Streetsblog Capitol Hill

TIGER funding by mode. Image: Eno

This article is the second of a two-part series about how U.S. DOT’s Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program — TIGER, a discretionary grant program that got its start under the Recovery Act in 2009 — has made transportation planning more strategic, based on a benefit-cost analysis and national goals. Read the first part here, about Republicans’ empty charges of political bias. 

U.S. DOT has committed to maintaining geographic equity and a set-aside of roughly a quarter of each TIGER grant cycle to rural areas. (The Eno Center for Transportation, which just released a report on lessons learned from the TIGER experience [PDF], notes that that commitment has probably also been the key to making the program politically sustainable.) But as always, there’s a problem of definitions. What qualifies as rural? Should grantors strive to give equally to each of the four traditional regions, or should grant amounts be proportionate to population?

In the end, DOT tried to be equitable to the four regions, by population, within a range of 12 percent. But maybe it shouldn’t really matter who lives in a certain area as long as the benefits of a project are spread out? For example, freight projects like the CREATE program — a freight rail project in Chicago — benefit the whole country, not just the community they’re located in.

And freight has been a big winner with TIGER, winning nearly a third of TIGER funds throughout the four grant cycles – something U.S. DOT officials wouldn’t have guessed would happen at the outset. But freight is often a perfect candidate for discretionary federal grants. Complex, interconnected, intermodal freight projects that move commerce have “elements that really don’t fit inside the tidy boxes that state DOT are able to deal with,” said Leslie Blakey, executive director of the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors. The focus on national and regional significance is one area where states fail, as they are only in tune with their own needs, not the needs of the whole country.

It’s not just TIGER: MAP-21 has gotten U.S. DOT to focus on freight in a way it never has before, and Congress is following suit, holding the first hearing yesterday of a newly-appointed special panel on freight. But TIGER led the way, bringing together various modal agencies to think strategically and holistically about the freight system. Though TIGER had limited funds to work with, the emphasis on intermodalism was a rare and necessary prerequisite for a useful conversation about freight.

Freight is also a prime example of the way TIGER funding can fill in the gaps between public and private funding. Private investment is “naturally part of the freight system,” according to Blakey, in a way that isn’t necessarily true of other areas of surface transportation. The private sector may be willing to fund the lion’s share of a freight project but doesn’t want to invest in certain elements that are purely for public benefit. That’s an ideal place for TIGER to fit in – to cover just a portion, in partnership with private investors.

Read more…

When the buzz about a new, stimulus-funded, discretionary transportation grant program started to circulate in 2009, some environmentalists opposed it. They worried it would be a slush fund for the Federal Highway Administration, used to build unnecessary roads that would aggravate sprawl and pollution. But insiders knew that wasn’t how the new Obama administration would be handling things.

The CREATE freight rail project, funded by TIGER I and II, will relieve costly bottlenecks in Chicago -- but will benefit the entire country. Photo: Eno

TIGER, the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program, has been praised from the left, right, and center for rewarding innovation, leveraging scarce dollars, breaking down modal silos, and funding non-traditional projects that don’t fit well under formulas.

Though Republicans have sometimes grumbled that the program has merely replaced Congressional earmarks with “administration earmarks,” or that it’s rewarded Democratic districts, they’ve continued to approve funding for the program. Even as House members have zeroed out high-speed rail funding for each of the last three years, they’ve gone along with five separate appropriations for TIGER without too much fuss.

Yesterday, the Eno Center for Transportation released a paper [PDF] investigating what TIGER has done well, what challenges remain, and what could be improved.

How TIGER changed the way states think about project planning

TIGER blew open the traditional processes for funding transportation. Rather than just submitting a list of projects on the wish list and getting formula funds in return, grantees had to pick their best projects with the greatest benefits; after the first round of grants they also had to have at least a 20 percent match from state, local, or private interests. TIGER has transformed the way transportation officials think, even beyond the grantees – failed applicants have sometimes gone back and tweaked projects, brought in new partners, lowered costs, and improved plans. TIGER has helped transportation officials around the country see a new, more strategic way to plan and carry out projects – a method that is beginning to be expected at the federal level.

Plus, state DOTs aren’t the only entities eligible to apply for TIGER grants – MPOs, port authorities, and transit agencies can apply on their own, too.

The intermodalism of the program has encouraged U.S. DOT to hasten the process of breaking down its own “modal silos” as well, with people from different modal agencies working together to select projects. Intermodalism is also a challenge: It’s not easy to compare a bike trail to a freight rail project or a highway interchange – they are judged on completely different metrics – but DOT has sought to choose the best projects put before them. And, as U.S. DOT Undersecretary Polly Trottenberg said at Eno’s panel discussion yesterday, of all the criticism of the program, there’s been almost no criticism of the individual projects they’ve selected.

Read more…

Image: Fast Lane

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told members of Congress last week that U.S. DOT would be announcing TIGER V on Friday. He kept us in suspense through the weekend, but here it is: $474 million for innovative transportation projects that don’t necessarily fit neatly under other funding programs.

The projects that will be prioritized under TIGER V are those that “are ready to proceed quickly.” (Don’t call them “shovel ready”!) The application deadline is June 3 and the money has to be out the door by October 1 of next year.

In addition to shovel-readiness “readiness to proceed quickly,” U.S. DOT will also be looking for projects that:

• Improve existing transportation facilities and systems
• Contribute to American economic competitiveness
• Create and preserve jobs
• Increase transportation choices and access to transportation services for people in communities across the U.S.
• Improve energy efficiency, reduce dependence on oil, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
• Improve safety

The focus on transportation choices and reducing oil dependence make transit and active transportation projects good candidates for TIGER grants. In urban areas, grants need to be for at least $10 million, and with bicycle and pedestrian projects being so cost-effective, only sizable ones will be eligible. However, in rural areas, projects of as small as $1 million are considered.

According to U.S. DOT, the first four rounds of TIGER attracted 4,050 project proposals seeking more than $105.2 billion. So far, the program has given out just over $3 billion.

From the beginning of today’s hearing, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee made it clear they weren’t going to let Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s last appearance before them be an easy one. While the hearing’s purpose was to examine the department’s budget request, the tough questions LaHood fielded on the budget were nothing compared to the fight one lawmaker picked about the Columbia River Crossing.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler wants to take light rail out of the Columbia River Crossing.

Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Tom Latham derided the administration request for $50 billion for “immediate transportation investments” as “a proposal we’ve seen three times before” which, like the 2009 stimulus package, is “not paid for or offset by reductions elsewhere.” He dismissed the plan to pay for transportation with war savings as “dubious,” saying, “Many members hope that the drawdown of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan will provide an opportunity to reduce spending and the deficit, and not serve as excuse for even more spending.”

LaHood told Latham he “can’t have it both ways.”

“The first two years I was in this job you all criticized us for not coming up with a way to fund transportation,” LaHood said. “For the last two years, after receiving criticism for the first two years, for no funding, we’ve come up with a funding mechanism.”

Even worse than defending a gimmicky pay-for, LaHood tied himself in knots promising the U.S. DOT “has never promoted building anything to get anywhere faster.” He defended this position when it came to the Columbia River Crossing in the Portland area, which Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler raked him over the coals for, and even for high-speed rail, which he pledged was not actually about increasing speeds. A weird position, indeed.

Latham noted that the administration budget proposal included $40 billion for rail and wondered when the administration might send over a draft proposal of the rail reauthorization those numbers are based on. He reminded LaHood that the administration never actually sent a draft surface transportation reauthorization.

LaHood tried to turn the tables on Latham, saying the president was busy with guns, immigration and the sequester, and when Congress does its work on those three issues, Obama will bring out his bold plans for transportation. LaHood has made this argument before, and it’s one I find perplexing. Isn’t that why there are Cabinet secretaries, with thousands of people working under them? No one at DOT is working on guns and immigration, but I bet someone there has a pretty good handle on their plans for the next rail bill.

Read more…

With the election just days away, it’s a good time to reflect on what the Obama administration has done with transportation policy – and what a Romney administration might have in store. Streetsblog does not endorse candidates. This is an overview of their respective records and a look back at what we know of these two men. We’ll start with President Obama in this post and move on to Mitt Romney in the next one.

High-speed rail could have been President Obama's signature achievement. Photo courtesy of Obama for America.

Perhaps the best thing President Obama did for transportation policy was to nominate Ray LaHood as U.S. DOT secretary. Sure, LaHood reportedly wanted to be Secretary of Agriculture, not transportation. And yes, Obama’s main motive for nominating the moderate Republican congressman was to make friends across the aisle, a goal that for the most part went woefully unmet. Nonetheless, LaHood has proven to be a genuine reformer.

We knew LaHood was a keeper when he stood on a tabletop and declared that bicycles were on an “equal footing” with cars, announcing “the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”

The administration’s creation of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities has created valuable new links between federal transportation, housing, and environmental policies, demonstrating how government can eliminate barriers between agencies. It’s a model that some state transportation agencies have begun to take note of, as they approach local governments to craft land use and transportation decisions that make sense in tandem.

Even the Republican House of Representatives’ ire toward the Partnership can’t destroy the essential piece of it: that agencies are breaking down siloes and communicating more effectively with each other. The smart growth ethic that infuses the Partnership has permeated the three agencies involved – and many more.

Another signature achievement of this administration has been the TIGER program. TIGER has awarded more than $3 billion to more than 200 transportation projects based on their ability to meet strategic objectives, bucking longstanding policies (which continue in the current transportation bill) that fund transportation based on formulas and a singular focus on making sure every state gets their piece of the pie. While TIGER has some geographic criteria and a set-aside for rural areas, it has rewarded cities, regions, and towns that are innovating, and the program has prioritized bike/ped infrastructure, streetcars, freight rail, maintenance of existing roads, and other measures that advance sustainable transportation and smart growth. And by the way, that rural set-aside isn’t a bad thing: It’s helped jump-start transit access in a lot of small towns and tribal areas.

Read more…

Some Republican lawmakers really can’t stand TIGER, the Obama Administration’s competitive grant program for innovative transportation projects, which has funded several local initiatives to improve transit, biking, and walking over the past few years. Right now, Republicans are fighting to keep TIGER funding out of an appropriations bill – even though demand for the program has been overwhelming. In the last round of funding, nearly 700 applications were received requesting $10.2 billion, with only $500 million available for about 50 projects.

Tampa's Riverwalk, recent TIGER grant recipient, shown with the site of the Republican National Convention in the background. How ironic! Photo: Tampa I am

But here’s the funny thing. If you didn’t know how much the GOP leadership has fought against funding for bike- and pedestrian-oriented projects, you might think they actually like them, based on their choice for the Republican National Convention this year. Republicans have chosen the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Florida as the site for their quadrennial convocation. Interestingly, the sports arena is adjacent to an important local amenity: the 2.6-mile Tampa Riverwalk, recipient of a $11 million TIGER grant just last month.

The funding will help fill in gaps in the greenway, which serves a downtown district that’s on a nice upward trajectory. A 20-story office building will soon be rising next to the RNC convention site — the first to be built in downtown Tampa in 20 years.

Maybe all the convention locations directly next to giant highway and bridge projects were booked?

The House of Representatives approved the transportation bill conference report this afternoon by a vote of 373 to 52. [UPDATE 4:00 PM: The Senate has also approved the bill, 74-19.] This is a bill that’s been called “a death blow to mass transit” by the Amalgamated Transit Union, “a step backwards for America’s transportation system” by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, “a retreat from the goals of sustainability and economic resiliency” by Reconnecting America, “a substantial capitulation” by Transportation for America, and “bad news for biking and walking” by America Bikes.

Remember the empty highways that symbolized the House Republicans' vision of America's transportation system? The final transpo bill might as well have the same unfortunate cover.

After more than 1,000 days of waiting since the last transportation bill expired, the nation’s new transportation policy is a grave disappointment to people seeking to reform the current highway-centric system.

The fact that the House GOP tried and, for the most part, failed to reverse the progress made under presidents Reagan and Bush the elder offers a small degree of consolation. “Some of the worst ideas pushed initially by House Republicans went nowhere – funding the highway system with new oil drilling revenues, taking transit out of the highway trust fund, de-federalizing transportation funding – to mention some of the most radical proposals that were seriously being put forward,” wrote Deron Lovaas of NRDC this morning. “But… that pretty much exhausts the good news.”

So what does the bill actually do? Overall, it doesn’t change a whole lot, and the most significant changes tend not to benefit livable streets or sustainable transportation. Here’s a breakdown.

Length and funding. The bill lasts a year longer than the Senate bill would have, expiring at the end of September 2014. That gives states, cities, and the construction industry substantially more stability and allows them to move forward on projects that have been delayed for years because of the uncertainty surrounding federal funding. It maintains funding levels at around $54 billion a year, as did the Senate bill, which is roughly current levels plus inflation.

While some have criticized the complex funding mechanisms that prop it up and its departure from a user-pays model, the Congressional Budget Office reported this morning that the bill actually reduces the deficit by $16.3 billion.

Everyone seems to understand that Congress won’t be able to pull this kind of magic for long and will soon have to deal with the long-term insufficiency of current Highway Trust Fund revenues to cover the nation’s transportation needs. However, the gas tax was not raised, and at the same time the House passed this bill, it also approved an appropriations bill that prohibits even studying the possibility of moving toward a VMT fee.

Non-transportation-related items. The Keystone XL pipeline and the EPA’s ability to regulate coal ash as a hazardous substance, introduced into the transportation negotiations by the House Republicans, were stripped out of the bill. The RESTORE Act to spend BP oil spill fines on Gulf Coast restoration is included.

Read more…

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood just announced the 47 transportation projects in 34 states (and DC) that will receive a total of almost $500 million from the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) program. It’s the fourth round of TIGER grants, bringing the total up to over $3 billion for innovative transportation projects.

The grayed-out portion of the dotted line will be completed, thanks to a TIGER grant connecting DC and Maryland neighborhoods by bike. Image: DDOT

Houston received $15 million to improve bicycle and pedestrian access to transit. The city with the most bike commuters in the state of Texas will get 7.9 miles of on-street bike lanes, 2.8 miles of sidewalks, and 7.5 miles of off-street paths for that money. And Chicago got $20 million for infrastructure improvements to the high-traffic 95th Street terminal and another $10.4 million to untangle freight and passenger trains, potentially reducing travel times by 50 minutes.

Here in DC, $10 million will build four miles of missing links in the bike network, connecting hundreds of miles of off-street bike paths between DC and Maryland. Shane Farthing, director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, says there’s not much commuter traffic in that area now, partly because the connection to the vast bike network in the near Maryland suburbs was nearly impossible to access from many parts of DC. But this grant will be transformative, he says. “I don’t think a lot of people realize that for a lot of DC, you can actually bike to the University of Maryland faster than you can drive or metro. And this will make that possible for an entire new segment of the District.”

The College Park metro station is a half-hour walk to the University of Maryland library. This could create a whole new transportation option for the 58 percent of UMD students that commute to school from off-campus — and could make attendance possible for many in the District who otherwise would have no reasonable way of getting there. The university is a 25-minute bike ride from the neighborhood in DC the new trail will connect to. That neighborhood is a low-income, predominantly African-American part of DC, east of the Anacostia River.

Due to a lot of time-consuming and relatively expensive environmental remediation that needs to happen, the bike route will be built in stages. Before the off-road facilities can be built, they’ll install on-street signage, making neighborhood bicycle connections that will remain in place, Farthing says, even after the off-road path is built. “It’s the best of both worlds,” he said.

The League of American Bicyclists points out some other exciting bike projects that were awarded TIGER grants, including one to put downtown Concord, New Hampshire on a bicycle-friendly road diet, another to connect downtown Tampa by completing important greenways, and another to include bike lanes on a new bridge in the Maine bicycle system.

However, another DC proposal to improve bike and pedestrian access to seven transit stations and hubs was rejected, unfortunately — one of many disappointed applicants this time. This round of TIGER was vastly oversubscribed, like every round before it. According to U.S. DOT, the 703 applications the agency received amounted to 20 times the amount of money available.

A few notes from U.S. DOT about the winners:

Read more…

It’s always confusing when, in the middle of endless bicameral hand-wringing about transportation spending, the House Appropriations Committee puts out a budget for transportation without much ado.

The White House vision for high-speed rail -- still a fantasy under the 112th Congress. Source: White House

That’s what they did today. The Transportation and HUD Subcommittee will vote tomorrow on its draft budget, released today, in preparation to send it to the full Appropriations Committee.

The bill flatlines highway spending at $39.1 billion and transit spending at $8 billion, as did the Senate appropriations proposal, but allows those levels to change, depending on what happens with the reauthorization. It cuts $69 million from last year’s U.S. DOT budget, with an even bigger bite — $181 million — out of the Federal Transit Administration budget. It cuts $138 million from the transit New Starts program, or “Capital Investment Grants,” in the language of the bill, including Small Starts.

So, while Americans continue to struggle with high gas prices and few transportation options, the House wants to make it harder to expand access to transit.

High-speed rail? Zero.

Oh, and TIGER, the ever-popular, oversubscribed grant program for innovative transportation projects? Zilch.

Don’t even ask about the groundbreaking Partnership for Sustainable Communities, which has the EPA, HUD, and U.S. DOT working in cooperation to foster more efficient — and fiscally prudent — development and growth.

The Senate, seeing which way the wind is blowing, allocated just $100 million for high-speed rail in FY2013, a sort of placeholder that keeps the program on life support until it can get back to making real, transformational grants. Not even that paltry amount made it into the final House budget this year.

Read more…

This is the city of New Haven's concept for Downtown Crossing, its plan for 11 acres of downtown land that will be cleared by the removal of the Route 34 Expressway. Photo: Downtowncrossingnewhaven.com

Earlier this week we ran a story about why local livable streets advocates with the New Haven Urban Design League are disappointed with the city’s decision to replace a section of grade-separated highway with a plan that remains, on balance, car-centric.

We soon heard from teardown proponents who remain supportive of the project. While acknowledging its shortcomings, Ryan Lynch of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign says the current project would be an important step forward for both New Haven and the state of Connecticut:

We agree that there is too much parking in the corridor, and the road remains too wide, but we have to disagree with the assertion that what is being proposed is only marginal improvement. This project, even in the first phase, will be implementing some of the most progressive transportation infrastructure in the state. Some of this infrastructure, to our knowledge, are firsts for the entire state of Connecticut, including the first ever bike boxes, separated cycle tracks, and raised intersections at particularly wide intersections.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Benton, a spokesperson for the city, took issue with some of the assertions from the Urban Design League, including the claim that the roadway replacing the highway will have no through streets. Phase I of the project — the phase that New Haven has collected about $30 million to build out — does not include side streets. Those are supposed to be built in Phase II, said Benton. Future phases are not yet funded, she allowed, but she said the city is committed to finishing them.

Benton said the city appreciates what advocates including the Urban Design League have proposed, but it’s the city’s responsibility to put forward something practical, as well as transformational. “I think it’s a testament to this project that they have been so engaged,” she said. “I don’t think their ideas are necessarily bad ideas. I think sometimes there a gap between feasible reality and what they would like to see.”

In other news about this project, Anstress Farwell, president of the Urban Design League, is traveling to Washington this week to speak with representatives of U.S. DOT about the organization’s concerns.