Press Releases and Newsletters
Criteria Published for Second Round of TIGER Grants (AASHTO)
Criteria Published for Second Round of TIGER Grants (AASHTO)
Applicants for the Fiscal Year 2010 Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery grant program will need to show “long-term outcomes” and “job creation and economic stimulus” for any projects they are proposing, according to draft criteria released Monday by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Also to be considered are project innovation and jurisidictional and funding partnerships.
States and localities applying for $600 million in transportation infrastructure grants amd $40 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development must also show they they will fund at least 20% of the project’s costs. This is a change from the first round of TIGER grants, which required no state or local matching funds. The matching provision can be waived for rural reas, however. There will be $140 million set aside for rural projects from this $640 million combined grant program.
This year’s TIGER grant program is part of the Obama administration’s Partnership for Sustainable Communities, according to a notice in Monday’s Federal Register.
U.S. DOT awarded the first round of $1.5 billion in TIGER grants in February.
The 21-page notice is available at tinyurl.com/TIGER042610. Comments on the proposed grant criteria will be accepted through May 28.
Metro City Census Efforts
At the 2010 Winter Meeting the Metro Mayors Board of Directors shared their efforts to ensure an accurate Census count. The Coalition compiled this report on their activities.
Best Practices in After School Programming Among Metro Mayors
At their 2010 Winter Meeting the Metro Mayors Board of Directors spent time sharing their city’s after school program efforts. The Metro Mayors Coalition compiled this report on member city’s after school programs.
NCDOT 2010 Legislative Agenda – Legislation and Mobility Fund
The NC Department of Transportation unveiled their legislative agenda for the 2010 Short Session which includes a couple of items of interest to cities. I have posted all three draft bill below by the draft title, but pay special attention to DOT Powers and Duties Changes. So far I am hearing positive feedback from transportation folks, but drop me a line and share your perspective with me.
Turnpike Authority Toll Enforcement Changes
NC Go letter in support of Mobility Fund
Table comparing other state’s fees to proposed increases to support Mobility Fund
Resolution in support of Mobility Fund
LaHood: Cooperation key to winning transportation funds (Winston Salem Journal)
LaHood: Cooperation key to winning transportation funds (Winston Salem Journal)
Triad area planners need to act with a more unified voice if they expect to successfully compete for limited federal transportation funds, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said during an appearance in Greensboro Wednesday.
LaHood said people in the various planning organizations in the Triad — which includes four metropolitan planning organizations — need to put aside their various agendas and work together.
“You all need to decide what’s important, put it on a piece of paper and agree on it,” LaHood said. “Four MPO’s is probably three too many…If you speak with one voice, you’ll be pretty damn powerful.”
LaHood said the U.S. DOT last year received $60 billion in requests for $1.5 billion in available Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants. The available money this year will be less, just under $600 million, LaHood said.
LaHood spoke to a group of more than 100 area transportation and economic-development officials as part of the Piedmont Triad Livable Communities Summit, held at the Grandover Resort & Conference Center. The summit was sponsored by the Piedmont Authority for Regional Transportation and the Piedmont Triad Partnership.
LaHood said “livable” communities can be defined as areas with affordable housing and more transportation options than just driving. He said livable communities are places where kids can walk or ride bikes to school, where senior citizens who don’t want to drive can still get to where they need to go, and where commuters have access to other modes of transportation such as light rail.
That’s the kind of community that people want and that businesses are attracted to, he said.
Transformation to livable communities begins at the neighborhood level, he said, through small changes such as adding sidewalks, bike lanes or greenways.
LaHood said that since he became transportation secretary he’s been to 80 cities in 35 states.
“I have yet to see a place where livability is more important,” he said about his visit to the Triad. “You’re on the right track.”
One thing LaHood pressed for is a rail system that links America’s cities, which he hopes can be in place within the next two decades.
Local officials have looked at commuter rail for the Triad along a 33-mile route between Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem and N.C. A&T University in Greensboro. But a study released last year determined that the potential number of riders in the area would not be enough to make it viable.
“My answer to that is if you build it they will come,” LaHood said. “I’ve seen it happen all over America.”
LaHood said that once transportation projects are built, they become catalysts for growth, which boosts their use.
PART executive director Brent McKinney said North Carolina’s MPO structure dates to the 1960s. He said that all four of the MPOs that serve the Triad have their own characteristics, but he believes they can work together for regional projects.
“We do need to come together and speak with one voice,” McKinney said.
By Paul Garber | Journal Reporter
Published: April 28, 2010
GREENSBORO
Payroll tax plan gets cool reception in Durham (News and Observer)
Payroll tax plan gets cool reception in Durham (News and Observer)
DURHAM The notion of a payroll tax on people who work in Durham County but live elsewhere got a cool reception this morning from Durham County’s delegation to the state legislature.
“Why do you want to put that on us?” said state Rep. Mickey Michaux, the delegation’s senior member, when the proposition came up during the delegates’ pre-session meeting with the Durham County Board of Commissioners.
However, the legislators were warm to another idea for bringing more revenue into Durham County: sharing in the sales taxes collected at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Currently, those receipts all go to Wake County.
The state General Assembly convenes for its 2010 short session, dealing mostly with budget matters, May 12. Its “long session,” for business of all sorts, begins in January 2011.
“If things remain the same in the long session,” Michaux said, “we might be able to do it.” The qualifying “if” reflected the fact 2010 is an election year, and several of Durham’s General Assembly delegates face opposition for re-election.
As things are in the General Assembly, Michaux is Senior Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and Durham state Rep. Paul Leubke is Senior Chairman of the House Finance Committee.
“I’m writing the budget and Paul’s doing the financing,” Michaux said. “We got a bit of leverage.”
Durham County, the City of Durham and the City of Raleigh, along with Wake County, share the airport authority and pay toward airport operations each year. Durham also provides the airport utilities, and the issue of equity could win support for sharing tax receipts from legislators from other parts of the state, Michaux said – helping overcome anticipated opposition from Wake’s delegation.
“Develop the argument,” said state Sen. Bob Atwater.
The commuter tax, which County Commissioner Joe Bowser has advocated for years, has less likely prospects.
“We have probably 100,000 people who come here to work,” Bowser said. “Those people are getting some services
Mecklenburg County tried to get authority for such a tax some years ago, County Manager Mike Ruffin said, but the proposal went nowhere.
“I can imagine the uproar from small businesses,” said state Sen. Floyd McKissick. “I don’t see anybody saying they support it.” It would also be easily liable to fraud, since all a commuter would need to do to claim county residence is to open a post office box.
Michaux said the tax would probably be unconstitutional, applied to only a “certain class” of citizens.
“You take care of the constitutional problem and I’ll look at it,” he said.
Published Wed, Apr 28, 2010 02:44 PM
Modified Wed, Apr 28, 2010 02:48 PM
Charlotte’s smog rank improves (Charlotte Observer)
Charlotte’s smog rank improves (Charlotte Observer)
But the city’s levels remain among the nation’s highest, according to the American Lung Association’s list.
Metro Charlotte improved two notches but still ranks among the nation’s handful of smoggiest cities, the American Lung Association said Tuesday in its annual rankings.
The group’s 2010 “State of the Air” report ranks the Charlotte-Gastonia-Salisbury metropolitan area 10th-highest among most ozone-polluted cities. Charlotte ranked eighth last year.
This year’s rankings are based on federally reported pollution data for 2006-08.
The area’s slight improvement reflects cleaner air in the East and Midwest as anti-pollution rules have taken effect over the past decade, the lung association says.
North Carolina’s smog levels reached the lowest point on record last year, the N.C. Division of Air Quality has reported. Electric utilities, prompted by a 2002 state law, have dramatically reduced emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides.
Improved rankings by 14 of the 25 smoggiest cities, including Charlotte, “prove with hard data that cleaning up air pollution produces healthier air,” Mary Partridge, the lung association’s national board chair, said in a statement. “However, more needs to be done.”
Despite cleaner power plants and diesel engines, the report said, more than 175 million Americans live where the air is often dangerous to breathe.
Among them, it said, are 56,000 asthmatic children in the Charlotte metropolitan area, which is also home to 75,000 people with chronic bronchitis and 27,000 with emphysema. All three conditions can be aggravated by smog. The estimates are based on federal disease rates and census data.
The report lists Rowan County, downwind of neighboring Charlotte, as the nation’s 17th smoggiest county. Mecklenburg is 22nd. Swain County, on the Tennessee border in the N.C. mountains, is among the most smog-free places, it says.
The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a stricter smog standard in January, just two years after the previous revision. Mecklenburg County is still trying to meet a standard set in 1997.
More than half of North Carolina’s 100 counties, including all of those in the Charlotte region, could fail EPA’s new standard, state officials estimate. Mandatory controls on use of vehicles might be needed to quell Charlotte’s heavy traffic, the city’s major contributor to smog, those officials have said.
The lung association advocates a smog standard of 60 parts per billion, compared with the 75 parts per billion set by the federal government in 2008.
A tougher standard will also make it harder for the Charlotte region to attract new businesses, said David Franchina, a Charlotte lawyer who is chairman of the Regional Air Quality Board. The board collaborates with local governments on a business-oriented smog initiative, Clean Air Works! This year’s campaign began this week.
The program, which involves more than 100 companies in the region, has in the past urged workers to carpool to work and walk to lunch on smoggy days. This year it’s putting new emphasis on workplace changes, such as reduced idling by fleet vehicles, to avoid smog-forming emissions.
Smog rankings “emphasize that the business community needs to be at the table to help fix this,” Franchina said. “All these rankings show that a lot of work remains to be done. Because (regulations are) only going to get worse as time goes by.”
By Bruce Henderson
[email protected]
Posted: Wednesday, Apr. 28, 2010
Innovative Financing Is No Substitute for New Funding (Innovation Briefs)
Innovative Financing Is No Substitute for New Funding (Innovation Briefs)
Hoping to sustain interest in the Committee’s efforts to enact a new multi-year transportation bill during this session of Congress, Reps. James Oberstar (D-MN) and Peter DeFazio (D-OR), leaders of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, convened a hearing on April 14 to explore innovative ways of financing highway and transit investments. But while the hearing provided a useful survey of available financing tools and programs, it produced no new answers to the key question that has bedeviled transportation advocates for many months and remains as the chief obstacle to moving the legislation forward— the question of how to pay for the proposed multi-year surface transportation program.
The Administration’s opposition to increasing the current 18.4 cents/gallon federal gas tax— the most obvious means of generating the needed funds— was reiterated once again at the House hearing by Christopher Bertram, U.S. DOT’s Assistant Secretary for Budget and Programs. The White House has also announced its opposition to any additional taxing of motor fuel as part of the Senate energy legislation. “The Senators don’t support a gas tax, and neither does the White House,” the White House said in a statement, thus squelching any secretly entertained hopes that the energy bill might offer a backdoor way of raising the gas tax in the guise of a ” carbon fee.” (The proposed Kerry-Graham-Lieberman energy plan reportedly would have called for an additional levy of 15 cents/gallon. To fully fund the proposed $500 billion six-year transportation bill would require approximately a 20 cents/gallon increase in the gas tax.)
White House opposition to a gas tax increase is only one of several obstacles standing in the way of an early passage of a multi-year law. Three other factors make passage of the legislation this year unlikely:
1. The Senate faces a crowded legislative agenda that includes confirmation hearings for a Supreme Court justice and consideration of the Finance Reform Bill in addition to the energy bill. The likelihood of taking up a multi-year transportation bill on top of that busy agenda in the 60 legislative days remaining before the pre-election congressional adjournment, appear remote according to congressional observers.
2. Passage of the HIRE Act has taken the pressure off the lawmakers to move the multi-year bill this year. The Act not only has extended the existing law until the end of December 2010; it also has transferred $19.5 billion from the General Fund into the Highway Trust Fund and restored an earlier $8.7 billion rescission of contract authority. The latest projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicate that the General Fund transfer, when added to the projected revenue stream from the gas tax, is expected to support highway and transit programs at the levels authorized for Fiscal Year 2009 through the end of Fiscal Year 2012 and into FY 2013 (Congressional Budget Office, “Highway Trust Fund Projections, March 19, 2010.) Our own reading of the CBO projections suggests that both the Highway Account and the Transit Account of the Trust Fund could remain solvent as long as the second or third quarter of Fiscal Year 2013. With assured funding possibly through mid-2013, the case for passing a multi-year transportation bill this year has become less than compelling. In an unspoken acknowledgment of this state of affairs, many interest groups have quietly dropped their efforts to lobby for enactment of the reauthorization bill this year.
3. Last but not least, there are no signs of a popular outcry about the stalled transportation authorization. Despite extensive documentation of the needs for new infrastructure investments (notably, U.S. DOT’s 2008 Conditions and Performance report and the findings of the two commissions established by Congress to study future transportation funding needs) there seems to be no sense of urgency on the part of the public to embark upon a massive program of infrastructure modernization. Signs of aging infrastructure are kept largely hidden from view thanks to determined efforts by state and local highway agencies to maintain their assets in good repair. In the absence of any visible signs of system deterioration, warnings by advocacy groups about “crumbling infrastructure” are falling on deaf ears. The recent injection of some $50 billion of federal funding into surface transportation in the form of Recovery Act (ARRA) stimulus funds, TIGER Discretionary Grants and High Speed Rail grants has further weakened the argument that the transportation sector is not receiving adequate attention and that we are vastly under-funding our transportation needs.
Leveraging Future Revenue Streams
Although the House hearing shed no new light on how to generate new revenues for the federal-aid transportation program, it sent a strong message that innovative financing methods can help expedite project delivery and offer other benefits to the public. Under traditional methods of financing, transportation projects are completed on a pay-as-you-go basis: projects are built incrementally as public funds become available over a period of years. Using financing tools, notably tax-free bonds, state and local transportation agencies can gain immediate access to the funds necessary to advance projects into construction, and use their traditional funding or project-generated revenue streams to liquidate the indebtedness over time. While toll revenue is often used as security (collateral) in highway financing, project-generated user fees are not the sole means of backing debt issuances for transportation projects. Other types of security include dedicated sales tax revenue, future federal grants and revenues derived from tax assessment districts, transit-oriented development and other “value capture” projects. As Philip Washington, General Manager of the Denver Regional Transportation District testified, this has enabled transit agencies to gain access to private capital even though transit lacks sufficient project-generated revenue to use it as collateral for long-term debt obligations.
A Variety of Financial Tools and Programs
Testimony by Assistant Secretary Bertram showed that there is no scarcity of federally-assisted financial tools and programs to leverage available funds and expedite delivery of transportation projects. They include the TIFIA Program (authorized by the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 1998) offering direct loans, loan guarantees and lines of credit for surface transportation projects of “regional and national significance;” tax-exempt Private Activity Bonds (PAB), issued by state and local governments to aid in financing privately funded transportation projects; taxable Build America Bonds (BAB) whose interest rates are subsidized by the Federal government, thus lowering the net borrowing costs (by 35%) for state and local government issuers of the bonds; State Infrastructure Banks (SIBs) which provide credit assistance in the form of loans, loan guarantees and letters of credit and serve as revolving infrastructure investment funds for state-sponsored surface transportation projects; and Grant Anticipation (GARVEE) bonds, debt instruments secured by a pledge of future Title 23 (highway) and Title 49 (transit) Federal-aid funding.
The latest addition to this arsenal of financing instruments is the proposed National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund (I-Fund). As Assistant Secretary Bertram testified, this entity, capitalized with an initial $4 billion General Fund contribution ($25 billion over 5 years), would serve as a one-stop clearinghouse for financing and funding high-value multi-modal transportation projects of regional or national significance. A portion of the annual capital contribution would be handed out in grants rather than loans. The Fund could eventually fold in TIFIA, RRIF (The Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program) and other federally-assisted transportation financing programs into a single loan and grant dispensing entity, housed in the Transportation Department. Congressional support for this proposal is uncertain, competing as it does with broader proposals for a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). The latter is being advanced by several congressional sponsors as an independent stand-alone entity that would support infrastructure investments across a broad range of sectors. However, for the NIB to qualify as a genuine bank, its loan portfolio would need to be confined to revenue-generating projects and to projects secured by other sustainable revenue streams.
Availability Payments
Another financing method given prominent mention at the House hearing was the technique of “availability payments.” This relatively new financing method has received wide publicity because of its use in two recent concession-based transportation projects: the $900 million Port of Miami Tunnel and Florida’s $1.65 billion I-595 express lanes/reconstruction project. Availability payments also will be used in financing the reconstruction of Doyle Drive in San Francisco and are being considered by a number of other public agencies .
Availability payment concessions are used where the facility in question is not intended, for policy reasons, to generate its own stream of toll revenue or where toll revenue alone may not be sufficient to cover the full cost of building, operating and maintaining the facility. Instead, the public authority pays the private concessionaire periodic payments out of its regular budget over a fixed term of the concession. Payments are made only once the project is completed and upon certification that the concessionaire is meeting certain performance requirements. Availability payments can be supplemented by “milestone” payments tied to the attainment of specific construction milestones and a “final acceptance payment” due upon completion of the project, as incentives for timely completion and avoidance of cost overruns. Because private concessionaires receive fixed payments regardless of the volume of traffic generated by the facility, they do not assume the revenue risk as in the case of a classic long-term toll concession.
Innovative Financing Is No Substitute for New Funding
In the final analysis, innovative financing is no substitute for new funding. As Eugene Conti, Secretary of the North Caroline DOT concluded in his testimony, “while these
The question of where the money for such a “well-funded” bill is to come from remains unanswered. Until the political will and public support are found to either: (1) raise federal fuel taxes, (2) permit the tolling of Interstate highways, (3) phase in distance-based (VMT) charges in lieu of fuel taxes, or (4) accept the notion of funding the federal surface transportation program out of General Fund revenues, the future of a multi-year transportation bill will remain shrouded in uncertainty.
April 19,2010
What we know about bike infrastructure: people want it (Fast Lane Blog by USDOT Sec. LaHood)
What we know about bike infrastructure: people want it (Fast Lane Blog by USDOT Sec. LaHood)
We know that 90 percent of the people are not going to be cycling to work or around town. But that opportunity and that kind of alternative is something people have said they want.
They said it in a recent study by Transportation For America. They said it last week in Tupelo and Hernando, Mississippi. They’ve been saying it in Portland, Oregon, for years. They’re saying it in Washington, DC.
They said it after an interview I gave in the New York Times earlier this month. And New York bicyclists have said it loudly and clearly with their pedals, increasing their numbers by 28% in the last year alone according to a study by Transportation Alternatives.
And in response to an All Things Considered interview, NPR listeners have been saying it over and over on the NPR website.
On Facebook, I sometimes have trouble seeing my own wall posts because bicycling fans have been so busy posting their support for DOT’s bicycle-pedestrian initiative in such strong numbers.
Even Lance Armstrong, America’s 7-time Tour de France winner, has added his voice to the mix, urging his 2+ million Twitter followers to listen to the NPR story about bike infrastructure in America. Thanks, Lance!
Why devote resources to a transportation mode that fewer than 10% of the nation is using? Well, bike infrastructure is relatively inexpensive–particularly if you compare it to, say, adding a lane to an existing roadway. Now, imagine if those people who do bike around chose instead to make all of their trips in single-occupancy vehicles. Our already congested roadways would be brought to a halt.
So, even for those folks who have no interest in bicycling, this relatively low investment actually pays dividends for those who still choose to drive. Everybody wins.
And the fact is, as Washington, DC, DOT Director Gabe Klein noted on NPR, “We see a direct correlation between our investment in bike infrastructure and an uptick in usage. When you make it hassle-free and inexpensive for people to use a certain mode, they will use it.”
I’ll say it again–because I want my online friends in commercial trucking and the people who make their living behind the wheel, to know–we are not out to make their jobs any harder than they already are.
I know they’re paying a lot of taxes to use the roads, and I appreciate that fact. But we’re talking about making their jobs easier by taking vehicles off those roadways and easing congestion so the trucking community and bus and taxi drivers can deliver their goods and passengers more smoothly.
Look, in the 54 years since President Eisenhower launched the interstate system that connects America, we’ve committed almost all of our transportation resources to highways. Part of our commitment now should be to create alternatives to congestion.
We know that making biking and walking safer creates more livable communities. It makes Americans healthier at a time when the US military has indicated that 27% of recruits are too overweight to qualify for service. It lowers greenhouse gas emissions. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil.
And it’s what Americans have said they want.
Ga. transportation deal seen as basis of solutions (BusinessWeek)
Ga. transportation deal seen as basis of solutions (BusinessWeek)
Some state and local officials see a sweeping solution to metro Atlanta’s gridlock woes in the transportation bill approved this week by the Georgia Legislature, calling it a watershed development that will secure the state’s position as the South’s economic engine.
But the money won’t arrive until three years from now at the earliest, and critics say the bill doesn’t do enough to rescue Atlanta’s cash-starved transit system.
Three years in the making, the legislation that won overwhelming approval Wednesday in the House and Senate will divide Georgia into 12 regions and ask voters in each region whether to hike the sales tax by 1 cent to pay for roads, bridges and rail projects in that part of the state. Only those regions that approve the sales tax increase would have the money to spend.
The vote would take place during the 2012 presidential primary, giving officials time to educate voters and select projects that would receive funding.
“While any new funding is three years away, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Matt Hicks, with the Georgia Association of County Commissioners Georgia said. “Georgia needs transportation funding and the county commissioners are going to do whatever they can to make what the Legislature has passed is successful.”
If metro-Atlanta voters approve it, the bill would also give the MARTA transit system more flexibility to spend its reserve money on new projects. MARTA does not get state funding.
Beverly Scott, general manager and chief executive of MARTA, said the bill isn’t a panacea, but does mark a watershed moment in the state’s transportation efforts. Even though MARTA will not get all the help it needs to address a $120 million shortfall in its current budget, Scott said she expects whatever regional projects are conceived in the coming years will also affect MARTA.
“This is only a beginning step,” she said. “There’s still a lot more work that has to be done, but this puts us in a much better position than we were 36 hours ago … given that we’ve been batting zero on transportation for the better part of a decade.”
Legislators have struggled for years to strike a deal on transportation, working to end some of the worst gridlock in the nation in metro Atlanta and in Georgia, the ninth-largest state. Business leaders have pressed hard for a transportation funding plan, saying the state’s spending has not kept pace with its explosive growth.
Last year’s effort to authorize regional transportation tax hikes failed in the waning hours of the session.
This year, Gov. Sonny Perdue got involved. So did newly elected Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed.
Perdue acknowledged that the money would not come right away but said the proposal stood a better chance of winning voter approval with the economy further along the path to recovery
In the meantime, he has proposed an additional $300 million in borrowing for the coming fiscal year to jump start road projects in Georgia.
Spending on transportation in Georgia has lagged well behind the state’s population growth. Georgia spends the second lowest per capita in the country on transportation, ahead of only Tennessee. Road projects in Georgia are funded mostly with money from the state’s gasoline tax, but those revenues have tumbled amid recession.
Neill Herring, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club and a frequent critic of the transportation legislation, said the measure does not represent real progress on Georgia’s multiple transportation needs, but only kicks the can down the road.
“The bill represents only the slightest advance over the present miserable situation,” Herring said. “It addresses, but does not solve, MARTA’s financial problems of two years ago and contemplates waiting at least two years before dealing with any other transportation problems. The next governor is going to have to do all of this all over again.”
In a joint statement after the vote, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and House Speaker David Ralston praised the collaborative effort between both chambers and the governor’s office to pass the bill.
“Just as our state has many diverse transportation needs, a funding mechanism should respect the diverse regional needs and should have the approval of voters,” the statement read.
“Our regional approach is a flexible and optional solution, which allows for true local input and influence of transportation projects.”
By ERRIN HAINES
