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Tag: transit funding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, in just the last six weeks…

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

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

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

T4America joins a parade of letters to USDOT urging them to do their job and get transit projects moving

Following a parade of official letters from elected representatives, T4America sent a letter urging USDOT to do the job required of them by law and award funds to expeditiously advance transit projects, communicate more clearly with local communities about the status of their projects, and recognize that a bipartisan majority in Congress has twice rejected their wishes to eliminate the transit capital construction program. (Updated below.)

As chronicled in our Stuck in the Station resource, the Trump administration’s USDOT has stated their clear preference to wind down the federal program that pairs federal grants with state/local dollars to invest in much-needed public transportation projects in cities of nearly all size across the country.

USDOT has (begrudgingly) continued to award dollars mostly to smaller transit projects that receive their funding all at once in one single year—$50 million here, $50 million there—while largely neglecting to advance and sign any funding agreements for multi-year transit projects with higher price tags that require them to provide a larger amount of funding over multiple years. To date, they’ve awarded just $532 million of the $2.3 billion that Congress has given them since May 2017, a fact that’s impossible to reconcile with President Trump and Secretary Chao’s complaints about the long, arduous, red-tape-filled road to getting transportation projects approved and their promises to expedite that process.

(Update: 9/24/2018: Streetsblog LA reported last week that Los Angeles received what’s known as a Letter of No Prejudice from USDOT to proceed on their Purple Line subway extension. While this is indeed a “big deal,” as described by Metro CEO Phil Washington, it does not provide funding from FTA nor does it guarantee that Metro will receive funding in the future. We’ll have more on what this means later this week.)

Last week, we sent a letter to the Federal Transit Administration urging them to get these projects moving and also bring a degree of clarity and transparency that’s been sorely lacking:

To date, the administration has failed to obligate the overwhelming majority of funding appropriated since FY17. This undermines the administration’s stated goal of cutting red tape and building infrastructure. We therefore urge you to expeditiously advance projects, working cooperatively with project sponsors.

We further suggest that you review your method of communicating the status of projects by providing regular, detailed updates to public and project sponsors. This should include specific information about what remains to advance a project, an expected timeline, and what fiscal year funding will be used for a project.

Congress has rejected the administration’s plan to end the CIG program and, instead, provided the FTA with about $2.3 billion to build new and expand existing transit. Based on the limited information publicly available from your agency, there are 16 projects in 13 communities expecting this funding. While some grants have been awarded, USDOT appears to be delaying many projects while not providing project sponsors with the information they need to address the issues USDOT cites as cause for delay. Congress has been clear: USDOT’s mission is to advance projects through the pipeline and award grants.

Read our full letter here (pdf).

We are not the only ones who have been writing letters to USDOT, however.

With several transit projects already in the pipeline (and more on the way thanks to several recent ballot measures), Washington State’s two Senators and scores of representatives sent a letter to Secretary Chao back in February. In this letter, they outlined the recent timeline for three specific transit projects, pointing to months where projects sponsors were left waiting with no communication or action from FTA, noting that this “emerging pattern of missed execution dates, delays, and seemingly deliberate slowdowns in executing CIG grant agreements that have received Congressional appropriations is extremely concerning.”

“In addition, we note it is in direct contradiction to your commitment to distribute the funding Congress provides the Department,” they continued.

A couple months later, in April 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA) sent a letter to Secretary Chao with a similar thrust. “Congress has now twice rejected proposals from the Trump Administration to terminate the Capital Investment Grant program and instead has strongly reaffirmed its bipartisan commitment to not only continuing, but actually expanding, the program,” the letter states.

For an administration that wants states and localities to pick up a greater share of the funding burden for infrastructure, Senator Feinstein notes that these transit projects should be a pretty attractive deal.

The federal commitment of funding for these [transit] projects averages only 45 percent of the total costs, far less than the federal share of up to 80 percent on comparable highway projects. These projects deserve the fair and timely administration they are owed by a program that has been duly authorized and appropriated.

Jane Williams, the acting administrator of FTA, responded via a letter to all of Congress this summer, in which she seemed to assert that FTA has a lot more latitude to choose projects than the law would suggest (pdf):

The FTA bases its discretionary funding allocation decisions for the CIG program on a variety of factors including the extent of the local financial commitment, project readiness, and geographic diversity. The FTA also considers the extent value capture, private contributions, and other innovative approaches to project development and delivery are used, including public-private partnerships.

Except that the transit capital program isn’t truly “discretionary,” like the TIGER (now BUILD) grant program is, as an example. And “geographic diversity” as a consideration is not actually anywhere in the current law. Rep. Peter DeFazio and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, two members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, addressed both of these issues in a reply to the acting administrator (pdf):

As you know, the [transit capital grant] program’s statutory language is not like a typical discretionary grant program like INFRA, bus, or ferry discretionary grants. It is a pipeline program where eligible projects that meet the statutory criteria under section 5309 are funding subject only to continued appropriations. …FTA’s letter also attempts to add a new criterion to the [transit capital] program, referred to as geographic diversity. We are concerned that FTA is adding another layer of bureaucracy to discourage multiple transit projects from entering the pipeline from within the same growing urban area or state.

What they’re saying is that if transit projects are entered into the pipeline and meet the criteria in the law and are scored in a satisfactory manner (FTA does have some latitude here), the law dictates that those projects should be approved and funded. Put another way, FTA doesn’t actually get to “choose” which transit projects they want to fund—it is not a truly competitive program.

Rep. DeFazio and Del. Holmes Norton also note the massive cognitive dissonance between an administration that has publicly and loudly committed itself to cutting red tape, and USDOT’s plan to add a whole lot more red tape to a process that’s already far more complicated than it should be.

When you testified before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, you spoke of an intent to ‘streamline permitting to speed up project delivery and reduce unnecessary and overly burdensome regulations.’ Given this testimony, we are confused as to why USDOT appears to be intent on creating new regulatory burdens designed to thwart transit infrastructure investment, in overt disregard of clear Congressional intent.

The message that USDOT is receiving is crystal clear. As our letter says, “we intend to continue to draw attention to these delays until these funds are obligated. Local communities have waited long enough.”

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

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

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

The full picture for funding is even worse. 

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s wrong with this picture?

Trump administration has effectively halted the pipeline of new transit projects

How long will the Trump administration sit on transit funding? Click to view Stuck in the Station, a new resource tracking the unnecessary and costly delays in transit funding.

Last March, Congress provided the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) with about $1.4 billion to help build and expand transit systems across the country. 142 days later and counting, FTA has obligated almost none of these funds to new transit projects. A new Transportation for America resource—Stuck in the Station—will continue tracking exactly how long FTA has been declining to do their job, how much money has been committed, and which communities are paying a hefty price in avoidable delays.

For 142 days and counting, Trump’s FTA has declined to distribute virtually all of the $1.4 billion appropriated by Congress in 2018 for 17 transit projects in 14 communities that were expecting to receive it sometime this year. Other than one small grant to Indianapolis for their Red Line all-electric bus rapid transit project, the pipeline of new transit projects has effectively ground to a halt.

As a result, bulldozers and heavy machinery are sitting idle. Steel and other materials are getting more expensive by the day. Potential construction workers are waiting to hear about a job that should have materialized yesterday. And everyday travelers counting on improved transit service are left wondering when FTA will do their job and get these projects moving.

“When it comes to funding for infrastructure, this administration has repeatedly made it clear they expect states and cities to pick up part of the tab,” said Beth Osborne, Transportation for America senior policy advisor. “Yet these communities are doing exactly what the administration has asked for by committing their own dollars to fund these transit projects—in some cases, going to the ballot box to raise their own taxes—and yet still the administration does nothing.”

Fourteen communities in total are waiting on this funding appropriated by Congress—and approved by the president—earlier in 2018.

Dallas is waiting on more than $74 million to lengthen platforms at 28 DART stations in order to accommodate longer trains and increase the system capacity. In Reno, NV, the transit provider is waiting on $40 million to extend their bus rapid transit system from downtown to the university and provide upgrades to the existing line. Minneapolis/St. Paul is waiting on three different grants totaling an estimated $274 million to help extend two existing light rail lines (including new park & ride stations and additional trains) to reach surrounding towns and build a new bus rapid transit line. Twelve other projects, most of them brand new rail and bus lines, are also waiting for grants ranging from $23 million to $177 million.

President Trump’s stated ambitions to make a big investment in infrastructure have largely been thwarted by his and Congress’ inability to find or approve any new sources of funding. Yet right now, the administration has $1.4 billion for infrastructure sitting idle in the bank for transit, money that could be used to buy materials that are getting more expensive by the day, fire up the heavy equipment, and fill new jobs with construction workers helping to bring new bus or rail service to everyday commuters who are counting on it.

So how much money did Congress put in the Trump administration’s hands, and how much has the FTA actually distributed to these ready-to-go transit projects? Which communities are paying the price in expensive but entirely avoidable delays?

Browse Stuck in the Station, Transportation for America’s new resource for tracking how much money has been obligated to transit projects in the pipeline.

View Stuck in the Station and take action

In this case “obligating” means simply having the FTA (acting) administrator sign a grant contract for a project that’s already been in the federal pipeline for years. To be clear, FTA has already identified the projects that will receive grants, Congress has approved overall funding levels, and local projects have accounted for this federal money in their budgets. Local communities are just waiting on Secretary Elaine Chao and the acting administrator of the FTA to put pen to paper and actually deliver the money they’ve been promised.

It’s time for FTA to fulfill its promises and get these projects moving.

Senate-Passed FY19 THUD Approps Bill Summary

Download the Senate passed FY19 THUD Appropriations Bill Summary here.

On August 1st, the full Senate approved the fiscal year 2019 (FY19) Transportation, Housing and Urban
Development (THUD) appropriations bill. The bill was included in a package of four appropriations bills,
known as a “minibus”, which was approved by a vote of 92-6.

The bill is substantially similar to what the THUD subcommittee approved on June 7th, though the full
Senate did approve several important transportation amendments on transit and on passenger rail that
are described in the document linked above.

A vital tool in the transportation-funding toolbox

A bus from UMass Amherst going up scenic Route 116 in the Pioneer Valley. (Image: Mehrashk, Wikimedia Commons)

The current administration is doing what it can to interfere with federal funding for transit, which makes it important that localities have a broad set of transportation funding tools. Today, we share an argument from Timothy Brennan, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, on the need to legalize regional ballot initiatives in Massachusetts and beyond.

Over the past two weeks, transportation news feeds have been full of stories about how the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is either slowing down the grant process for transit projects, holding up payments on transit projects already approved for federal dollars, or injecting more uncertainty into the funding process by redefining what constitutes local dollars. The message is clear: the current administration believes it is not the role of the federal government to fund transit. They see it as a state and local responsibility, and as such they are on the hunt for ways to require states and local governments to pony up even more resources for projects that receive a share of federal money.

Regardless of how one views the issue (and we believe the federal government should robustly fund transit for a number of reasons), it’s clear that localities must have the broadest set of tools available to finance transportation projects if they hope to secure any federal funding. While many communities are prepared to tackle this challenge at the ballot box, nine states—including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—prohibit cities and towns from allowing voters to approve local taxes to fund transportation projects. Communities in states that limit the use of regional ballot initiatives may find themselves at a distinct competitive disadvantage as they seek federal funding.

Today, we welcome thoughts from Timothy Brennan, executive director of Massachusetts’ second largest regional planning agency—the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission—on the need to legalize regional ballot initiatives (RBIs) in the Commonwealth.

Unlocking the Potential of RBIs

Timothy Brennan, Executive Director, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission

As the current legislative sessions winds down here in Massachusetts, there is lingering hope that state legislators will enact legislation enabling regional ballot initiatives (RBIs) for cities and towns to raise local transportation funds. State Senator Eric Lesser—who serves as Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Economic Development & Emerging Technologies and Vice Chair of the Joint Committee on Transportation—is sponsoring legislation that would, if approved, allow voters in regions across the Commonwealth to decide at the ballot box whether to approve a placed-based RBI to generate supplemental funds dedicated to advancing a pre-defined list of transportation projects over 10-20 years.

At a recent RBI legislative briefing session convened by Senator Lesser, a panel of knowledgeable RBI proponents outlined the attributes and benefits of RBIs. Those advocates—from Transportation for America, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, Transportation for Massachusetts, and my own, Springfield-based Pioneer Valley Planning Commission—made the case for why RBIs can be a powerful addition to today’s transportation financing toolbox. I’ve long been a committed advocate for RBIs based on the experiences of other cities dating back to 1987 when voters in the San Diego region approved one of the nation’s first RBIs. Since then, San Diego voters have repeatedly renewed the measure, even with California’s mandatory two-thirds vote margin. This has extended the RBI’s useful life for decades, along with the transportation investment funds it has generated, making San Diego one of the most successful RBI regions anywhere in the United States. Today 41 states have various forms of RBI-enabling laws in place.

Five Reasons Massachusetts—and every state—should allow RBIs

Here in Massachusetts, RBI enabling legislation has yet to be enacted by the State Legislature. Unlike 41 other states where cities and towns can vote on a custom-fitted RBI to fund priority transportation improvements, our residents do not have that option. And RBIs are generally quite popular; historically, RBIs have been approved 70 percent of the time in places on both ends of the political spectrum. So what has 30 plus years of RBI experience in a broad array of metropolitan and rural areas taught us? Five compelling reasons to enable RBIs in Massachusetts stand out:

  1. SCALE: RBIs can be adjusted to work for regions of different geographic size and reach. Collectively, regions can generate significant local revenue that are solely dedicated to advancing specific, priority improvement projects that are shared with voters before they’re asked to cast their RBI ballot.
  2. STRUCTURE: All decisions as to whether to approve or reject an RBI are made locally by voters who, in turn, also get to decide on the RBIs local, long-term governance structure.
  3. STRATEGY: RBIs are by definition “placed-based” financing mechanisms, which give voters in a defined region the ability to shape and act on their desired future. By their very nature, voters must approve the regional transportation investments, necessitating local, public engagement.
  4. SUCCESS: With RBI enabling legislation in place, sustained success is possible provided there’s evidence of continuing progress on the implementation of the transportation improvements voters approved. RBIs create a mechanism that enlists ongoing voter engagement and sustains RBI support.
  5. SUNSETTING: Voters must re-visit and re-vote on RBIs every 10 to 20 years, which serves as an ultimate measure of performance and accountability. If real progress is not achieved on the region’s priority transportation improvements during the RBI’s life cycle, the likelihood of this RBI being extended by the voters becomes highly unlikely. As one established RBI district in Colorado proclaims, “promises made need to be promises kept.”

For these reasons, I believe enacting RBI-enabling legislation here in Massachusetts can produce benefits that are comparable to what’s already been experienced in San Diego and dozens of other regions, large and small, across our nation. Massachusetts is one more RBI success story that’s just waiting to happen.

Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) buses at Union Station in Springfield, MA . (Image: Newflyer504, Wikimedia Commons)

Senate appropriators reject administration proposals to eliminate transit investment

press release

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click here to sign the letter

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

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

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

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

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

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

TIGER grants focus on rural areas, recognize the value of complete streets, and ignore transit

Just a month after the Trump administration proposed a budget that would eliminate the competitive TIGER grant program entirely next year, the US Department of Transportation announced the winners of this year’s awards. This year’s winners show a clear shift in priorities — this round is decidedly rural or small town in nature and nearly devoid of transit projects. However, the winners also show that this administration recognizes how smaller-scale complete streets projects bring tremendous value to local communities.

The fiercely competitive but notably small TIGER grant program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. The federal government has found a smart way to use a small amount of money to incentivize the best projects possible and encourage local investment: TIGER projects brought 3.5 other dollars to the table for each federal dollar awarded through the first five rounds. They’re overwhelmingly multimodal and multi-jurisdictional projects—like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements—that are often challenging to fund through the traditional, narrow transportation formula programs.

This intense competition for funds stands in stark contrast to the majority of all federal transportation dollars that are awarded via formulas to ensure that all states or metro areas get a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars. And unlike the old system of congressional earmarks, the projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to ensure that each dollar is spent in the most effective way possible.

As we look through this year’s list of awardees—the ninth group of winners since the program was created in the stimulus package of 2009—five clear themes rise to the top. Here’s what you need to know about this year’s TIGER winners and the status of this valuable program.

#1 Reminder: this could be the last of the TIGER program

Though it’s one of the most fiscally responsible transportation programs administered by USDOT and incredibly small when compared to the overall transportation program, the administration’s budget request for next year completely eliminates TIGER. While the Senate has stepped in to save this program numerous times, they’ll only continue to act if the local leaders who depend on it continue to speak up.

Whatever the pros and cons of the winners, as outlined below, local officials across the country depend on this program to invest in ways that traditional state or federal programs either don’t allow or make too difficult. Once again, this round is full of projects that would have been unlikely to receive funding under the traditional program either due to the project type or project sponsor.

#2 The administration rewards the growing local support for complete streets and main street revitalization

If there’s a clear winner in this round of awardees, it’s for projects that are focused on revitalizing main streets, improving pedestrian safety and access to transportation options, and building a better street framework for creating and capturing value. Projects in Carson City, NV; Immokalee, FL (pictured in graphic above); Burlington, IA, Akron, OH; Frankfort, KY; and Mill City, OR, among a few others, all have a strong complete streets or bicycle and pedestrian component. The administration is to be commended for seeing the connection between investing in traditional, people-focused streets and downtowns as not only a viable economic development strategy, but a vital one.

But the administration can’t choose these projects if they’re not in the applicant pool. And the proliferation of these projects is a testament to the growing movement of local officials who understand that improving safety through low-cost interventions, building a sense of place, investing (or reinvesting) in downtown, and focusing on moving people rather than just vehicles brings a strong economic payoff to their communities. Because of that, they’re investing their own dollars heavily in these projects and the administration is making a wise investment by partnering with them.

#3 More funding for rural projects, but with a loose definition of “rural”

While USDOT says that over 60 percent of the awards go toward rural projects—a stated goal of the Trump administration—it’s probably more accurate to say that most of this funding goes to midsized cities. (They count places like Lincoln, NE—pop. 280,000—as rural.) There was also a clear bias in favor of awarding funds to projects in states that are in the middle of the pack in population, and the most populated states that produce an outsize share of the country’s GDP mostly received very low dollar awards—states like California, New York, Texas, and Illinois.

While funding more “rural” projects is a stated goal of the administration, it’s hard to square with the administration’s current plans to make towns and cities and states pick up more of the funding burden. Rural projects usually bring less local or state money to the table, by DOT’s own admission: “Since 2009, the TIGER program has awarded nearly $1.4 billion in federal funding to 171 rural projects across the nation, leveraging an estimated $2.5 billion in non-TIGER funding,” lower than the 3.5 non-federal dollars per TIGER dollar for all projects through the first five rounds. In an ironic twist, these smaller places (and midsized cities, as noted) will be the ones most intensely feeling the squeeze if the administration gets their way on federal transportation funding.

#4 Awards for transit projects were few, keeping with the administration’s overall views on transit

The underlying law’s language (found in the 2017 appropriations bill) requires some level of parity between various modes of transportation:

“…the Secretary shall take such measures so as to ensure an equitable geographic distribution of funds, an appropriate balance in addressing the needs of urban and rural areas, and the investment in a variety of transportation modes”

Contrary to that language in the law, this batch of TIGER grants only includes a few smaller transit projects, leaving out both the quantity and size of larger transit investments we’ve seen in many past rounds. Though it’s not in step with the intention of the program as crafted by lawmakers, it’s certainly hand-in-glove with the administration’s stated belief that localities should fund transit investments all by themselves. The administration has already pledged to end the capital program for building new transit lines or stations, and these awardees largely reflect that view.

#5 The tradeoff for a project in almost every state is the lack of nationally significant projects

It’s nearly impossible to make an award in almost every state while also funding a handful of larger, transformative, nationally significant projects—projects like the CREATE program (rounds I and IV) to address huge national freight rail bottlenecks in Chicago or the Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail project. This has been a struggle for the TIGER program dating back well into the Obama administration, but this is the tradeoff that comes with trying to get an award for nearly everyone: more smaller awards, and less capacity to invest in big nationally significant projects that have benefits for people far outside of a single city, region or state.

TIGER should represent a way forward

The majority of all federal transportation dollars today are awarded to states and metro areas in a way to ensure everyone gets a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars or how well-conceived their projects are. TIGER operates differently, forcing projects to compete against each other on the merits. Rather than being slated for elimination, this should be a model for the future of transportation funding: formula dollars awarded for repair and maintenance, and then money for any new capacity (of any type) awarded competitively.

Will Congress acquiesce to the administration’s demands to eliminate TIGER? In spite of the administration’s stated opposition to this program, they just funded 41 important projects that would have been difficult to build under the regular program. As stated above, Congress will only continue defending this program as long as local leaders and advocates continue pressing for its survival. Get in touch with your representatives today and urge them to continue supporting this small but vital program.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3) Ends federal support for building or improving public transportation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8) Makes long-term cuts to overall transportation funding

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

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

The infrastructure plan that cuts infrastructure funding

After the release of the Trump administration’s long awaited infrastructure plan yesterday (along with their FY19 budget request), Beth Osborne, vice president of technical assistance at T4America, joined CBC News to talk about some of the issues with the plan in particular.

We have numerous concerns about the infrastructure plan, including the complete lack of any new money, the dismantling of existing, popular programs that fund transit infrastructure or pressing local needs (TIGER and transit capital funding), and the complete lack of any mechanism or requirements to ensure that any money spent will go toward fixing our existing infrastructure first.

“One of the reasons there’s a break in trust between the taxpayer and the federal government is that there are only so many times you can come before the taxpayers and say, ‘our nation’s roads and bridges are crumbling, please give us more money to fix it,’ and then not dedicate [the money] to fixing it.”

Watch the full interview with Beth:

Catch up and learn about what’s at stake for small and rural transit providers in the budget

Smaller cities and rural areas are facing potential funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital federal programs they depend upon to provide transit service — whether as a lifeline or a powerful economic development tool.

A few weeks ago we released a new detailed memo (pdf) to explain these specific threats facing rural areas, and detail the efforts by the administration and Congress to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation.

Earlier this week, we held a short webinar with our federal policy experts and some sharp local leaders that have experience in providing transit service in rural areas to explain that memo in more detail. We talked through the status of the current appropriations process, what you can do today, the impact on formula transit grants and the Small Starts capital program, and the overall outlook for the transit program.

If you missed the session, you can catch up with the full recording here:

Transit providers of all sizes, in all parts of the country, should band together and start making the strongest possible case for preserving the federal transit program. Read our full summary and learn how you can take action.

New report: Transit funding supports manufacturing jobs from coast to coast

Public dollars devoted to making capital improvements to public transportation systems support thousands of manufacturing jobs, in communities small and large, in nearly every state across the country.

This new short paper from T4America examines the supply chain for public transportation, and illustrates how proposed cuts to federal transit funding threaten thousands of manufacturing jobs at more than 2,700 suppliers from coast to coast.

The supply chain for public transportation is as deep as it is wide, touching every corner of the country and employing thousands of Americans who produce everything from tracks, to seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels and everything else in between. As just a snapshot, recent capital improvements made in just four transit systems — San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and Portland — supported jobs in 21 states.

Heavy cuts to federal transit spending, as proposed by Congress, would have a devastating effect on these local businesses and the tens of thousands of jobs they support. Without continued federal support, transit projects underway could stall, new or planned projects would be postponed or canceled, and transit agencies would scale back or cancel orders of new railcars or buses. The factories and suppliers that produce or manufacture components for transit systems would have to downsize or shutter without a steady pipeline of projects.

To preserve these jobs and support main streets from coast to coast, Congress and the administration should support and fund the Transit Capital Investment Grants (CIG) Program at or above FAST Act levels of $2.3 billion.

View the full report here, which includes a handful of maps and graphics, and rankings of the top ten states and congressional districts by the number of transit manufacturers located within their borders.

Proposed cuts to federal transit funding threaten thousands of manufacturing jobs in the supply chain from coast to coast

press release

WASHINGTON, DC — A new Transportation for America paper illustrates how public dollars devoted to making capital improvements to public transportation systems support thousands of manufacturing jobs, in communities small and large, in nearly every state across the country.

These jobs are currently threatened by cuts to federal transit funding proposed by both the Trump Administration and Congress; cuts that would have a heavy impact on the more than 2,700 manufacturers of transit equipment located across 49 of 50 US states.

“Too many leaders in Congress seem to falsely believe that just because the majority of all transit rides take place in major metropolitan areas, that the benefits somehow stop at their borders,” said Kevin Thompson, Director of T4America. “Yet the benefits of these investments ripple out from coast to coast, supporting jobs in communities of nearly every size. As an example, recent capital upgrades made to just four major transit systems — San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and Portland — are supporting manufacturing jobs in 21 different states.”

The supply chain for public transportation is as deep as it is wide, touching every corner of the country and employing thousands of Americans who produce everything from tracks, to seats, windows, communications equipment, wheels and everything else in between. Heavy cuts to federal transit spending would have a devastating effect on these local businesses and the tens of thousands of jobs they support.

As just one example, Automated Railroad Maintenance Systems (ARMS) in Missouri, produces power, train control, signaling, communications systems and electronics for public transit, passenger, and freight railroads across the country. ARMS’s transit customers depend on federal funding for major new construction project to place orders with the company. “From what we understand there is about $6 billion in federal funding that goes into various transit programs. That’s the main life-blood of this industry,” said Mike Monaco, VP of passenger sales at ARMS. “Obviously, any kind of reduction of federal funding would be a big factor.”

Without continued federal support, transit projects underway could stall, new or planned projects would be postponed or canceled, and transit agencies would scale back or cancel orders of new railcars or buses. But it’s not just federal transit dollars that support these jobs — they’re almost always paired with local or state funds. Many of the communities awaiting federal grants have already raised their own funds via tax increases or ballot measures and are ready to place orders that would be filled by factories and suppliers tailored to serve this industry — employers that may have to downsize or shutter without a steady, predictable pipeline of transit projects.

To preserve these jobs and support main streets from coast to coast, Congress and the administration should support and fund the Transit Capital investment Grants (CIG) Program at or above the $2.3 billion level already agreed upon in the bipartisan 2015 federal reauthorization (The FAST Act).

Read the short paper here: https://t4america.org/maps-tools/transit-supply-chain

What’s at stake for small and rural transit providers?

Federal transit funding is still on the chopping block. Those who operate or depend on transit — whether in small, rural areas or large, urban ones — must band together to convince both Congress and the President of the vital nature of public transportation services.

While we’ve frequently highlighted the ongoing, existential threats to the main source of federal funds for helping cities expand or create new public transportation lines or service, smaller cities and rural areas are also at risk of funding reductions, phase-outs or the total elimination of vital programs they depend upon.

In this new detailed memo (pdf), T4America lays out the specific threats facing rural areas and explains Congress’ and the administration’s efforts to cut or eliminate vital funding programs for public transportation. Get the full summary on:

  • What the president has proposed and the status of the current appropriations process
  • What you can do today
  • Formula transit programs, Small Starts, the TIGER competitive grant program, and
  • The outlook for the transit program

Transit providers of all sizes, in all parts of the country, should band together and start making the strongest possible case for preserving the federal transit program. Read our full summary and learn how you can take action.

Join us on October 23 for a live webinar discussion

Our team of experts will discuss rural transit providers, the projects that are at risk from these cuts, and what you can do to defend transit in your region. Join the live discussion on Monday, October 23, 2017  from 3:00-4:00 p.m. EDT. Register today.

Register for the webinar

Statement from Transportation for America on House Passage of THUD Appropriations

press release

On Thursday, September 14, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3354, the “Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act, 2018”, which contains the fiscal year 2018 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations. Beth Osborne, interim T4America director, issued the following response:

“We are disappointed and concerned that the House decided to move ahead with a bill that cuts federal appropriations for vital transportation programs, including the TIGER and transit Capital Investment Grant (CIG) Programs. Local governments and voters are investing their own dollars on innovative transportation, housing, and neighborhood revitalization projects but they need help from these vital federal programs to make these things happen. This spending bill pulls the rug out from under those communities.

“The House-passed THUD spending bill zeroes out funding for TIGER, a crucial program that gives local governments direct access to federal dollars for innovative projects. TIGER projects are overwhelmingly multimodal and multijurisdictional projects — like rail connections to ports, complete streets, passenger rail, and freight improvements — that are often challenging to fund through the underlying formula programs. In 2016, U.S. DOT received 585 applications totaling over $9.3 billion, reflecting an overwhelming demand across the country for the TIGER program. Through the first seven rounds of grant awards, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars. Given the $500 million appropriated last year by Congress, that’s over $1.5 billion in other critical infrastructure spending that would likely be lost under this bill.

“This bill also appropriates no money for new transit investments through the Small Starts and New Starts programs. These programs provide federal matching funds for communities and regions that are taking the initiative and committing hefty sums of their own local dollars to build or expand transit systems. Without additional federal funding for transit construction, its likely that few, if any, new transit projects will be built.

“This appropriations bill ignores why communities need federal community development and transportation programs. It’s not just that they need money or innovative tools — which, for the record, they do. They also need a reliable partner who can support their work, not austerity measures that punish them for taking action. If the federal government quits being that reliable partner — which this appropriations bill absolutely implies — it will cause lasting damage to American communities and break the President and Congress’s promise to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure. These programs invest in communities across the country, improving mobility, security, and economic opportunity. Now is not the time to slash these investments.

“We urge the Senate to reject the disinvestment this bill represents and instead pass a bill that reinvests and rebuilds America for the future.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

TAKE ACTION

 

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

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

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

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

TIGER amendments

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

Transit construction grants

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

Passenger rail

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

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

Elected officials and local organizations: Support TIGER & public transit funding

Facing the prospect of severe cuts from the Trump administration and Congress, T4America is looking for elected officials and organizations to show their support for investing in smart projects to move goods, move people and support the local economies that our nation’s prosperity is built on.

Updated 9/6/2017 9:00 a.m. — The letter is closed. We’ll publish the final letter and share the signatories soon. Thanks!

Calling all elected officials, local, civic and business leaders, and local, regional or state organizations! Sign a letter urging those currently assembling the federal transportation budget for the upcoming year (FY 2018) to prioritize funding for TIGER competitive grants, new transit construction, and passenger rail programs.

Read the full letter and sign it today — we’re aiming to deliver it before the end of August. Ed note: This letter is intended for organizations and is not open for individuals, other than elected officials at any level.

(letter is closed)

Where do we stand in the budget process?

For these three programs, this simple chart below shows four things: the current funding levels for this year, what the President proposed in his budget earlier this year, and what was recently approved by appropriations committees in the House and the Senate.

Enacted 2017 levelsPresident Trump's request for 2018House 2018 AppropriationsSenate 2018 Appropriations
TIGER Grants$500 million$0$0$550 million
Transit Capital Grants$2.4 billion$0$1.75 billion$2.133 billion
Amtrak & passenger rail$1.495 billion$795 million

(All cuts come from eliminating federal funding for all long-distance routes)		$1.4 billion$1.6 billion
TOTAL THUD FUNDING$57.65 billion$47.4 billion$56.5 billion$60.058 billion

As you can see, while committees in the Senate ignored the president’s call to eliminate TIGER and funding for new transit construction outright, those final decisions will be made by Congress as they debate the budget on the floor and then try to reconcile their different versions. (Worth noting: The House proposed eliminating TIGER funding and a barebones budget for keeping in-progress transit projects moving, which means that’s their starting point on negotiations.)

What we’re asking for is for Congress to approve a budget that fully funds the FAST Act, the current transportation authorization, already agreed to by Congress and approved by a bipartisan vote back in 2015.

More background is below:

TIGER

The majority of all federal transportation dollars are awarded to states and metro areas in a way to ensure everyone gets a share, regardless of how they’re going to spend those dollars or how well-conceived their projects are. TIGER operates differently.

The TIGER program has illustrated a productive way to use a small amount of money (about $500 million annually since 2009) to incentivize smarter projects based on their merits. This fiercely competitive program is one of the few ways that local communities of almost any size can directly receive federal dollars for their priority transportation projects. Projects vying for funding compete against each other on their merits to spend the dollars more effectively. They also bring more private, local, or state dollars to the table. Through the first seven rounds, each TIGER dollar brought in 3.5 non-federal dollars, in contrast to federal money for building new roads, for example, which only bring in about 20 state/local cents for each 80 federal cents.

Transit Capital Investment Grants

The Transit Capital Investment Grants program (often broadly referred to as New Starts) supports metro areas of all sizes that are investing their own money in building or expanding transit service.

While making the case for eliminating the program, the Trump Administration recently stated that “localities should fund these localized projects,” but local voters and leaders are doing that already, putting their own skin in the game to meet the growing demand for well-connected locations served by transit. At the ballot box last November alone, voters approved more than $200 billion dollars in tax increases to invest in these projects. But cities of all sizes are counting on the federal government to continue supporting these bottom-up efforts, as they’ve done for decades. Eliminating this program or even just reducing its funding will threaten their economic prospects and their ability to satisfy the booming demand from residents and employers alike for well-connected locations served by transit.

Passenger rail

President Trump proposed cutting Amtrak’s budget nearly in half, with nearly all cuts coming from eliminating long-distance passenger rail service. Funding for the Northeast Corridor would survive, as would the funding for state-supported routes.

But neither chamber heeded this call from the administration: the House approved slightly less funding compared to last year, while the Senate provided the full amount outlined in the FAST Act, allocating competitive funds for safety, state of good repair for the Northeast Corridor, and operating and capital support for restored or new passenger service throughout the rest of the country.

House & Senate reject president’s request to end all federally supported transit construction

Over the last week, House and Senate committees have both passed transportation budget bills for the upcoming year. While the House made a few cuts, the Senate flatly rejected President Trump’s requests to eliminate the TIGER grant program, halt all new federally supported transit construction, and slash passenger rail service.

After a budget deal was struck in May that avoided most cuts for the rest of this year, negotiations begun on the budget for the 2018 fiscal year which starts this October. This means appropriations committees in both the House and Senate setting funding levels for transportation programs for next year, including the discretionary programs that the Trump administration has targeted for cuts (i.e., those not funded by the Highway Trust Fund.)

In the span of the last week, House and Senate appropriations committees & subcommittees have finalized and voted to approve spending bills for the upcoming year. And while the House did make some cuts, the Senate appropriators unanimously repudiated many of the president’s budget requests for transportation and even made an interesting change when it comes to selecting the best TIGER grant applications.

But first, how does each committee’s bill stack up to what the president requested in his budget outline from earlier this year?

Comparing House & Senate 2018 appropriations

Enacted 2017 levelsPresident Trump's request for 2018House 2018 AppropriationsSenate 2018 Appropriations
TIGER Grants$500 million$0$0$550 million
Transit Capital Grants$2.4 billion$0$1.75 billion$2.133 billion
Amtrak & passenger rail$1.495 billion$795 million

(All cuts come from eliminating federal funding for all long-distance routes)		$1.4 billion$1.6 billion
TOTAL THUD FUNDING$57.65 billion$47.4 billion$56.5 billion$60.058 billion

Logged-in T4 members can read our House appropriations summary below.

[member_content]T4A members, you can find the full House appropriations summary here. (pdf)[/member_content]

When it comes to the popular TIGER grant program that the Trump administration had targeted for outright elimination, the Senate actually proposed increasing its funding by $50 million.

And they didn’t stop there.

While the new administration at USDOT had produced their own criteria for how to choose winners for the competitive TIGER grants, the Senate appropriators apparently didn’t approve of them. This language directs USDOT to continue using criteria developed under the last administration to select the winners, the same used for the last eight rounds of TIGER grants. (The Senate Appropriations bill was approved by a bipartisan 31-0 vote, it’s worth noting.)

Though the House did eliminate all funding for TIGER, this is likely unrelated to the president’s request. This has been the norm for the last several years. The House eliminates the funding, the Senate preserves it, and then the Senate number for TIGER has been taken during conference as the House and Senate hammers out the differences. But this doesn’t happen automatically. When/if the appropriations process moves forward, your representatives will need to hear once again your support for TIGER.

Neither House nor Senate appropriators heeded the president’s call to eliminate the federal funding for building shovel-ready transit projects; funding that always gets paired with local or state dollars to make those projects a reality. While the House’s version did make cuts, the Senate provided exactly what’s required to support all of the projects that currently have full-funding grant agreements and are ready to break ground (or are already underway), though the amount is indeed slightly less than the current year’s funding level ($2.13 billion vs $2.4 billion.)

While the House didn’t follow the president’s request to eliminate the program, under no circumstances should a 27 percent cut to transit funding be received as good news.

This cut would result in a handful of transit projects that have local or state dollars already in hand not receiving the full funding they were promised to proceed. And it would delay every other transit project in line behind them waiting for their turn to get a share of this tiny annual amount of federal funding.

We all need to be prepared to continue fighting these cuts to the transit capital grants program. (Get more info on the threats to transit funding here below)

Building public transit back better

About that infrastructure package

Lastly, the appropriations bill included some interesting language about President Trump’s so-called $200 billion infrastructure package. Does the Senate Appropriations Committee know anything about it, and do they believe the stated goals are the right ones?

To date, no such proposal has been submitted to the Committee. While the Committee fully supports additional spending for our nation’s infrastructure, it strongly disagrees with the administration’s assertion that providing federal dollars for infrastructure has created, “an unhealthy dynamic in which state and local governments delay projects in the hope of receiving federal funds.” Without federal investment in infrastructure, particularly in our nation’s highway network and transit systems, the ability to move freight across the country and the free movement of people between states with vastly differing abilities to fund infrastructure would be compromised.

The budget process will continue moving forward, though as with the last several years, Congress is not expected to complete any of these individual FY 2018 appropriation bills before the fiscal year begins on October 1. In all likelihood, they’ll once again have to resort to an omnibus budget or continuing resolution to just keep things moving forward without any agreement to be had on the individual bills.