T4America Blog

News, press releases and other updates

Posts Tagged "BUILD Grants"

BUILDing Complete Streets

By now it’s well known that the Trump administration is no friend to transit funding. Even the BUILD grant program—which was originally designed to fund complex, multimodal projects—has been warped by the administration’s focus on roads. But there is one silver lining from the most recent awards: Complete Streets.

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Trump’s USDOT BUILDs even more roads

26 Nov 2019 | Posted by | 1 Comment | , , ,

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.

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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.

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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.

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

press release

The US 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.

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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.

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

press release

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 […]

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Senate appropriators reject administration proposals to eliminate transit investment

press release

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:

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