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Tag: Capital Investment Grant Program

Three things to know about FY2021 House transportation appropriations

Earlier this month, the House Appropriations Committee approved transportation funding levels for fiscal year 2021. Emergency funding for the primary transit construction program and passenger rail is great, but more money for highways—funneled into existing broken programs that just make traffic worse—is not. Here’s what’s to like and not to like in the House FY2021 transportation appropriations bill. 

Increased funding for transportation is only good if it’s spent on programs that make a difference. Unfortunately, current federal highway policy fails to prioritize maintenance while worsening safety, climate change, and congestion, and undermining investments in rail, transit, biking, and walking. That’s why our transportation problems continue to worsen despite large sums of funding: our highway funding creates problems that wastes the money spent on transit and passenger rail. 

While current public transportation, BUILD Discretionary Grants, and passenger rail policy can be improved, additional funding for these programs, even under current law, is absolutely critical for state and local governments. This is why the FY21 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee is, for the most part, a mixed bag. Here are three things to know. 

1. Emergency funding and policy improvements for Capital Investment Grants (CIG)

Capital Investment Grants (CIG) is the main federal program for constructing new transit assets. In order to receive CIG funding, state and local governments need to raise matching funds. With COVID-19 demolishing state and local governments’ budgets, few entities will be able to receive funding from CIG without making major sacrifices. 

The FY21 THUD appropriations bill includes $5 billion in emergency funding for CIG, bringing CIG’s total fiscal year funding level to $7.2 billion. The bill also makes a policy change that will make CIG funding more accessible in the COVID-19 era: Funds made available by this bill can be used for amendments to an existing Full Funding Grant Agreement to lower or defer the local match, something that may be necessary due to COVID-19. 

2. No emergency funding for transit operations

With all of public transportation’s funding sources—farebox revenue, state and local sales tax revenue, and more—dwindling due to COVID-19, transit is in dire need of emergency operating support. Many transit agencies are anticipating running out of funds in the next few months, stranding riders who depend on transit to reach their jobs, healthcare, groceries, and other services. 

In May, transit agencies, elected officials, and organizations across the country called for $32 billion in emergency support; many agencies have now upped their ask to $36 billion. But the FY2021 THUD appropriations bill doesn’t provide any emergency operating support for transit. There’s hope that transit will be included in the next round of COVID-19 relief legislation, but it might not be at the level necessary to keep transit services running. 

3. More highway funding for broken programs

The FY2021 THUD bill significantly increases highway and transit funding levels to match the INVEST Act, the House-passed proposal to reauthorize federal transportation policy. However, while FY21 appropriations must be approved to avoid a government shutdown, the INVEST Act is unlikely to become law, at least not this year, and the most likely scenario is an extension of current law (the FAST Act). 

This means that these increased funding levels will just be funnelled into programs that make our problems worse—particularly the federal highway program, which is still hardwired to prioritize car access, incentivizing projects that improve vehicle speed without actually increasing people’s access to jobs and services, reducing our maintenance backlog, or saving lives from crashes. The INVEST Act would update the federal highway program with performance measures that would connect federal funding to the outcomes Americans value, but in the meantime, increased highway funding will likely be spent on building roads to nowhere. 

If the INVEST Act was law, this would be a different story 

The Appropriations Committee directs spending—not policy—so we cannot hold the committee responsible for outdated transportation policy that just makes our problems worse. Although we are concerned that significant new highway funding without policy reform will continue to undermine our goals, we appreciate increased funding levels for transit, passenger rail, and the BUILD program, and the support this Committee has given to the CIG program in FY21 and in recent years. 

This is why we support the INVEST Act, and why we’ll continue to work to secure fundamental reform in the next surface transportation authorization: under new transportation policy, all federal funding will work to improve Americans’ access to the things they need. We’re looking forward to working with Congress to pass transportation policy that puts funding to work. 

Five things Congress can do to save transit

Public transportation is in crisis. Transit agencies are suffering tremendous losses in ridership and farebox revenue, as well as state and local revenues, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, the multi-year transportation bill passed in the House of Representatives that includes some relief for public transit won’t pass anytime soon. Here’s what Congress must do to truly save transit from collapsing. 

Public transportation is facing an existential crisis. Transit agencies across the country are making drastic cuts to service to cope with depleting budgets, severing millions of people from access to essential jobs and services, including healthcare and grocery stores. Any long-term economic recovery will be nearly impossible without transit service to connect people to opportunities and these essential services.

But recent transportation and stimulus bills didn’t supply transit agencies with sufficient emergency funding, nor make critical, short-term policy changes to help agencies weather this crisis. The HEROES Act, House Democrats latest economic stimulus measure, included $15 billion for public transit, less than half of the need. The INVEST Act, a long-term transportation authorization passed as part of a large infrastructure package in the House earlier this month, fundamentally changes the programs at the heart of federal transportation policy to help communities improve access, safety, and their maintenance backlogs. But it only provided transit agencies with $5 billion in emergency assistance—a far cry from the $32 billion over 160 organizations, including Atlanta’s MARTA and New York City’s MTA, have asked for. 

Last week, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) released their proposal for fiscal year 2021 spending levels. While the subcommittee supplied transit construction programs, like New and Small Starts, with emergency funding, there is no funding for direct emergency operating support for transit agencies like was provided in the CARES Act. 

We can’t afford for transit to stop running. If Congress does nothing, public transportation won’t be able to provide Americans with a convenient, affordable, rapid and sustainable transportation option when our country needs it the most. Here’s what Congress can do.

NOTE: while some of these recommendations are included in the HEROES Act, the INVEST Act, or the House FY21 appropriations, no bill includes all of these recommendations and none of these bills have been signed into law (or even stand a chance of consideration by the Senate). Transit agencies are hurting now, and urgent action is required. Each of these recommendations work together, and we urge Congress to consider this as a package. 

Provide at least $32 billion for emergency operations support and allow transit agencies to use 2019 ridership data to receive formula grants in FY21 and FY22.

Public transportation is the bedrock of our transportation infrastructure, connecting millions of Americans to jobs, schools, services and opportunities every single day. Yet this essential service might not survive COVID-19. Transit agency revenues are dwindling due to dramatically reduced fare collection, diminished local funding sources, and other impacts from a contracting economy. Further, ridership levels are plummeting as transit agencies actively discourage non-essential travel. With recurring federal transit funding based in part on ridership, these historic low ridership levels put future funding at risk. Without emergency help today, and a guarantee of long term stability, essential transit service will suffer.  

To ensure that transit agencies can continue to operate, Congress should: (1) provide at least $32 billion for emergency operating support, and (2) allow transit agencies to use 2019 ridership data to receive formula grants in FY21 and FY22, holding transit providers harmless for the loss of ridership due to COVID-19, as is allowed in the recently-passed INVEST Act. 

Require detailed, directive, guidance on how to safely operate, and provide necessary personal protective equipment (PPE)

Over 100 U.S. transit workers have died from COVID-19. In New York City, transit workers are dying at three times the rate of police and fire emergency personnel combined. Yet thousands of transit personnel work everyday to connect Americans to jobs and healthcare, many doing so without access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). 

Another factor contributing to transit workers’ greater risk of contracting COVID-19 is underwhelming federal guidance for transit agencies regarding the purchase, distribution, and use of PPE, and how to safely operate during this crisis. The CDC guidance for transit operators, maintenance workers, and station staff does not provide clear enough instruction, leaving local communities, states, and transit agencies to develop a patchwork of rules. The lack of prescriptive, national regulations, means some transit workers and riders will be more protected than others and leaves safety to the discretion, and political whims, of local communities. 

To improve safety for the essential transit workforce, Congress should  (1) require detailed, directive, federal guidance on how to safely equip personnel and work environments and operate transit services, (2) supply transit workers with PPE.

Eliminate the local match for existing and upcoming projects in the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) pipeline and increase annual funding for CIG

COVID-19 is decimating state and local governments’ budgets, constricting local governments’ ability to raise matching funds to receive funding from the CIG program. There are $23 billion worth of projects in the CIG pipeline, demonstrating the demand for additional public transit across the country. These projects create manufacturing jobs and support local economic development. To reduce strain on local budgets and support local economic development, Congress should (1) Provide no less than the FY19 funding level of $2.55 billion and $3.1527 billion to cover the additional proposals; (2) eliminate the local match for new CIG projects in the pipeline and retroactively reduce or eliminate the local match for existing projects, and (3) prevent Federal Transit Administration from changing overall project ratings due to changes in local commitments or ridership projection. 

Provide at least $7 billion in public transit formula funding to save jobs and protect transit’s future

Some kinds of spending create more jobs, faster, than others. Transit maintenance has proven to be an effective job creator because less money is spent on equipment and permits and more on wages. Transit agencies face a $99 billion maintenance backlog due to chronic underfunding. By investing in transit maintenance, we can improve essential service and create jobs quickly. 

To create jobs and repair essential public transit systems, Congress should (1) provide $7 billion in formula maintenance funding, (2) eliminate the local match for these funds in FY21 and FY22.

Provide a fair share for transit by ending the “80-20” split and funding transit at the same level as highways

Investing in transit creates jobs quickly and supports service essential to our economic recovery; yet, since 1982, Congress has provided transit with only about 20 percent of dedicated surface transportation funding. This “80-20 split” in transportation spending has left transit chronically underfunded for decades and has created the perception that highways are more deserving of support, and more affordable, than transit. With the gas tax increasingly unable to support transportation spending, the rationale for the 80-20 split no longer applies. To support our economic recovery, Congress should (1) not default to the 80-20 split, and (2) provide funding for transit at least at the same level as highways.

Download these recommendations as a fact sheet.

Nine other important things to know about the House’s transportation bill


Last week the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released a multi-year transportation bill that starts to connect transportation spending to accomplishing measurable outcomes, including our three core principles. Here are nine other important other things to know about the House’s introductory effort to replace the FAST Act, which expires this December. Most are exciting, but there are two major disappointments.

Read our previous post chronicling how this bill stacks up to our three core principles: prioritize maintenance, design for safety over speed, and connect people to jobs and services.

1) Puts climate change at the center to reduce emissions

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the country, the vast majority of which is due to personal cars and trucks. This legislation recognizes that reducing this pollution is imperative and requires states to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their transportation system. (A similar requirement from USDOT was rolled back early in the Trump administration.) This requirement to measure and reduce GHG emissions from transportation could be a gamechanger. States that spend in such a way to reduce emissions can be rewarded with increased flexibility. States that fail to reduce emissions will face penalties. This is precisely the kind of holistic approach that the Senate’s proposal is lacking. As we wrote last summer about the Senate bill, “Despite including a climate title for the first time ever—a huge feat for a Republican-led Senate—and a new safety incentive program, the [Senate EPW’s proposal] puts the bulk of its funding into programs that incentivize the building of high-speed roads. This negates the funding for the climate and safety programs because high-speed roads are dangerous by design and increase transportation emissions.”

2) Climate isn’t confined to a single section

There are a handful of other new climate programs proposed by the House to tackle climate change. First, the bill proposes a new Carbon Emissions Reduction program within the highway title to fund projects that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Second, there is also a new Pre-Disaster Mitigation program that funds projects that improve the resilience of existing infrastructure. Third, the proposal includes a new Community Climate Innovation Grant program that will provide $250 million annually to support local projects that reduce emissions.

There are several provisions in the bill seeking to electrify vehicles, including allowing surface transportation funds to be used for vehicle charging infrastructure. The bill also creates the Electric Vehicle Charging and Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure grant program, which would make $350 million per year available to public agencies to build more charging stations for zero emissions vehicles. Finally, the “Low or No Emission” grants program for transit buses and facilities would also be renamed the “Zero Emission Grants” program to reflect a shift in the program. Funding for zero emission bus grants—which will fund the purchase of buses and charging infrastructure, and require a plan to transition to a zero emission fleet—would be increased more than fivefold to $1.7 billion over five years.

3) Builds on the FAST Act’s rail program to provide a better and more balanced passenger rail service

Expanding and improving passenger rail is one of the best ways to improve access for millions of Americans in big urban areas and small rural ones alike. High-speed rail would be nice, but in many areas of the country, rail connections are the only way for some people to travel between smaller towns and cities. We need to improve the entirety of our network and bring better, more reliable passenger rail service to more people. By providing $60 billion in funding for passenger rail over five years, the House starts to balance out rail with the rest of our transportation investments.

Perhaps most notably, in stark contrast to Congress’s recent attempts to peel off the Northeast Corridor and cancel vital long-distance routes, it re-establishes the centrality of a complete national network of short- and long-distance rail service by funding each one in an equal manner. And it gives Amtrak the legal tools it needs to address bad faith interference from freight carriers. As an example of how this is necessary, when Amtrak was negotiating with CSX for their right-of-way along the Gulf Coast to restore passenger service, CSX first came to the table with a dollar figure that was so large as to defy rational explanation.

4) More money for transit with a policy shift to quality service for more people

Transit gets a big boost in overall funding (47 percent) with this bill (as does highways at 42 percent, unfortunately), but the real star here is the change in policy. For years, federal funding for transit has incentivized lowering operating costs—where can transit be built the most cheaply, how can it be run for the least cost, etc.—instead of building transit that is most useful to people. But no one ever chose to ride transit because its construction costs were low—frequent service and reliability are what people care about. The INVEST Act flips these incentives to focus on frequency of service that will encourage more people to choose to ride.

There are also major reforms to the program used to build and expand transit (Capital Investment Grants), like directing the federal government to cover a larger share of the costs—as we have long done for highways—and doubling the program’s historically limited funding to about $4.5 billion per year on average. And a new federal transit-oriented development office will help coordinate transit and housing investments to create more walkable, transit-accessible neighborhoods around the country.

5) A year for transition and some emergency support, though not what transit needs over the next year

The House recognizes that we are in the midst of a crisis with this pandemic; so for the first year, 100 percent of all new funding would go toward emergency programs. For transit, that means $5.7 billion. The House deserves credit for recognizing that we need emergency assistance for our unique circumstances, but transit will need far more than this bill provides. Most of that need will have to be addressed outside of a reauthorization bill since it is possible, even likely, that a reauthorization package will not become law for a year. House leaders are likely planning to address pandemic recovery elsewhere, but it is good to remember that this funding, along with the funding from the passed CARES Act and the proposed HEROES Act, still falls short of what is needed to keep transit running through fiscal year 2021.

6) Connects housing and transportation

This is a transportation bill, but it takes seriously the powerful impact of transportation policy on housing and vice versa. We must provide more attainable housing in places where people can drive less and walk or take transit more. This proposal attempts to address this by providing a large boost in transit funding. But it is also essential to incentivize cities and developers to build more affordable housing near transit.

The House proposal calls for the creation of a new Office of Transit-Supportive Communities within the Federal Transit Administration to coordinate transit and housing projects within the USDOT and across the federal government. This office would be empowered to provide new Transit Oriented Development Planning grants to state and local governments who are designing or building new high-frequency transit. These grants would support efforts to enhance economic development and ridership by facilitating multimodal connections, increasing pedestrian and bicyclist access, and enabling mixed-use development. The grants can pay up to 80 percent of the cost, but projects that include an affordable housing component can go up to 90 percent.

The office would also offer technical assistance with transit-oriented development, including siting, planning, and financing projects. The technical assistance could also support housing feasibility assessments, ridership promotion, applying for relevant federal funding, value capture, and model contracts. All assistance must include strategies to improve equity and serve underrepresented communities.

These are important provisions, though it would be helpful and important to have states and MPOs measure how well they are performing in providing affordable housing in areas that have affordable transportation. A good way to do this would be to create a new federal performance measure for combined housing and transportation costs with 45 percent of household expenses as the target upper threshold.

7) A few other exciting new programs

  • There is congestion pricing provision that allows the conversion of non-tolled lanes to variable tolling lanes if the Secretary finds that the “toll facility and the planned investments to improve public transportation or other non-tolled alternatives in the corridor are reasonably expected to improve the operation of the cordon or corridor.” The planning for such a conversion must include consideration of air quality, environmental justice and equity, freight movement and economic impacts. Further, the operator must report on the impact of the program on congestion. Wouldn’t it be nice if state DOTs had to do that on regular highway expansions?
  • This bill creates a new $600 million competitive program akin the TIGER/BUILD program to fund local and tribal governments, MPOs, transit agencies for projects that improve safety, state of good repair, access to jobs and services, and GHG emissions. The Secretary of Transportation will have to create a transparent new system for objectively evaluating projects and developing a rating system to compare the benefits and costs of each application, using these metrics above. And only the highest scoring projects would be eligible for grants, which can be up to $25 million.
  • The bill proposes a new $250 million program to provide direct funding to “high-performing” MPOs for locally-selected projects. Awarded amounts would vary from a minimum of $10 and a maximum of $50 million. High-performing MPOs would be determined based on the financial, legal and technical capacity of the MPO; its coordination with the state DOT, transit agencies, and other MPOs in the metropolitan area; and its management of the planning program and past competitive grants.

8) The issue no one has taken on yet: the 80-20 split

Why are we still propping up the 80-20 split of highway and transit dollars? It budges with this legislation, but only a little to 77-23 or so. As T4America Director Beth Osborne said on Twitter, “It is amazing that with such a disproportionate boost [in overall funding], transit just barely makes it to 20% of the funding. It shows what a lift real change is. How are we 38 years past the 80-20 deal and still so subjugated by it?”

If Congress is able to fund this bill, it’ll happen with a sizable amount of general taxpayer funds, not gas taxes. So taking care of the user isn’t the reason for sticking with the old funding pattern. Also, the United States spent decades building out a highway system: will this country ever put the same energy into another surface mode?

For no good reason at all, we are still spending money on highways like we’re just starting out, way back in 1956. This is no longer the Eisenhower highway program, but this bill proposes to add almost 100 billion additional dollars to the pot for highways as if it was. Congress declared the interstate system complete decades ago, but you wouldn’t know it by the funding. Even though this bill proposes to spend that money far better, the level of spending is a sign that we still haven’t successfully transitioned into managing the system we built. That urgently needs to change.

9) Congestion as the goal of the program still reigns supreme

Congestion relief has always been the underlying goal of the program whether written or not. And it always means congestion relief through building and expanding highways, even though it never, ever works and usually makes congestion worse. (See The Congestion Con report for the proof.)

If Congress enacts an access measure, we hope they consider removing the congestion relief measure since improving access includes improving access by car through congestion relief. A more insidious issue is the ever powerful, unwritten standard that dominates the program called “Level of Service”—a measure of how fluidly cars are traveling. A road is rated an A through an F; an F is failing even though it may very well be the most economically productive corridor. “Level of service” is simultaneously required nowhere but no one is allowed to design a transportation project without it. It is probably time for Congress to tackle this issue in the law if they want to truly exert authority over this program and focus it on a broader array of priorities.

House committee grills USDOT on transit funding delays

Bird's eye view of construction on a wide road in Los Angeles.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held an oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16, to question the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) about its ongoing failure to release billions of congressionally-appropriated funds for local transit projects in a timely fashion through the transit Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program.

Bird's eye view of construction on a wide road in Los Angeles.

Construction on the Crenshaw/LAX line in Los Angeles. Photo by LA Metro.

While the hearing’s second panel was far less informative or helpful (more on that later), the first panel consisted solely of Acting FTA Administrator K. Jane Williams answering questions from a number of committee members about the impacts of USDOT’s and FTA’s efforts to slow down grants from the lone federal program dedicated to building new and expanded public transit. 

Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) opened strong, reporting committee staff’s analysis of FTA’s data on its administering of the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program. (You can read the full findings here.) Staff found that delays in obligating CIG funds have doubled since the Obama administration, despite Trump administration claims that “environmental reviews” were what slowed down delivery, according to DeFazio. 

Committee staff also found that the CIG cost share of transit projects has decreased, falling from an Obama administration height of CIG funds composing 50 percent of a project’s funding to now, where CIG funds constitute no more than 36.6 percent. According to DeFazio, this is because the FTA has made it known to transit agencies that projects asking for “over 40 percent won’t be funded or will receive a low rating.” 

The FTA’s spreadsheet sleight-of-hand 

Back in April, the FTA released a statement announcing $1.36 billion in federal funding “allocations” to 16 projects. As we’ve noted already, allocations are simply a spreadsheet exercise. While normally an important step in the typical process for grants, no agreement is signed, no money changes hands and local communities are not able to proceed with construction.

In her testimony, Acting FTA administrator K. Jane Williams referenced allocating $825 million worth of CIG projects this year, saying that, “in our administration, when we make an allocation, it is our signal that we will sign a grant agreement.” 

That was certainly the case during previous administrations, and the Acting Administrator’s comment is welcome. However, the Acting Administrator did not state how long communities should expect to wait between an allocation and a grant agreement. Indeed, FTA’s actions over the last two-and-a-half years tell a different story. Under this administration, projects have languished for months after receiving an allocation. Many that received allocations last year are still waiting for their signed grant agreement that actually give them the funding to proceed.

Because Trump’s USDOT requested zero dollars for new transit projects for two years , FTA also halted the standard practice of publishing clear reports along with the annual budget request that specifically described which projects would receive funding that fiscal year. Without these reports (and even less information publicly available online) it is difficult for Congress and the public to hold the FTA accountable. Allocating funds without these reports, and without a clear commitment to advancing projects through the pipeline, is confusing and misleading to the public.

There are certainly delays coming from somewhere

Acting Administrator Williams was asked very directly about delays for these projects, and she gave a direct but very carefully worded answer: “There is not an FFGA, SSGA or Letter of No Prejudice on my desk, my leadership’s desk, or OMB’s desk. So there are no delays happening.” When asked a follow-up question about her answer, she affirmed that “there is not one single project waiting for my action as I sit here today.”

But that’s exactly the problem: nobody—transit agencies, local governments, or us at T4America—know precisely what is causing delays. This is made worse by the FTA no longer publishing the reports that enable Congress and the public to hold them accountable. 

The Acting Administrator blamed delays on local communities. However, we know that it has been nearly 500 days since FY2018 appropriations were signed, and FTA still has not identified the specific CIG projects for all of the available 2018 funding. We also know that local communities and project sponsors report poor communication with FTA, a lack of transparency, and numerous bureaucratic hurdles to advancing projects. 

If FTA will not help local communities then the projects will never advance to the Acting Administrator (or anyone else’s) desk—it’s a catch-22. 

Committee members from both parties understand how important transit is

Rep. Greg Pence (R-IN) doesn’t have any CIG projects in his district. But he knows that investing in transit is good for his state not just by improving people’s transportation options, but by supporting manufacturing jobs up the supply chain. Trains and buses and rails all need to be built; investing in transit directly supports these industries. Indiana is home to 193 of these manufacturers. 

Across the aisle, Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA) grilled the FTA Acting Administrator on whether the FTA records and calculates the cost to communities of transit funding delays. The (roundabout) answer: if the FTA does collect that information, it won’t be sharing it. 

Testimony about transit focused on roads

After two hours of testimony and questions spotlighting the FTA, a second panel focused on transit capital grants with testimony from the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and the Kansas City Streetcar Authority. Although the House T&I committee is charged with writing policy and has no jurisdiction over money, these testimonies, particularly ARTBA’s, went straight to talking about the Highway Trust Fund. 

There was also a lot of discussion about the upcoming surface transportation reauthorization, an issue that House T&I has jurisdiction over but was not the focus of the hearing. 

There was one cool and unexpected comment, though: APTA’s president, Paul Skoutelas, proudly told the committee that he doesn’t own a car, saying “I take the bus.” We love that! 

Some transit agencies are unwilling to speak up

We’ve heard that local governments and transit agencies are hesitant to be publicly critical of the FTA—especially when they have projects in the pipeline or in development. The only witness before the House T&I Committee that actually applied for CIG funding was the Kansas City Streetcar Authority. The agency is waiting for $330 million to extend its popular line. We were thrilled to hear that they have had a positive experience. However, plenty of other agencies have seen their costs rise because of delays, a few of which we chronicled before the hearing, and which were well documented in the Committee staff report. 

By the time this second panel started with ARTBA, the T&I Committee room had mostly emptied out, signaling that perhaps the members of the committee were as skeptical about the utility of this second panel as we were before the hearing.

On what does the House T&I Committee have jurisdiction?

Members and witnesses alike both regularly strayed into off-topic remarks that were beyond both the topic of the hearing (transit grants) and the jurisdiction of the committee. Raising the gas tax received a lot of air time, as well as electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and of course the obligatory mention of Hyperloop.

Yet the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has limited or no jurisdiction over these things. Especially the question of raising the gas tax—that’s a matter for the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. 

What this committee does have jurisdiction over is how the FTA administers transit grant programs. The first half of the hearing was a good start, but the small amount of progress the FTA has made in the last year has been the direct result of pressure from the public and Congress, and the committee will need to keep up the urgency on advancing these projects in a timely fashion.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is holding an oversight hearing on USDOT’s failure to release transit grants

Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee speaking at a hearing.

Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee speaking at a hearing.House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) speaking at a hearing.

Transportation for America urges the House of Representatives to turn up the heat on USDOT for failing to release funding for transit grants during an oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is holding a long-awaited oversight hearing on Tuesday, July 16 at 10:00 AM to hold the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) accountable for failing to spend transit funds that Congress already appropriated for deserving transit projects. 

“The Trump administration is undermining Americans’ access to jobs and improved quality of life by failing to release approved funding for transit projects,” Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America, said. “USDOT has slowed down the pipeline of projects dramatically and made the process so confusing and unclear that local communities could be discouraged from even applying with their new projects, even though Congress has repeatedly provided funds for this program. Communities and leaders on both sides of the aisle choose to invest in public transit because it makes sense. The federal government needs to do its job—release the funds in a transparent and timely manner.” 

Since the Trump administration took office more than two years ago, Congress has appropriated  approximately $3.8 billion to the popular transit Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program, the main source of federal funding for building and expanding transit systems in cities of all sizes all over the country. 

Congress has continued to hold up their part of the bargain, but USDOT has failed to do its job, awarding just one-third of that $3.8 billion to new transit projects, slowing the pipeline of transit projects down to a snail’s pace.  By the middle of 2019—two and a half years into the Trump’s first term—the USDOT had approved and signed just five grant agreements for new, large, multi-year transit projects. 

USDOT is still sitting on ~$2.4 billion that is to be obligated to transit projects. Communities are waiting;  jobs and critical projects are on the line. Local communities are counting on the federal government to be a reliable partner and provide the funds they have been counting on. The funding for new or improved transit service has already been appropriated by Congress—USDOT just needs to do its job.

Transportation for America applauds Representative Peter DeFazio, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, for bringing this important issue to light. We hope that Committee members will join him in asking difficult questions during the hearing, such as: 

  •  Why does FTA seem to be unwilling to sign grant agreements for eligible transit projects?
  •  Why isn’t FTA being more transparent and forthcoming about the status of projects publicly and with project sponsors. FTA no longer publishes the same summaries on their website.
  • Why does FTA seem to be aiming to confuse the public with the announcements of “funding allocations” which are not binding and don’t result in any actual money going to local agencies?

President’s budget dramatically cuts transit grants while USDOT sits on billions of unobligated funds.

President Trump’s just-released 2020 budget would cut federal transit capital grants by $1 billion. Although this is a slight improvement from the administration’s past efforts to eliminate all funding for new transit projects, it comes after a backlash against USDOT—stoked by Transportation for America’s ‘Stuck in the Station’ resource—for failing to administer the grant program in good faith and in a timely fashion.

Specifically, the 2020 budget requests just $500 million for new transit grants, a 64 percent cut from the $1.4 billion Congress appropriated explicitly for new projects in 2019 earlier this year. (The president’s budget includes $1 billion for projects already underway that the administration is legally required to continue funding.)

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) under Secretary Elaine Chao’s leadership has empowered President Trump’s strange crusade against transit funding. When Congress ignored the president’s previous budget requests to eliminate the program and made bipartisan moves to allocate billions in funding for improving and expanding transit, USDOT neglected to award grants.

Even after responding to the backlash by advancing several projects in 2018, USDOT is still sitting on more than $2.77 billion in available funds for new transit projects, as Transportation for America shows with Stuck in the Station.

“USDOT and the president are responding to the backlash to their past efforts to eliminate this popular program that provides transportation options, offers alternatives to soul-sucking congestion, and supports manufacturing jobs across the country,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “Unfortunately they are still proposing a massive cut in funding for building or improving transit systems. And while they are calling for cuts, USDOT is still sitting on billions intended to advance projects across the country.”

Following the release of Stuck in the Station last summer, USDOT picked up the pace of its grant awards slightly as public pressure mounted, funding nine more transit projects and bringing the total up to 10—just 10 projects in two years. That pace is wholly inadequate, and they are failing to keep up with the money that Congress continues to provide each year to advance new projects. They’ve awarded less than 30 percent of the more than $3.8 billion Congress has appropriated since 2017.

Combined with less transparency from the department about where projects stand in the grant process and what money is being used, it leaves communities, advocates, and even Congress guessing.

Congress has not taken kindly to USDOT’s blatant attempts to hamstring transit funding nor its disregard for congressional intent. In both the 2018 and 2019 appropriations bills, Congress inserted unprecedented language requiring USDOT to award at least 80 percent of each year’s funds by the end of the following calendar year—a direct rebuke of USDOT’s intransigence. USDOT now has until the end of 2019 to award at least 80 percent of their 2018 funds to the more than two dozen projects awaiting funding. Stuck in the Station now counts down to the Congressional deadlines and tracks how far USDOT has to go to meet that minimum requirement.

It’s important to note that even if USDOT reaches their 80 percent benchmark—which is an open question—that’s only a ‘B-‘ grade. Satisfactory.

USDOT’s unnecessary funding delays are increasing project costs, hindering construction in places with small fair-weather construction windows, and potentially jeopardizing projects altogether, leaving local communities on the hook as bureaucrats play politics in Washington. And this isn’t just happening in theory; according to reporting from Indy Midtown Magazine, “Federal delays in making appropriated funds available to [Indianapolis’ transit provider] IndyGo added approximately six months to the construction schedule.” Construction on the Indianapolis Red Line bus rapid transit project is now being accelerated to make up for federal delays.

Transit projects like the Indianapolis Red Line and the other two dozen projects in the pipeline for federal funding help spur local investment, support high-paying manufacturing jobs around the country, and provide the foundation for robust regional, state, and national economies. This budget is clearly out of step with what Americans need and want as communities across the country are trying to address looming crises like climate change and burgeoning inequity in our communities, and boost economic activity.

With the 2018 fiscal year over, how much money has USDOT obligated to transit projects?

The 2018 fiscal year closed yesterday, wrapping up a year in which USDOT received more than $1.4 billion from Congress to invest in new transit construction and improvement projects across the country. With another infusion of cash for FY 2019 coming (eventually), it’s time for a look at how much USDOT still has on hand from 2018—as well as the unspent funds from FY 2017.

With fiscal 2018 now in the books and 2017 more than a year behind us, USDOT still has nearly $1.8 billion in unspent funds at their disposal from these two years for new transit. They’ve obligated a total of $532 million in 2017-2018 dollars to just eight transit projects, with just $100 million of that from FY 2018.

Perhaps one reason why USDOT has awarded so little of the funding from this year is because they still have almost half of the $925 million that Congress gave them back in May 2017. That fiscal year now closed more than a year ago.

USDOT’s bank account is actually about to get even bigger.

While the 2019 budget is still awaiting final action by Congress, the relevant committees from both chambers have already approved their 2019 budgets for transportation (and housing) programs. And as it stands now, both the House and Senate would infuse the transit capital program with more than $2.5 billion. While about half of that money would be for advancing ongoing multi-year transit projects that USDOT already approved, approximately $1.5 billion would be intended to advance new projects in the pipeline that are expecting to sign agreements with USDOT sometime in 2019 or beyond.

Before the end of the calendar year, without advancing any big-ticket transit projects, USDOT could have more than $3 billion on hand to obligate to transit projects.

If this budget is approved by Congress, it will mark the third straight time that they’ve rejected USDOT’s preference to receive zero dollars to advance new transit projects. Remember, this was their request for the 2019 budget (emphasis ours):

The FY 2019 [budget] proposal limits funding for the CIG Program to projects with existing full funding grant agreements. For the remaining projects in the CIG program, FTA is not requesting or recommending funding. Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.

To hear FTA tell it, they’re wondering what the big fuss is all about. Last week the FTA’s Acting Administrator Jane Williams spoke to the American Public Transportation Association at their annual conference. During her remarks, she expressed surprise at all the hand-wringing about FTA’s signature transit program:

Unfortunately, the administration’s efforts to support our nation’s infrastructure are many times overlooked by the focus on the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program. I know a lot of you in the room have very strong opinions about this administration’s approach toward the CIG program. Even though this program represents less than 20 percent of FTA’s budget, it seems to occupy 80 percent of the attention.

A huge share of FTA’s funds are distributed via formulas—FTA has no discretion to turn off that faucet even if they wanted to. So yes, the public is very interested in the single biggest available federal funding stream to pair with billions raised by local taxpayers to advance new transit projects across the country. Leaders in places like Atlanta might understandably be wondering about the future of their ambitious $2.5 billion transit plan that hinges on receiving funding from a program that USDOT would prefer Congress wind down.

Further on in her remarks, Acting Administrator Williams claims credit for projects that they actually haven’t funded yet:

In fact, in just the last six weeks…

  • Allocated $100 million in funding toward our planned multi-year FFGA for the Seattle Lynnwood Link Extension light rail line, and
  • Allocated $99 million in funding toward our planned FFGA for the Santa Ana, California streetcar project.

USDOT has not yet signed funding agreements nor obligated any funds to the Lynnwood (WA) Link light rail project and the Orange County (CA) Streetcar. Claiming credit for “allocating” funding to them is like telling your kids that they need to write thank-you notes for the presents they might get for Christmas, if they’re good.

Congress isn’t likely to act on the 2019 budget before the November elections—the president signed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government through December 7—but when they do, they’ll be filling up the USDOT purse with yet more funding for transit. Stay tuned.

USDOT has become the biggest obstacle in the way of delivering transit projects on time and on budget

Our updated Stuck in the Station resource shows how USDOT was already slow-rolling transit funding well before Congress gave them another $1.4 billion 157+ days ago to build or expand transit systems across the country.

Since March 23, 2018, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has awarded just $25 million of the $1,400,000,000 that Congress made available to them this year for advancing transit capital projects in more than a dozen cities. 

The full picture for funding is even worse. 

In addition to sitting on $1.4 billion, USDOT has distributed less than half of the $925 million Congress appropriated for new transit projects all the way back in May 2017—more than 480 days ago.

Collectively, that now means that Congress has given USDOT more than $2.3 billion over the last two years to help build or expand transit in scores of local communities. Though they have awarded about $457 million since early 2017, that’s less than 20 percent of all the dollars that Congress has given them for transit capital investments over this two-year period. Put another way, nearly a full year after the close of FY17, USDOT has committed less than half of what Congress gave them for that period.

Congress is concerned about this slowdown: In a report commissioned by Congress, USDOT was warned by the Government Accountability Office back in May that they “run the risk of violating federal law” by failing to administer FTA’s transit capital investment program, as we noted last Friday.


See the full dataset and most current numbers in Stuck in the Station

When USDOT responded to the initial release of Stuck in the Station, they asserted in a response to some reporters that they had in fact advanced ten transit projects since 2017 with funding agreements. But is that the right number? As we wrote in last week’s post:

FTA suggested in their response to reporters that ten projects have received “new” full funding grant agreements (FFGAs) since 2017. But only two of those are actual big ticket New Starts or Core Capacity transit projects [that even require these types of multi-year grant agreements]: The CalTrain electrification project and the Maryland Purple Line project were both holdovers from the Obama administration that moved forward because of intense political pressure or the resolution of a pending legal dispute, respectively. The other eight projects FTA shared with one reporter were all Small Starts projects.

Two of these eight particular projects actually received FY16 dollars (The Link extension in Tacoma, WA and the SMART commuter rail in San Rafael, CA.) That arguably leaves just six transit projects that this administration has truly advanced through the pipeline on their own with 2017 or 2018 dollars.

This also means that, when the administration turned over at USDOT with the inauguration of President Trump, the previous regime had successfully obligated nearly all of the FY16 transit capital funds, save for about $200 million intended for just three projects. $100 million of that funding was for one project held up by a legal dispute (the Purple Line in Maryland). More than two years into the current administration, USDOT has awarded less than a fifth of the $2.3 billion they’ve been directed to obligate by Congress.

Wasn’t this administration supposed to be all about delivering projects more quickly and cutting the red tape?

Gov. Accountability Office: The FTA “runs the risk of violating federal law”

With the release last week of Stuck in the Station, we detailed how the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has been delaying the distribution of $1.4 billion to help build and expand transit systems across the country. 153 days (and counting) after Congress handed billions to USDOT and the FTA, they finally spoke up last week.

After the release of Stuck in the Station last week, FTA responded through a spokesperson, disputing our claim that any of the 17 projects on the list are “ready-to-go,” stating that “none of the projects listed have met the requirements in law for receipt of Capital Investment Grants funding.”

Putting aside the obvious point that FTA’s reason for existence is to help shepherd communities through the process and meet the requirements, it’s incredibly unclear—even to the locals trying to build these projects, in many cases—where these projects stand in the process.

“The public and project sponsors have had very little information about what additional steps are required by USDOT to move their projects forward,” said T4America senior policy advisor Beth Osborne, in response to FTA’s comments. “FTA saying only ‘we are reviewing these projects’ does virtually nothing to illuminate their procedure. In the past, the administration would provide information in the budgetary process about which projects are expected to move forward. In a break with that common practice, this administration hasn’t done that, so we pulled from the information available on FTA’s website. If that information is not sufficient to understand where projects stand, it further demonstrates how opaque this process has become.”

To this point, we’ve already heard that several project sponsors are in the dark about the status of their projects or exactly what FTA is waiting to receive from them to move forward.

FTA suggested in their response to reporters that ten projects have received “new” full funding grant agreements (FFGAs) since 2017. But only two of those are actual big ticket New Starts or Core Capacity transit projects: The CalTrain electrification project and the Maryland Purple Line project were both holdovers from the Obama administration that moved forward because of intense political pressure or the resolution of a pending legal dispute, respectively. The other eight projects FTA shared with one reporter were all Small Starts projects, but only one of those received any funding from FY18. All of the rest were funded through money still unobligated from one of the last two fiscal years (FY16-17).

Why isn’t there a clear list published by USDOT with the dates these agreements were signed? And how much money from the previous year (FY17) has USDOT still not obligated at this point? Why is it so hard to find this information?

FTA suggests in their statement that they’re working to advance the rest of these transit projects in the pipeline, but their true position is in fact the opposite, which they’ve made crystal clear elsewhere: transit is not a federal priority and only projects with current grant agreements should receive federal dollars.

Here’s what FTA says in their FY19 Annual Report of Funding Recommendations: (emphasis ours; CIG stands for the transit Capital Investment Grant program.)

The FY 2019 [budget] proposal limits funding for the CIG Program to projects with existing full funding grant agreements. For the remaining projects in the CIG program, FTA is not requesting or recommending funding. Future investments in new transit projects would be funded by the localities that use and benefit from these localized projects.

There it is in black and white: USDOT and FTA’s position for next year’s budget is that the pipeline of transit projects should grind to a halt completely, leaving cities and communities on their own to raise yet more local funding than they already have to complete their projects.

In sad attempt at a fig leaf, the FTA also tossed this red herring into their response:

In addition, FTA has made available almost $10 billion in FY18 formula funding and $534 million in funding for other competitive programs.

That’s nice, but those funds have nothing to do with the transit program they are tasked with administering. They are formula dollars, which are awarded by Congress automatically from the Highway Trust Fund. USDOT is merely a pass-through for those funds with some oversight responsibilities.

Lastly, Congress is also concerned that USDOT is slowing down the pipeline and dragging their heels on advancing projects. Two things Congress has done recently suggest this.

1) There’s language in this year’s final approved omnibus budget that says that FTA has to obligate 85 percent of the transit capital program funds by the end of 2019. No one at T4America can remember any language like this from Congress to FTA, probably because FTA has never slow-rolled the process down like this before. And 2) for next year’s funding, in the Senate FY19 transportation and housing bill, the Senate also expressed their concerns about unnecessary delays from FTA with this report language on page 74:

“Project Pipeline.–The (Appropriations) Committee is concerned with unnecessary delays for projects seeking advancement into engineering or a grant agreement. These delays are costly for local project sponsors and create uncertainty for transit planners and providers across the country. The Committee directs the Secretary to continue to advance eligible projects into project development and engineering in the capital investment grant evaluation, rating, and approval process pursuant to 49 U.S.C. 5309 and section 3005(b) of the FAST Act in all cases when projects meet the statutory criteria.”

As that same Senate report says later on, FTA is trying to use the President’s budget request (which has no legal authority and is largely a statement of principles and priorities) to keep from doing what Congress has already mandated that they do — move the pipeline of new projects forward and tell the public what projects will receive funding:

The Committee is particularly concerned that FTA has no immediate plans to address outstanding statutory provisions because the Administration’s budget request does not include any new CIG projects. The Committee is dismayed that FTA is ignoring statutory mandates in order to reflect a budget request that has been consistently rejected by Congress and directs the Department to implement the GAO recommendations within 60 days of the date of enactment of this act.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (pdf) referenced by the Senate committee in the last sentence above is a flaming arrow directed at FTA. (Laura Bliss at CityLab also covered this report today in this superb piece.)

Commissioned by Congress, this report from May reaches some damning conclusions about FTA’s process with the pipeline of transit projects, and intimates that they’re coming dangerously close to failing to follow the law. Most shockingly, the FTA has told the GAO directly that they aren’t planning to do what Congress has directed them to do because the president is trying (and repeatedly failing) to end all transit funding anyway, so why bother. That’s not how the law works, however:

However, as also mentioned earlier, in March 2018 the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, provided the [transit capital] program with more than $2.6 billion, and also directed FTA to continue to administer the Capital Investment Grants program in accordance with the program’s procedural and substantive requirements. Following the enactment of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018, FTA officials told us that they are reviewing the law and determining next steps. However, they did not indicate that they have any immediate plans to address those provisions. Moving forward, if FTA does not take steps to address the outstanding provisions, FTA runs the risk of violating federal law.

An administration that has been so publicly focused on speeding up project delivery, cutting red tape, and moving transportation projects along as fast as humanly possible has become the biggest obstacle for the timely delivery of transit projects that scores of local communities are depending on.

Every day that they delay, materials get more expensive, workers and equipment sit idle, and local taxpayers will end up having to pay more than they should have.

It seems that everyone other than our country’s Federal Transit Administration is interested in moving these transit projects forward in a way that’s clear, transparent, and expeditious.

What’s wrong with this picture?

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 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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Urge your representative to support public transit funding in next federal budget

After two straight years of the Trump administration pushing to eliminate all funding for building or improving public transportation systems, Congress is right now deciding how much funding to provide for transit in the FY19 budget. To make sure Congress knows they need to continue rejecting these proposed cuts, T4America is circulating a sign-on letter for organizations and elected officials.

Communities across the country are using transportation as a powerful tool to boost their local economies, whether by remaking the streetscapes on Main Street to better support local businesses, investing in public transit to improve access to jobs, or revitalizing a downtown anchored by an Amtrak station that connects to other communities. Federal transportation funding plays a key role in these efforts, and many communities have raised their own local tax dollars with the expectation that the feds would continue to be a reliable partner in their efforts.

However, unlike past presidents from both parties, the Trump administration has proposed to cut and/or eliminate the federal programs that invest in these strategies for local economic competitiveness. These cuts would result in canceled transit projects, less vibrant communities, and many people stranded without options for getting to work and other necessities. This would pull the rug out from approximately 40 cities that were fully expecting the federal government to share around 50 percent of the cost—many of which have already raised new transportation revenues from voters at the ballot box.

Congress is in the annual process of putting together the FY19 appropriations bills and they are deciding right now how much funding to provide for these vital programs. We need to join our voices together and urge them to prioritize investments that support local communities, public transportation and passenger rail service.

We are organizing a sign-on letter for local or community organizations and local elected officials to call for robust investment in these programs. Sign this letter of support that we will deliver to House and Senate appropriators.

Click here to sign the letter

The letter urges Congress to provide robust funding for transit capital grants, the BUILD program (which replaces TIGER), and various passenger rail programs. As our letter says:

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.

If you represent a local or national organization, or are an elected official at any level, click here to read and sign the full letter.

—

Note: For the wonks among you who want to know all the finer points and funding levels, the letter calls for maintaining authorized funding levels of federal transportation programs in the FY19 appropriations process. Specifically:

  • Fund the Federal Transit Administration transit capital investment grants program at or above the FY18 level of $2.645 billion.
  • Continue supporting the 56 projects in 41 communities that are anticipating federal transit funding by requiring the USDOT to sign Full Funding Grant Agreements (FFGAs) for these projects, advance them through the pipeline, and obligate these dollars so construction can begin. This funding is critical to all future rail and bus rapid transit projects.
  • Fund the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant program at or above the FY18 level of $1.5 billion. This fiercely competitive program (formerly known as TIGER) is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects.
  • Provide funding for Amtrak’s national network at or above the FY18 level of $1.292 billion and $650 million for the Northeast Corridor.
  • Fund the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure Safety and Improvement (CRISI) grants at or above the FY18 level of $592 million.
  • And lastly, fund the Restoration and Enhancement (R&E) grants for passenger rail at or above the FY18 level of $20 million.

Read the full text of the letter here. And sign the letter today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) Ends federal support for building or improving public transportation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8) Makes long-term cuts to overall transportation funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

TAKE ACTION

 

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

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

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

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

TIGER amendments

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

Transit construction grants

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

Passenger rail

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

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

U.S. DEPARTMENT of TRANSPORTATION FY2018 APPROPRIATIONS BILL SUMMARY

As introduced on July 10, 2017

Late on July 10, the House Appropriations subcommittee released a draft bill to fund transportation and housing programs for fiscal year (FY) 2018. The bill would appropriate $56.5 billion in discretionary spending, which is $1.1 billion below FY 2017. USDOT would receive $17.8 billion in discretionary FY2018 funding, a $646 million decrease from FY2017. The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to markup the draft bill on Monday, July 17.

The full text of the draft bill can be found here. A summary of the appropriations bill can be found on the House Appropriations Committee page here.

BACKGROUND

Congress must take action on addressing the budget caps enforced through the Budget Control Act (BCA), which passed into law in 2011. The Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney has hinted that the Treasury Department could run out of room to borrow under the current debt limit as early as September. While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has not given an estimate of exactly when the Treasury was most likely to hit the debt limit, October or November is likely.

Despite the absence of a budget deal, the House Appropriations Committee has come out with interim 302(b) allocations, which set the spending level for each appropriations subcommittee. Under this document, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) subcommittee has a FY 2018 funding cap of $56.5 billion, a $1.1 billion decrease from FY 2017 funding level. See interim sub-allocations document here.

TIGER

The House FY2018 bill eliminates funding for the TIGER program. In past appropriations, the House has also used this same strategy – zero out the program and rely on the Senate to maintain funding for TIGER. Then when they conference the House and Senate bills into one bill, the House pushes the Senate to cut funding from another program in order to maintain TIGER funding.

It is unclear the extent to which the Senate will continue to carry the weight of supporting the program moving forward.

New Starts, Small Starts, Core Capacity (Capital Investment Grant Program)

The House bill allocates $1.75 billion to the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program, which is a 27 percent cut from, or $660 million less than, the FY 2017 funding level of $2.4 billion. It is also $549 million less that the authorized level for the program in the FAST Act. Of this, $1.008 billion is set-aside for New Starts projects that have full funding grant agreements (FFGAs), $145.7 million for Core Capacity projects, and $182 million for Small Starts.

Of the remaining CIG funding, $400 million would fund “joint Amtrak-public transit projects.” This language provides a clue that the Subcommittee intends the funding to go to the Gateway project, a rail improvement project in the Northeast Corridor. With all this funding dedicated to Gateway, there would be no remaining funding would be available for any of the CIG projects that anticipate getting an FFGA signed in 2018 or late 2017.

While the House leaders included language directing the USDOT Secretary to “continue to administer the Capital Investment Grant Program in accordance with the procedural and substantive requirements of” the law, the lack of funding available to do that would effectively prevent projects from moving forward until at least 2019.

Amtrak, CRISI, State of Good Repair, and REG

The FY2018 draft bill provides $1.4 billion for Amtrak. Of this, $1.1 billion is for the National Network, which is consistent with the FAST Act authorized amount, and $328 million for the Northeast Corridor (NEC), which is a decrease from the $515 million authorized amount in the FAST Act.

The Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) grant program is funded at $25 million, a decrease from the $230 million authorized under the FAST Act and less than half of the $68 million that the program received in FY 2017.

The draft bill does not provide funding for the Restoration and Enhancement Grants (REG) program, which authorized at $20 million under the FAST Act.

The FY2018 bill provides $500 million for Federal State Partnership State of Good Repair grants, significantly above the $175 million authorized for FY 2018. In spending this funding, the bill directs USDOT to “first give preference to eligible projects for which the environmental impact statement required under the National Environmental Policy Act and design work is already complete at the time of the grant application review, or to projects that address major critical assets which have conditions that pose a substantial risk now or in the future to the reliability of train service.” This language indicates that funding would be directed to the Gateway’s Portal North Bridge and Hudson River Tunnel projects. Overall, the Gateway project could receive $900 million in grant funding under the bill – about one sixth of the $5.4 billion in discretionary appropriations for non-aviation programs.

Analysis

The House draft THUD appropriations bill does not have as drastic funding cuts as those proposed by the Administration (see T4America summary of the Administration’s FY 2018 budget proposal here). However, it still represents significant cuts from current funding levels and would have far-reaching impacts for communities’ transportation and housing programs.

On July 11, the House Appropriations THUD Subcommittee held a short mark-up and passed the draft bill without any amendments. The bill is scheduled for consideration by the full House Appropriations Committee on July 17 and may move forward to the House floor. However, Congress is not expected to complete any of the FY 2018 appropriation bills before the fiscal year begins on October 1. T4America encourages communities to reach out to their representatives to ensure funding is maintained for the key programs your community relies on.