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Tag: CIG

House-passed COVID relief bill increases emergency funding for transit construction grants

Local governments’ budgets have been decimated by the pandemic. Yet the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program—the main federal program for funding new transit construction—counts on project sponsors matching federal funds with local funds. To keep transit projects moving, the House approved increased emergency funding for over 24 CIG projects from Arizona to New York in the upcoming COVID-19 relief package. 

Phoenix, AZ’s Valley Metro’s South Central Extension/Downtown Hub—a CIG project that would receive this emergency funding. Photo courtesy of Valley Metro.

Capital Investment Grants (CIG)—composed of the New Starts, Small Starts, and Core Capacity programs—is the federal government’s main program for constructing new and expanded transit projects. Potential CIG projects go through multiple rounds of review by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), where they are rated on cost-effectiveness, environmental benefits, land use, congestion relief, and mobility improvements. 

Most other transportation grant programs require a 20 percent local match, whereas current law prohibits any CIG project where the local match is below 50 percent, as we wrote in our report The Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation. In normal times, this places a much higher burden on local and state governments that wish to build or expand public transit. COVID-19 has worsened this burden while also threatening local communities existing commitments. 

Due to COVID-19, local governments’ revenue is significantly down, with tax receipts declining with the economy. As a result, project sponsors are having a much harder time raising funds for the local CIG match. This threatens the viability of existing projects, potentially leading to delays, cost increases and the extreme outcome of cancelling projects. The recent action by the FTA helps, but the CIG program needs emergency funding to support local communities and keep projects moving. 

We are thrilled that the House Budget Committee added an additional $425 million to the $1 billion in emergency funding for CIG included in the first version of the latest COVID relief bill (the American Rescue Plan Act). They will go a long way towards keeping projects moving through the CIG pipeline—at a time when we need frequent and affordable transit more than ever. 

This additional emergency funding for CIG was part of the COVID bill approved by the House this past Friday, which now heads to the Senate. This bill also includes $30 billion in emergency funding for transit agencies, which is needed to ensure that transit can continue to connect Americans to jobs and essential services—because if you have no money to run the system, building new transit is pointless. 

The original bill approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee provided $1 billion for CIG projects that have negotiated full funding grant agreement (FFGAs) in fiscal year 2019 or 2020 but are not yet open for revenue service. These funds were to increase the projects’ non-federal match, as a result of project sponsors facing significantly reduced revenues due to COVID. 

The additional $425 million, added to the bill by the House Budget Committee, will be allocated in two ways:

  • $250 million to increase the amount given to each project funded by the base bill
  • $175 million for projects that received their most recent CIG funding in fiscal year 2018 but are not yet open for revenue service. 

Yet more needs to be done to support the demand for new and expanded public transit.

As described in The Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation, Transportation for America recommends replacing the CIG program with two programs: A $6 billion/year formula expansion program, and a $6 billion/year discretionary grant program for capital projects that improve access to frequent transit for low-income people, both requiring a 20 percent local share. 

These investments—along with investments in transit operations, maintenance, and electrification—can be possible if Congress provides transit with the same amount of funding as highways. To truly support public transit, the federal transportation program must be re-oriented towards investments in transit that substantially improve people’s access to jobs and services. 

With Congress writing long-term transportation policy now, we need your help to push for fundamental reforming the federal transportation program. Sign up for our Month of Action—kicking off today, Tuesday, March 2—to take one small action every week to influence this important legislation.

Three things to know about the Senate’s FY21 appropriations for transportation

Last month, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development released a proposal for fiscal year 2021 that cuts funding for important transit and passenger rail grant programs. With only 10 days until the government runs out of funding, the clock is ticking for the House and Senate to reach an agreement on their two very different appropriations bills. 

An empty Amtrak station. Photo of Buffalo Exchange Street Station by Adam Moss on Flickr’s Creative Commons.

During this year of tumult, it came as no surprise that Congress failed to reach an agreement on fiscal year 2021 appropriations in September. With 10 days until the continuing resolution passed to keep the government open expires on December 11th, Congress needs to move quickly to reach an agreement. 

Problem: The Senate’s transportation appropriations and the House’s transportation appropriations are very different. 

Last week, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development released its dismal proposal for fiscal year 2021 appropriations. This bill provides significantly less funding than the House-passed FY21 appropriations, and it doesn’t include any supplemental emergency appropriations for COVID relief.

Here are the three most important things to know about the Senate’s transportation appropriations. 

1. No emergency relief for transit or passenger rail grant programs

COVID-19 has hit U.S. public transportation and passenger rail hard. Transit agencies are in desperate need of at least $32 billion in emergency operating relief to maintain base levels of service, and Amtrak has repeatedly requested at least $4.9 billion from Congress to avoid further cuts to jobs and service. But it’s not just operations that need a boost: transit and passenger grant programs, like the Capital Investment Grants program, need supplemental emergency funding too. There are $23 billion worth of projects in the CIG pipeline, demonstrating the demand for additional public transit across the country. 

But there’s no emergency funding for either transit or passenger rail grant programs in the Senate’s appropriations bill. The Senate has also failed to pass a separate relief bill (like the House’s HEROES Act), and are missing a chance to appropriate any emergency money—be it operating support or emergency funding for discretionary programs, as the House included in its appropriations bill—in this proposal. 

2. Capital Investment Grants program takes a beating

The Senate bill cuts funding for the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program, the federal government’s primary discretionary program for new transit projects. The Senate proposes $1.889 billion, which is less than the House-proposed level of $7.175 billion—$5 billion of which is supplemental emergency funding. With COVID-19 shutdowns and the ensuing economic slowdown throwing off the financial calculus of these large infrastructure projects, this emergency funding will ensure that critical CIG projects can proceed without delay. 

3. Passenger rail funding slashed

The Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program provides funding for capital projects to invest in rail infrastructure. This is the key program supporting new and expanded passenger rail service across the country. We have this program to thank for successful projects such as the upcoming return of passenger rail to the Gulf Coast. 

Yet the Senate bill undercuts the House’s proposal for this critical program, proposing $340 million where the House appropriated $500 million. In addition, the Senate bill requires that 25 percent of CRISI appropriations be reserved for rural areas. 

Robust and consistent appropriations are critical to supporting transit and rail projects across the country. As the House and Senate negotiate a final FY21 appropriations bill, we hope lawmakers remember how essential these programs are to our communities—especially as COVID-19 continues to demonstrate that essential workers, and therefore all of us, are reliant on public transit. We must invest in these systems to support our economy today, and recovery tomorrow.

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.

Transit projects slowly leaving the station

A Route 603 bus parked in Ogden, UtahRoute 603 runs between Ogden Union Station and Weber State University in Utah which will eventually be served by a BRT route funded in part through a federal grant. 

After the Trump administration took office, long-planned transit projects applying for federal grants began to run into administrative roadblocks, unexplained delays, and other difficulties that put the future of these projects at risk. In response, Transportation for America launched Stuck in the Station to call attention to these inexcusable delays and slowly USDOT began to respond to the pressure. Now, in light of that progress, our focus will be on policy solutions—changing the law—to make transit easier to build in America.

Nearly two years ago—in August of 2018—Transportation for America started ringing alarm bells. Under the Trump administration, “the pipeline of new transit projects has effectively ground to a halt,” we wrote at the time when we released our Stuck in the Station tool to track the administration’s (lack of) action on transit grants. Seventeen transit projects in 14 communities were waiting for funding; they’d followed all the rules over multiple years to get to the point where a federal grant was finally in sight, “and yet still the administration does nothing.” 

As we directed the public’s attention to the unexplained hold ups at USDOT, media outlets started writing about it. Members of Congress started asking questions and holding hearings. The funding delays were the talk of transit conferences where administration officials were speaking. And slowly, our work to hold the administration accountable began to show results. Today the situation is markedly better. Twenty transit projects have been awarded funding and moved forward in the last two years.

That’s not to say everything is perfect—public transparency at the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has plummeted. The FTA is still failing to release project rankings (a key component in eligibility for a grant) and their annual reports continue to include less information than under past administrations. But the situation has changed over the last couple years and there are other ways that we can continue to hold the administration accountable and help transit projects get built: policy reform.

Policy is our bread and butter

Right now, Congress is writing legislation that will govern all of federal surface transportation policy for the next five years, including the Capital Investment Grants program. At the same time, the COVID-19 crisis has devastated local transit budgets, putting transit projects in line for federal grants at risk of ever coming to fruition because of financing, not administrative obstruction. Both of these offer opportunities for us to improve the program by changing the law—to streamline it, to reorient the priorities, to increase transparency, and to make it easier to build transit in America.

And that’s already bearing fruit. The long-term policy proposal from the U.S. House—the INVEST in America Act—would change policy to delay the repayment of local funding matches and authorizes the federal government to cover more of a project’s total cost.

As our focus shifts more to policy reform, it’s our hope that Stuck in the Station will become wildly out of date as new transit projects are funded and the pile of cash for new projects that FTA is sitting on continues to dwindle. We’ll still be keeping an eye on this administration’s actions and be ready to ring the alarm again if fishy business starts anew. But until then it looks like transit projects are slowly leaving the station. All aboard!

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.

New and expanded transit projects may not get built

City and state budget deficits and a drastic decline in transit ridership have pushed transit agencies to the brink of collapse. Communities that were on the verge of expanding or building new transit may not be able to finance their projects if Congress doesn’t act.

Transit agencies across the country are facing huge operating and budget losses. While transit agencies are still operating to provide essential service, they are on track to lose billions this year due to revenue dwindling as a result of dramatically reduced ridership, increased cleaning costs, diminished local tax receipts, and other impacts from a contracting economy.

This has had a predictable impact on service, with every agency in the country making changes to reflect the drops in ridership. But also at risk are plans to expand or build new transit that have been in the works for years. These new services would yield significant mobility and economic benefits for communities in the years to come, but only if they can get off the ground.

Communities of all sizes apply to the federal Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program in order to secure federal funding for new or expanded transit projects—subway systems, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars, and bus rapid transit. Participating in the CIG program requires significant local political and financial commitment and years of dedicated work. But even with that comparatively high bar, there is still great demand for this funding, with over $23 billion in requests from projects currently waiting in the CIG “pipeline” for federal funding.

To access funding, Congress has recently required local communities to come up with at least 50 percent of the total cost, and under this administration, FTA has sought to make local communities pay even more. For many CIG projects, the local match comes from tax revenue and local community budgets. In many cases, communities have gone to the ballot to increase taxes to pay for these transit projects.

Now, all those carefully laid plans and contingencies could be for naught in light of the gaping hole that’s suddenly appeared in many municipal budgets—a 50 percent (or greater) local match could become an insurmountable challenge. Even projects that were on the verge of receiving a grant could see their “overall project rating” downgraded, which would prevent them from receiving a grant and delay critical projects which support jobs today, and long term economic development tomorrow.

Boosting CIG to create jobs

Back in March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Emergency Security (CARES) Act, a $2 trillion relief package that gives transit agencies $25 billion in emergency relief. While providing transit operating support, as the CARES Act did, will continue to be important to keep transit running and allow service to rebound as economies reopen, ensuring that capital projects receive adequate federal support will spur our economic recovery in the long run. Transit is a job creator, and investing in CIG projects means investing in jobs in local communities and in the manufacturing sector across the country. The supply chain for public transportation touches every corner of the country and employs thousands of Americans who produce tracks, seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels, and everything else in between. More than 2,000 manufacturing facilities and companies are tied directly to the manufacture or supply of new transit systems and repairs and upgrades to existing systems.

Every $1 billion invested in public transit creates more than 50,000 jobs and economic returns of $3.7 billion over 20 years. And during the 2009 stimulus, we found that dollar for dollar, “public transportation produced 70 percent more job hours” than funds spent on highways.

Further, access to transit has proven to be critical to economic development, and any long-term economic recovery will be nearly impossible without transit service to help people get back to work after this unprecedented crisis subsides. Companies of all sizes are relocating to or deciding to start up in walkable downtowns and communities with transit to ensure access to a high quality workforce. Communities designed around transit are desirable for workers and businesses, which will boost economic growth and support our economic recovery.

Investments in transit create jobs directly, and lay the foundation for long term economic prosperity.

What Congress can do

Congress has already stepped up to help transit agencies get through the beginning of this crisis by providing operating support in the CARES Act, and while transit agencies need additional operating support, we must also think about other important challenges facing transit.

To support local community demands for transit, and job creation today while supporting the conditions for job creation tomorrow, we need CIG, and to save CIG, Congress must:

  • Provide no less than the FY19 funding level of $2.55 billion and $3.1527 billion in FY21 if Congress enacts the proposals below.
  • Eliminate the local match for new CIG projects for projects that demonstrate an inability to cover the cost of the local match.
  • Retroactively eliminate the local match for existing projects that demonstrate an inability to cover the cost of the local match.
  • Prevent FTA from changing overall project ratings due to changes in local commitments or ridership projections.

A proposal for the long-term transportation reauthorization released by U.S. House Democrats on June 3 would address a number of these points, at least partially. There’s nearly $1 billion for emergency CIG support in the first year and a delay in payment for local matches. The bill would also allow a 30 percent increase in the federal share of project funding (for a total of up to 80 percent) for new projects and projects that received their grant as far back as 2017.

These actions would reduce strain on local community budgets, allow them to proceed with building transit, and give USDOT the resources to fund more projects. In the long-term, this would ensure more robust transit service and greater access to jobs and services. But in the short-term, it would create jobs and put Americans to work. It would allow projects to continue to move through the “pipeline” and eventually receive funding.

What transit agencies can do

As we wrote recently, transit agencies need to track and publicize how COVID-19 is impacting their agency. They should quantify the impacts of low ridership and of keeping service running for essential workers and document stories from personnel and riders to make the case for continued federal funding and local support.

Tell Congress what your agency needs and what your experience of waiting for CIG funds has been like. Congress needs to hear that there is continued demand for CIG funding and sustained local support to continue expanding transit.

And most importantly, continue to engage with local advocates and riders. Ask them to call their elected officials to explain how important transit is, and how transformational new or expanded transit in the community could be.

Is this flurry of transit grants a blip or a trend?

A First Coast Flyer BRT bus in Jacksonville. USDOT recently finalized a grant for another line of this service.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has finalized five grants to expand and build new transit lines. It’s a stark departure from USDOT’s history of stonewalling grants under Trump. This surge of grants could signal a shift in the agency’s stance, but the whole mess definitely underscores both how our federal transportation system makes transit hard to fund and why Congress should increase funding and certainty for transit in new, long-term transportation policy. Transportation policy principles released in the House suggest that could be possible.

Five federal grants for transit projects around the country were announced over the last two weeks. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is and it’s a stark departure from the delays and obstruction that have characterized this administration’s approach to public transportation funding over the last three years. Those preventable delays have resulted in a transit backlog, with dozens of projects currently waiting for federal grants to be finalized so they can get off the ground. 

But this new flurry of activity offers some hope that perhaps the administration is changing its tune on transit funding. Albany, NY, Jacksonville, FL, Portland, OR, and Spokane, WA all received smaller (<$100 million1), one-time grants to build bus rapid transit lines. The Federal Way Link Extension received a larger, multi-year grant to extend the light rail system in the Puget Sound region.

Unfortunately, many other transit projects are still waiting for federal grants to come through. The final phase of the Purple Line subway extension in Los Angeles has been in limbo for more than 14 months—the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has made two “allocations” to the project but inexplicably hasn’t finalized an actual grant. Minneapolis is another community facing an extraordinary delay on a federal grant for their Green Line light rail extension. Projects in Phoenix, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and other communities are all still waiting. These delays aren’t merely inconveniences: construction costs have gone up and timelines pushed back; people and businesses will have to wait longer to benefit from more transportation options.

It’s unfortunate that federal funding to build and expand public transportation has been at the mercy of a hostile administration. But this is a product of Congress treating transit like a second-class mode of transportation for decades.

A system designed to fail

The vast majority of transportation funding in the U.S. is dedicated to roads. Over $40 billion a year is automatically divvied up among states primarily to build new highways and make them wider. (In theory, this is also supposed to fund maintenance, but most states don’t.) By contrast, only about $2.6 billion is available for new public transit capital projects each year, and this funding is not guaranteed. And while the federal government will cover 80 percent of the cost of a highway project, it will only pay for up to 50 percent of the cost of a transit project. 

In essence, capital funding for transit is orphaned, kept largely separate from other federal transportation funds, while roads are treated to a geyser of funding (that includes billions in general tax revenues because the gas tax no longer brings in enough to pay what goes out). The Trump administration has been able to play games with transit funding because Congress treats it like an orphaned child, putting it in the hands of whoever happens to occupy the White House. 

While the current administration has been openly hostile to transit, even under administrations more amenable to transit, this second-class treatment has hampered its uptake. Fortunately, Congress has an opportunity to reform the federal program right now as they begin rewriting federal transportation policy. The next reauthorization should make transit a priority by funding transit at the same levels as highways, providing a higher federal cost-share for transit projects, and making operating support available. Future federal legislation should make transit safe, reliable, and convenient. 

It appears that some of this could be possible based on principles released by the House majority on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, but time will tell.

Cautious optimism

Building transit one grant at a time clearly isn’t working, but for right now, this is the system that we have and we’ll work to ensure it functions as intended. When it became clear that USDOT wasn’t executing grants in 2018, we sounded the alarm: our Stuck in the Station resource was born and media headlines brought the obstruction in this obscure program to light. Our advocacy on Capitol Hill resulted in an oversight hearing in the U.S. House, which did its own investigation into delays.

But in light of these five new grant announcements, we’d like to believe that the administration is done blatantly obstructing transit grants. For one, all the misleading terminology about “allocating” grants (but not actually awarding them) is gone from these recent press releases—and hopefully future press releases will only be about finalized grants and not meaningless allocations. Second, USDOT approved more grants in the past two weeks than in the first 18 months of Trump’s term. Third, as the administration begins its fourth year and priorities change, perhaps the hard-working career employees are being allowed to go about their jobs without interference from political appointees who don’t like the idea of funding transit.

That’s the optimistic view, but it’s also possible that this is only a temporary reprieve. The administration has been asking Congress to eliminate transit funding (grants or otherwise) altogether since taking office, and last year Congress made a $500 million cut to transit grants—a direct result of USDOT slow walking these funds. Rewarding a bully only emboldens them, and that cut was a reward for the Trump administration. 

So we’ll keep watching to see if USDOT is ready to get back to work helping build sorely needed transit infrastructure. If that’s the case, we may be able to retire Stuck in the Station and focus our efforts on reforming federal transportation policy in Congress instead of babysitting a federal agency.

Member Policy Memo: Final FY2020 THUD Appropriations Bill

On December 16, 2019 House and Senate negotiators released the text of an agreement, also known as
a “conference report” on FY20 appropriations. The agreement is comprised of two bills, with the THUD
appropriations included in H.R. 1865, the Domestic Priorities and International Assistance
Appropriations Minibus. The House and Senate approved the bill, and the President signed it into law before the current continuing resolution (CR) with temporary funding levels for federal agencies expired on December 20. Here is the analysis from our policy team provided exclusively to members.

Business groups urge Congressional support for transit funding

The business community gets it—public transportation is critical for the strength and growth of local economies and federal funding for transit is needed to get projects off the ground. In a letter to Congress, members of the Chambers for Transit coalition called for fully funding the nation’s largest grant program for public transit and reorienting the entire federal transportation program around clear goals and priorities.

Ahead of striking a deal to fund the government for the next year, the business community spoke out about the need to fund transit. A letter from members of Chambers for Transit, a coalition of chambers of commerce, economic development groups, business districts, and other business groups, laid out the case for robust federal support for public transportation:

“Public transit is critically important to the economic competitiveness and vitality of our local communities. Transit provides affordable access to jobs for many workers. For businesses, transit provides access to employees on a day-to-day basis.

“Over the long-term, investing in public transit is part of an integral strategy for creating the kinds of communities where many people want to live, with vibrant walkable neighborhoods and a diversity of transportation and housing options. This is critically important to our economic competitiveness because these are the places where businesses choose to locate so they can attract and retain a talented workforce.”

Their ask was twofold. Most immediately, they called for fully funding the transit Capital Investment Grant program in the next year, a program with bipartisan support that funds the construction and expansion of bus rapid transit, light rail, commuter rail, and other forms of public transportation. The U.S. Department of Transportation—the executive agency in charge of administering the program—has also been engaged in a well-documented attempt to undermine the program and delay the signing of grants. Therefore, these business groups also urged Congress to exercise their full authority to hold the agency accountable and ensure USDOT executes the program as intended.

Unfortunately, Congress made a $500 million cut to transit funding in this program for next year. The cut is a result of the diligent work by USDOT to slow-walk transit grants and make it appear as if the program was overfunded.

Beyond the immediate policy concerns is a long-term vision for federal transportation policy. The current 5-year federal transportation policy is set to expire in 2020 and Congress has barely begun to rewrite it. The signatories wrote:

“Nearly seven decades ago the federal transportation program set out with a clear purpose: connect our cities and rural areas and states with high-speed interstates and highways for cars and trucks and make travel all about speed. These brand new highways made things like cross-country and inter-state travel easier than we ever imagined possible. We connected places that weren’t well-connected before, and many Americans reaped the economic benefits. With the interstate system now complete, we’ve never really updated those broad goals from 1956 in a meaningful way despite diminishing returns and a lack of clearly defined priorities for this century.”

Despite the clear need for an updated vision and new policy goals, what Congress has produced so far is disappointing. Instead of a more fundamental rewrite that acknowledges how dramatically transportation has changed in the last few decades, legislators are largely tweaking policy around the edges.

These business leaders asked Congress to define new goals and priorities and write policy to support those priorities in the next long-term transportation authorization. The Chambers joined Transportation for America’s call to support the following three core principles for federal transportation investment:

  1. Prioritize maintenance
  2. Design for safety over speed
  3. Connect people to jobs and services

With new federal policy structured around those principles and robust federal funding for transit in the next year, communities around the country will be better positioned to become more economically vibrant.

You can find the full letter and the signatories here and learn more about each of the three principles proposed here.

Congrats USDOT, for a job poorly done

Congress required USDOT to spend its 2018 transit funds by the end of this year, and USDOT was poised to fail. But at the last minute, Congress bailed them out by easing the requirement. As the deadline approaches, USDOT is still sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that it refuses to award, unnecessarily delaying critical new transit projects.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is approaching an important deadline. After the agency proved that it couldn’t be trusted to execute transit grants in good faith, Congress imposed a December 31, 2019 deadline for “obligating,” or awarding, 85 percent of the $2.6 billion dedicated to the Capital Investment Grant program in 2018. That was 22 months ago. With only a couple weeks left in the year, USDOT has failed to hit that mark, but earlier this year, Congress blinked and bailed USDOT out by lowering the bar for them.

When initially passed last year, the deadline was an important, bipartisan signal that Congress was unhappy about USDOT ignoring the law, flouting congressional intent, and purposefully sabotaging transit expansion.

But Congress watered down this requirement recently to say USDOT only has to “allocate” funding—a relatively toothless standard. Allocation is not the same thing as obligation and just means that USDOT has made room in a spreadsheet for eventually spending the money on a particular project. It results in zero dollars actually going to build or improve new transit without additional approvals and action by USDOT.

In total, USDOT has failed to obligate more than $2.2 billion in funding for new transit projects since the Trump administration took office.

When it comes to FY18 dollars, though Congress threw them a lifeline, USDOT is still sitting on more than $668 million that it hasn’t obligated to transit projects. One of those allocations was made as far back as November 2018. These perplexing and avoidable federal delays seriously disrupt local project timelines and budgets.

As of publication, USDOT has only awarded (i.e. obligated) about 77 percent of the 2018 dollars Congress dedicated to transit grants that could be used to get new transit projects started across the country. But USDOT has “allocated” 98 percent of the 2018 grant funding available. That’s small consolation to the communities that have been waiting for up to nine months since they received an allocation on a USDOT spreadsheet for their shovel-ready transit projects to receive funding they can actually use.

Given the new standard, we should congratulate USDOT. They have successfully ignored Congress in order to push an anti-transit agenda that is broadly opposed on Capitol Hill and in the public—and they are going to get away with it. The bar has been lowered so much that USDOT can step over it without actually doing its job. Perhaps in the new year, the U.S. Department of Transportation will finally find its sense of purpose and start funding these critical transportation projects, and Congress will be able to find a way to hold USDOT’s feet to the fire. USDOT has already allocated the funding; it’s time to start spending it.

For more information about USDOT’s transit funding delays and how we got here, take a look back through our Stuck in the Station blog. and explore the Stuck in the Station resource.

Shutdown averted; another crisis created

people waiting for a train

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) is refusing to obey the rules and Congress has so far been powerless to stop them. At stake are billions in federal funding for new and expanded transit systems that USDOT doesn’t want to award. But a policy change that attempts to reign in USDOT and make it obey the law could just be making matters worse.

Congress today has done its part to avert a government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution (CR) that will fund the federal government through November 21. The president has until Monday night to sign it. While a CR is generally just a continuation of existing policy, this one tweaks a key, but very wonky, policy for the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program—the main source of federal funding for building new and expanding existing transit systems.

The CIG program has been under attack by the Trump administration, which is ideologically opposed to funding transit, since day one. Because Congress has continued to fund the program, USDOT has instead sought to sabotage the grant-making process by delaying grants, shutting down lines of communication, and making the whole process more opaque and confusing to everyone involved: Congress, project sponsors, and the public.

Now here’s where it gets wonky. In fiscal years (FY) 2018 & 2019, Congress tried to hold USDOT accountable by adding new language to their appropriations bills that required the agency to actually award (i.e. “obligate”) at least 85 percent of the funds for that fiscal year by the end of the following calendar year (so 85 percent of FY18 dollars would need to be spent by December 31, 2019 and FY19 dollars spent by the end of 2020).

The CR that Congress just passed changes that language to say that USDOT must “allocate,” rather than “obligate,” at least 85 percent of those funds. Allocation is not the same thing as obligation and results in zero dollars actually going to project sponsors.

The original “obligation” language was designed to force USDOT to advance projects through the CIG pipeline and actually award funding by signing grant agreements. The change comes from a concern that USDOT will simply ignore the law—let that statement sink in—which would result in Congress clawing back the CIG funding through a lengthy legal process.

In essence, USDOT doesn’t want the money even though Congress gave it to them anyway and ordered them to spend it because they know local communities are counting on it for their transit projects. But USDOT is ignoring the law and spending as little of the funding as they can get away with. To date, USDOT has only spent about a third of what Congress has authorized over the past three years. It’s understandable that Congress would seek another solution to get grants out the door—we agree more is needed—but focusing on “allocating” funds could create a new problem while failing to solve the original one.

Creating a new problem

Changing the requirement for “obligation” to “allocation” through the CR ignores the new realities on the ground. It used to be that an “allocation” meant something. USDOT would allocate funds to projects that were almost finalized and ready for construction to signal that a grant was to follow shortly. Under previous administrations, allocations would inform how much money Congress would provide in the budget for the CIG program and signal an imminent grant. But this administration has broken from precedent. “Allocations” from this USDOT are a big old nothingburger.

As we have previously described, an “allocation” is simply an internal accounting in the ledgers at USDOT. It doesn’t mean funding has been awarded nor does it guarantee that funding will ever arrive. In at least nine cases, communities have been waiting for months without funding despite receiving an allocation. One of those projects—the Purple Line subway extension in Los Angeles—has received two separate allocations without receiving a dime of federal money.

A table of nine nine unfunded transit projects with allocations and the date of the allocations

Congress’s new rules in the CR would unfortunately do nothing to ensure these communities receive funds and would give undue credit to USDOT for “allocating” these funds, regardless of whether that allocation eventually results in a formal grant.

Instead of simply swapping “obligate” for “allocate,” we’ve proposed that Congress requires a strict timeline for DOT between making an allocation and an obligation, along with requirements for the DOT to regularly communicate with Congress and project sponsors about the status of all projects that are seeking CIG funding. While Congress can’t do USDOT’s work for them, it can exercise aggressive oversight that would make it much harder for the agency to just sit on its hands. USDOT’s actions (or lack thereof) to date have more than justified such an approach.

Congress’s heart is in the right place; they’re trying to make USDOT obey the law and administer the CIG program as intended. The fact that Congress is even in this position speaks to the sordid state of affairs at USDOT. But their proposed remedy to this problem—changing policy in the CR to focus on tracking internal accounting (“allocations”) instead of executed grants—could just end up making things a whole lot worse.

Voters love Phoenix light rail. Does USDOT?


On Tuesday, voters in Phoenix resoundingly voted to reaffirm their support for the city’s transit expansion plans. But while the city can now move beyond this threat to its transit ambitions, the region joins scores of others still waiting on the Trump administration for federal transit funding.

On Tuesday, Phoenix, AZ residents threw their support behind transit, quashing an effort to end all future investment in light rail with 63 percent of votes in favor of continuing the city’s expansion plans. It’s hard to overstate the importance of this vote and it marks the fourth time that Phoenix voters have gone to the ballot box and registered their overwhelming support for transit since 2000. Four years ago voters approved a 0.3 percent sales tax increase to move numerous transit projects forward, and last Tuesday, in even greater numbers, Phoenix voters reaffirmed that commitment.

But will USDOT follow through and match that commitment?

At least three light rail projects in the city can continue to move forward now that the results are in and the south/central extension and downtown hub is ready to begin construction as soon as October—but only if the federal funding comes through. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has yet to sign a grant agreement and award the money to Valley Transit.

What USDOT has done is “allocate” the first portion of a $345 million grant for this project back in July, but as we’ve explained previously, USDOT “allocating” funds is simply moving around numbers on a spreadsheet. For Phoenix to actually receive their funding, USDOT must sign a final grant agreement, something they’ve been notoriously unwilling to do.

First the Koch brothers, now USDOT

The campaign against light rail in Phoenix was run by local activists but supported and funded by the conservative Koch brothers who have a long history of trying to derail transit investments around the country.

With the referendum out of the way and light rail back on track, the federal government could now be the city’s biggest obstacle to completing the south/central extension on time. Under the Trump administration, USDOT has worked diligently and effectively to hamstring federal funding for transit.

Every time USDOT allocates funding to a project and puts out a press release, local media runs glowing stories about those local projects being “approved” or “advanced,” while often failing to note that no money is actually awarded and projects still aren’t cleared to start construction. There are currently 10 projects that have received funding allocations from USDOT but still have not yet received a grant agreement. Two of those projects were “allocated” money nine months ago. Phoenix received its allocation more recently, just days before a U.S. House oversight hearing into USDOT’s (mis)management of the transit grant program in July.

During the hearing, the acting administrator at the Federal Transit Administration within USDOT, K. Jane Williams, said, “in our administration, when we make an allocation, it is our signal that we will sign a grant agreement.”

The projects that have been waiting nine months might disagree with that statement. Though Phoenix is rightfully taking a well-deserved victory lap after a major win at the ballot box, it remains to be seen how long Phoenix will have to wait for it’s funding.

See Stuck in the Station for more information about federal funding delays for transit projects.

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.

Try as Trump might, transit grants are here to stay


The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to eliminate a critical transit grant program and Congress has repeatedly parried those attempts. The new transportation funding bill from the U.S. House is only the latest evidence that those transit grants are here to stay.

The House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee recently released a funding bill that covers transportation funding—everything from passenger rail, to highways, to various grant programs like BUILD. One program in particular—the Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program that funds new transit and system expansions—has been a target in this administration’s crusade against transit, as we catalogue in Stuck in the Station.

But despite the administration’s repeated requests to eliminate or cut funding for this program, the new Democratic majority preserved funding for this program—just as the Republicans did when they controlled the House. While there are some proposed changes to the program that help illuminate some of what’s happening behind the scenes, here’s the bottom line:

The administration is still very actively trying to kill the program, Congress is doing as much as they can to ensure the program is executed as intended, and every indication is that this program is here to stay.

Let’s talk funding

All the talk in Washington is about money, so let’s just get this out of the way. Transit grants saw a small ($251 million) decrease over last year’s funding, but that’s only because last year’s was $251 million higher than authorized. So nothing new here.

By our calculations, there are more than enough transit projects making their way through the pipeline that are eager for a slice of this funding. That said, the administration is trying to paint a different picture. By failing to sign new grant agreements, adding additional and unclear requirements, releasing less information publicly, and requesting $0 (or massive cuts) for the program, the Trump administration is trying to undermine this transit funding and discourage local transit agencies from even applying. But Congress has stepped up their oversight of the program to make sure good projects continue to apply and get the funding they deserve.

Congress beefs up oversight

In an attempt to force the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to actually award grants, sign grant agreements, and fund new transit projects, Congress added unprecedented language last year’s funding bill requiring 80 percent of funding be distributed to projects by the end of 2019. Stuck in the Station tracks USDOT’s progress toward this requirement.An achievement bar measuring what percentage of federal transit funding has been awarded. In order to preserve funding levels, 80 percent of authorized levels have to be awarded by the end of 2019; as of June 4, 2019, 71 percent of funding has been awarded.

In response, to avoid signing new grant agreements, USDOT has taken the unusual step of doubling awards to projects they’re already obligated to fund to try and hit that mark. And they’ve misled the public about their intentions to sign new grant agreements with some serious verbal gymnastics.

This year, the House has upped the ante. The same 80 percent requirement exists (USDOT will have to distribute 80 percent of this funding by the end of 2020), but any unspent funds would now be automatically awarded to projects in the pipeline, even if the administration has refused to sign a grant agreement. USDOT either needs to do its job and advance these projects or Congress will do it for them.

Federal transit grants aren’t going away

As communities attempt to manage inexorable growth and change, transit investment is critical. Public transportation is and integral part of retaining a talented workforce, attracting businesses and jobs (and getting workers to those jobs), providing affordable transportation and reducing inequities in our communities, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other dangerous pollutants, improving safety, and reducing congestion.

Undermining federal transit funding doesn’t change those facts; communities are and will continue to invest in transit and the federal government should be a partner in those efforts, not an obstacle. But regardless of USDOT’s actions, there is no indication that grants for new and expanded transit are going anywhere anytime soon. This House appropriations bill is just the latest example.

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.

A new countdown for USDOT transit funding

As Congress enters negotiations for the next long-term transportation bill and works to pass a new annual budget, our Stuck in the Station resource has been updated to provide a complete list of transit projects awaiting funding in 2019 and track USDOT’s progress towards meeting hard and fast deadlines imposed by an impatient Congress.

Last August, we launched Stuck in the Station to catalogue the Trump administration’s efforts to hamstring federal transit funding. From day one, the administration has proposed to defund the largest federal grant program for new transit projects and system expansions. Congress said “no” and gave them more than $2.3 billion dedicated to getting new projects off the ground, and the political appointees over at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) decided they just wouldn’t spend any of that money. Maybe they thought no one would notice. Except we did, and we called out their foot dragging with Stuck in the Station.

That was six months ago, at which point the administration had not signed a single new full funding grant agreement in a year, despite being flush with funds appropriated by Congress. Now, after months of increasing pressure from Congress, the public, and inquisitive media outlets in scores of metro areas, USDOT has signed 10 grants, accounting for about 45 percent of their available funds.

That’s progress, but it’s still woefully inadequate. After updating Stuck in the Station to add additional projects in the transit pipeline that have been rated “medium” or higher and are therefore eligible for funding, there are at least 26 projects in 20 communities that are waiting for a piece of the $1.1 billion available right now. And once a new transportation appropriations bill is signed (it’s among the funding bills being held up in the current government shutdown/funding standoff), USDOT will likely receive even more money to get these project rolling—perhaps another $2 billion or more.

Update: a new government spending bill signed by the president on Friday, February 15 adds another $1,491,505,856 in funding for new transportation projects. The new total is reflected in Stuck in the Station.

Every delay means that bulldozers and heavy machinery are sitting idle. Steel and other materials are getting more expensive. Potential construction workers are still waiting to hear about jobs that should have materialized yesterday. And everyday travelers counting on improved transit service are left wondering if their government will ever start doing its job.

Congress took unprecedented steps to require USDOT to act

The administration’s previous actions to slow roll transit funding proved that it couldn’t be trusted to execute transit grants in good faith, so Congress made a bipartisan move to add strings. In the 2018 transportation funding bill, Congress specified that USDOT must spend at least 80 percent of these transit capital funds by the end of the (calendar year) 2019. While USDOT has made progress as they advanced some projects in 2018, they still have hundreds of millions of dollars left to obligate to meet that statutory requirement.

Our updated Stuck in the Station resource now includes a countdown to the end of 2019 and a tracker showing how much USDOT still needs to award before the clock strikes zero, based on the most up-to-date information available about USDOT’s progress.

View Stuck in the Station

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. Whether the administration is willing to believe it or not, transit is a critical solution for looming crises like climate change and burgeoning inequity in our communities.

Failing to use the funds at their disposal would be a dangerous abdication of responsibility by USDOT leaders to carry out the agency’s mission: “ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.”

Federal transit funding delays grab headlines across the country

President Donald Trump reportedly consumes a lot of media, so what better way to get the administration’s attention than by going to the media. Since we launched Stuck in the Station this summer—which catalogues the egregious (and wholly avoidable) delays in transit funding under this administration—dozens of media outlets across the country have covered the news.

Some of the outlets are those you might expect, which regularly cover transportation and urbanism issues. Streetsblog USA declared that the Federal Transit Administration has “gone rogue.” CityLab cited the “splashy countdown clock” in cataloguing the inexplicable delays to major transit projects.

Understandably, reporters and editorial boards in cities with transit projects on the “awaiting funding” list also are taking a strong interest. News outlets in Tampa, FL, Tempe, AZ, Sacramento, CA, Atlanta, GA, and New York, NY all questioned how the delays will ultimately affect long-awaited projects in their cities, and the taxpayers who are already committed to footing half or more of the bill in most cases. In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times highlighted the central role of the Purple Line Subway extension in the 2028 Olympics. The line will eventually connect athletes housed at UCLA with sporting venues across the city, if it’s completed on time. But due to funding delays, “whether the project meets its deadlines is in the hands of the Trump administration.”

“But local and state dollars cannot replace federal funding. Nor should they. The federal government has a shared national interest in a country that’s safe and well-connected, and where people and goods move efficiently. The Purple Line subway is the perfect example. It will help move people through one of the country’s most congested corridors.”

–The Los Angeles Times.

Similarly, the Star Tribune editorial board (in Minneapolis, MN) pleaded with the Trump administration to approve funding for a major light rail extension before civil contractor bids were set to expire. At this point, according to the paper, the only thing holding back the project is the lack of expected federal funding. “A longer delay would almost certainly mean higher costs and could unravel the project’s painstakingly woven funding arrangements, achieved through years of arduous political exertion by jurisdictions along the proposed 14.5-mile line,” the editorial board notes.

None of the cities mentioned here have received grant agreements from the USDOT as of this writing, leaving the future of their projects (and years of hard work) in limbo. Los Angeles and Minneapolis both received Letters of No Prejudice—though such letters do not guarantee any future federal funding—and have begun construction. In essence, these two cities are taking multibillion-dollar gambles, though ones predicated on the expectation that USDOT will continue approving transit grants as they always have through the last decade or two.

President Trump has been in office for almost two years now, but the administration has only spent a measly 23 percent of the $2.3 billion that Congress appropriated to fund new transit capital projects since 2017. (Though USDOT has reportedly approved the Lynwood light rail project in the Seattle region, no final funding agreement has yet to be signed or money sent out the door. That could happen before the end of the year and would represent the first multi-year, big-ticket full funding grant agreement advanced solely by this administration.)

While the president himself hasn’t responded to any of this media coverage—based on his tweets at least—USDOT definitely has. During a recent speaking engagement, Jane Williams, the top administrator for the department that oversees the transit grant program, seemed irritated by all the coverage the funding delays have been getting. “It seems to occupy 80 percent of the attention,” Williams said, “it is the elephant in the room.”

But when you’re failing to do your job, people, including the media, tend to notice. So get to work.

FY19 THUD Continuing Resolution and Bus Grants

On September 28, President Trump signed H.R. 6157, the FY19 Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Education appropriations bill, which also includes a Continuing Resolution (CR) to extend government funding at FY18 levels through December 7th. The CR covers any appropriations bills not enacted before October 1, 2018, which includes the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) bill that funds federal transportation programs.

Also, on September 25th 2018, the Federal Transit Administration announced it was awarding $366.2 million in Bus and Bus Facilities grants to a total of 107 projects in 50 states and territories.

Download T4A’s more detailed policy memo here for more in depth information and analysis.