USDOT to change FTA's funding guidelines for major transit projects

 

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed new funding guidelines for major transit projects that would be based on livability issues, such as economic development opportunities and environmental benefits, in addition to cost and commuting-time savings.

 

The guidelines would change how the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) selects projects to receive federal funding through the New Starts and Small Starts programs. The FTA will immediately rescind budget restrictions issued by the Bush Administration in March 2005 that primarily focused on how much a transit project shortened commute times in comparison to its cost.

 

Full story at: http://www.progressiverailroading.com/news/article.asp?id=22353

Ray LaHood:

""To put it simply: We will take livability into account," LaHood said today. "This new approach will help us do a much better job aligning our priorities and values with our investments in transit projects that truly strengthen communities. We’ll finally be able to make the case for investing in popular streetcar projects and other transit systems that people want – and that our old ways of doing business didn’t value enough."

 

More: http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/01/13/big-transit-news-bush-era-rule-tossed-enviro-benefits-on-the-table/

Music to my ears.

From the National Association of Railroad Passengers:

 

http://www.narprail.org/cms/index.php/hotline/more/hotline_637/

Hotline #637

January 15, 2010

 

In what looks to be a massive victory for rail transit, the Obama Administration has announced they will dramatically change existing policies for selecting transit projects for federal funding, focusing on issues such as economic development opportunities and environmental benefits—as opposed to the existing criteria that are narrowly focused on cost and time saved.

 

The move will rescind criteria put into place by President George W. Bush in 2005, in an effort to reduce the federal role in transit funding. 

 

The change was subject of the lead story in The Washington Post’ s Jan. 14 Metro section, under the headline “Brighter outlook for transit projects; Obama Changes Funding Policy.”  The article quoted Stewart Schwartz, Coalition for Smarter Growth executive director, saying “It’s a dramatic and welcome change [which] will ensure that priority is given to designing mixed-use walkable communities.”

 

Conversely,  Bob Chase of the highway-oriented Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance criticized the Obama Administration as seeming “to be weakening the criteria to expand it to include something called livability…If the objective is economic development, then they should use economic development dollars, not transportation dollars.”

 

“Our new policy for selecting major transit projects will work to promote livability rather than hinder it,” said U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.  “We want to base our decisions on how much transit helps the environment, how much it improves development opportunities and how it makes our communities better places to live.”

 

Trolleys, streetcars, light-rail, and bicycle and pedestrian projects are all expected to benefit as transit projects that improve urban mobility without necessarily improving on automobile commute times.

 

One of the lost opportunities highlighted by Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff was a light-rail system in Charlotte, NC.  Local transit officials sought federal aid to purchase equipment and build platforms that would accommodate three-car train sets, but they didn’t meet Bush Administration criteria, and they were forced to reduce the scope to two-car sets.  Charlotte commuters have flocked to the system, and officials are scrambling to expand the platforms and purchase extra equipment, at a higher cost than they if the original plan for three-car sets had been approved.

 

“It’s not that we’re going to ignore cost — we always want to be sure people aren’t building Taj Mahal projects — but everything was cost before,” said Rogoff.

 

Rogoff cited a light-rail project that will connect Minneapolis and St. Paul as a likely beneficiary of the Obama Administration rule change.  The FTA told reporters he was concerned “from a civil rights perspective” that Minnesota might not be able to afford to build train stations in black and Asian neighborhoods in St. Paul because the Bush-era rules would deem them to be not cost-effective.