programs administered by the federal government, providing grants directly to local communities across the country for all manner of transportation systems from biking and walking infrastructure to port projects to transit systems. Communities can continue to rely on BUILD to help make upgrades to their ports (like in Mobile, Alabama) or shared-use trail systems (like in northwest Arkansas).
The Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program at $2.5 billion, a $1.6 billion increase over the administration’s FY19 request but $92 million below FY18. This funding will allow projects like the Indianapolis Purple Bus Rapid transit (BRT) line, the Raleigh-Durham light rail line and the Tempe, Arizona Streetcar to move forward. Each of these communities raised tens or hundreds of millions of local dollars based on the promise of federal matching funds. The Senate, through this bill, keeps that promise.

The Senate strongly endorsed continuing Amtrak’s long-distance service, despite objections of the Trump administration, by virtually prohibiting Amtrak from reducing or eliminating rail service on the Southwest Chief line as Amtrak proposed. The Senate also adopted an amendment supported by Transportation for America that expressly prohibits the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) from changing its federal loan policy that would have raised costs for local taxpayers (see FTA’s “Dear Colleague” letter). The letter sowed confusion about FTA’s standards and we’re pleased the Senate rebuked the agency’s actions. The Senate sent a clear message that FTA should continue carrying out the CIG program as Congress intended.

We applaud the Senate for taking a firm stand in support of these programs and the communities that rely on them; we hope the U.S. House of Representatives will do the same.

On May 23, 2018, the House Appropriations Committee approved their THUD bill. Like the Senate bill, the House bill rejects the president’s proposal to eliminate or severely cut vital transportation programs that local communities rely on. We encourage Speaker Ryan to bring the bill expeditiously to the full House of Representatives for a vote.

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.

208 local leaders and organizations urge Congress not to back down from federal commitment to transportation

208 local leaders and organizations—including 72 local elected officials—sent a letter to House and Senate appropriators today urging them to continue rejecting the administration’s proposed cuts to transit and passenger rail programs, and the BUILD competitive grant program.

This group of elected officials and organizations, spanning 36 states, urged Congress to continue their commitment to invest in these small but vital programs that help move goods, move people and support the local economies upon which our nation’s prosperity is built.

“This impressive group of 208 signatories are sending a clear message to Congress and the administration: The opportunities provided by these relatively small federal transportation programs are crucial to the long-term vitality of communities across the country,” said Kevin F. Thompson, director of T4America. “Local voters and leaders have been approving billions in tax increases at the ballot box to invest in meeting the growing demand for well-connected communities served by transit. But they’re counting on the federal government to continue its historic role as a reliable funding partner to support these bottom-up efforts to invest in transit.”

As Congress continues working to finalize the 2019 budget, the letter’s signers urge appropriators to “recognize the power transportation investments can and continue to have on making our communities dynamic, livable, and connected places while strengthening our country’s position in the global marketplace.”

The letter continues:

We want all American communities, large and small, across the country to benefit from a multimodal transportation network. We want to rebuild and improve our transportation infrastructure and that begins by ensuring that projects and programs in the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act are fully funded and that the administration’s proposed cuts to key federal transportation programs—including the BUILD (previously TIGER) program, the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Capital Investment Grants (CIG), and long-distance passenger rail programs—are defeated and funding for these programs are secured or enhanced.

As you consider funding levels for fiscal year (FY) 2019, we urge you to prioritize federal investments in our national transportation system, specifically for public transportation and passenger rail service.

The full letter, including the list of all 208 signatories from 36 states, can be found here.

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Senate appropriators reject administration proposals to eliminate transit investment

On Thursday, June 7, the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up and approved the FY19 Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations Act. Kevin F. Thompson, Director of T4America, offered this statement in response:

“Millions of Americans are counting on new or improved transit service to provide options for reaching jobs and opportunity, and local governments are counting on federal funds to leverage local taxpayer revenue and bring these projects to fruition. The Senate Appropriations Committee recognized that need today. By unanimously approving $2.6 billion to fully fund all transit projects in the federal pipeline, Congress is signaling its intent to make local communities stronger and rejecting the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for transit and leaving every community to fend for itself.

“While the committee members ignored the administration’s requests to deeply cut or eliminate passenger rail programs and the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant program, formerly TIGER, they did provide less funding for next year than was approved in the FY18 appropriations bill. They did so despite the fact that last February’s two-year budget deal allows for greater investment in infrastructure, a stated priority of Congress and the administration. We hope the full Senate will use this bill as a foundation to fund transportation programs at or above FY18 levels to benefit all Americans and truly improve access to opportunity.”

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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!