Infra Insight Blog

USDOT Announces $1.5 Billion in TIGER Grants – $60M in TIFIA Allocations

On February 17, the one year anniversary of the landmark American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, USDOT announced the final list of TIGER grant recipients. Grants range in size from $3.15M for a roadway rehabilitation/reconstruction in Burlington, VT to a $105M grant for construction of two new intermodal facilities in Memphis, TN and Birmingham, AL to support freight rail service from the Gulf Coast to the Mid-Atlantic.

When combined with state and private funds, the TIGER funds will support ...

USDOT has published new program guidance for the TIFIA Program which clarifies project selection criteria and processes. The new guidance is the product of long deliberation at USDOT, which withdrew an earlier proposal last spring. [See USDOT Withdraws Proposed Changes to the TIFIA Program.]

The notice:

• Announces a change in TIFIA selection criteria and processes going forward – rather than the current first come, first served basis for project submission, the new process would pool all letters of interest and apply weighting criteria to choose the best projects.

• Requests ...

The Obama Administration recently outlined its proposal for enhanced federal safety oversight of subways, light-rail and municipal bus systems. USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood said, Now, would we prefer that states regulate their own systems? You bet. But some states simply lack the resources to do that. And, in a pinch, some state will cut safety items from their budgets. For transit passengers those cuts are too dear.

The proposed Public Transportation Safety Program Act of 2009 would authorize the Secretary, through the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), to set and enforce minimum federal transit safety standards and ensure that transit safety efforts grow in tandem with increased ridership.

USDOT is currently prohibited from establishing federal transit safety standards, and instead relies on 27 State Safety Oversight Agencies (SSAs) to monitor transit safety as provided in 49 CFR Part 659.   Following several transit incidents earlier this year, FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff announced the Administration’s intent to enhance federal oversight.  [See FTA Considering New Safety Oversight for Rail Transit.]  Funding, independence, and enforcement powers are critical concerns for SSAs, which average less than one staff person per transit agency and in some cases rely on transit revenues from the systems they oversee.

Under the proposed program, FTA would be authorized to promulgate minimum national standards for rail transit safety, applicable to all fixed rail systems not currently under Federal Railroad Administration jurisdiction. (The legislation would also authorize bus safety regulatory authority but DOT expects its initial focus to be on rail transit safety.)

States could choose to continue transit safety oversight on behalf of FTA, but only when FTA finds that the SSA has:

•          an adequate number of fully-trained staff to enforce federal regulations;
•          been granted sufficient authority by its governor and state legislature to compel compliance by the transit systems it oversees; and
•          sufficient financial independence from any transit systems under its purview.

TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) division has weighed in on road user fees based on vehicle miles traveled or VMT. Their latest report Implementable Strategies for Shifting to Direct Usage-Based Charges for Transportation Funding responds to VMT’s critics who say the transportation funding method would be too challenging and require a lengthy implementation period. The report outlines strategies for shifting to direct user-based charges for transportation funding, focusing on incremental VMT mechanisms which can be fully implemented in the ...

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has endorsed USDOT’s policy of allocating Highway Trust Fund (HTF) apportionments based on total lane miles in each state – including miles of highway built, operated or maintained through public private partnerships (PPPs).

Each state’s share of the nation’s highway system (quantified as lane miles) has factored in federal aid allocations since 1976, though initially this measure excluded tolled facilities. In 1998, Congress greatly expanded the use of the lane mile funding formula with TEA-21, and eliminated the ...

New subway safety standards may be coming soon to a city near you.  The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has assembled a team of transportation safety experts to explore rail transit (subway, light rail, and commuter rail) safety reforms, which may extend to bus operations.

FTA is currently prohibited by law from establishing national safety standards, requiring Federal inspections, or requiring specific operating practices, but that may soon change.  In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff condemned several recent ...

A recent survey conducted by KPMG International confirms what many in the infrastructure industry already knew: current infrastructure investment is insufficient to support economic growth and politics frequently influences infrastructure development in the United States.  In this global survey, KPMG surveyed 455 infrastructure executives, including 118 from the United States.

While much of the recent industry press has focused on the lack of available financing as the primary challenge to delivering infrastructure, a vast majority of the respondents indicated that ...