CAGTC says DOT multimodal awards overlook freight priorities

The Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors argued that key freight hubs were bypassed in the latest round of TIGER grants and the inaugural round of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s FASTLane program.    Freight projects came up short of expectations in the latest round of Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants and the inaugural round of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s FASTLane program, the Coalition for America’s Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC) said Thursday.
   CAGTC is an umbrella organization of companies, governmental entities and trade associations that focus on promoting freight infrastructure development and efficiency through public policy.
   The advocacy group argued that key freight hubs such as the largest import gateway for merchandise in Southern California, Chicago’s inefficient and crowded railroad network where huge amounts of cargo are interchanged between eastern and western railroads, the truck and logistics crossroad of Memphis, Tenn., the logistics and population mega-region of New Jersey, and Florida seaports were bypassed in the recent competitions.
   Early last month, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced 18 winners of its Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Project program, dubbed FASTLane. The program, authorized by Congress in this year’s FAST Act transportation bill, was designed to make investments in critical freight and highway corridors. Investment criteria written into law, and reflected in the DOT’s grant solicitation, focused on goods movement infrastructure and listed goals such as increasing global economic competitiveness; improving connectivity between freight modes; and improving the safety, efficiency and reliability of the movement of freight and people.
   A CAGTC examination of the winning FASTLane applications showed a heavy dose of projects largely targeted at moving people, including highway improvement projects in Arizona, California and Idaho. The group also pointed out that FASTLane awards that were freight oriented went to small facilities that serve localities, but don’t handle freight volume that crisscrosses the nation and is consumed by large swaths of the population.
   “Competitive grant programs are designed to award only the best projects satisfying program intention and criteria. Like the early rounds of the TIGER competitive grant program, the FASTLANE award process will need fine tuning going forward to ensure all awards meet the program’s high standards,” CAGTC Chairman Tim Lovain, executive vice president of Capitol Strategies Partners, said. “We look forward to reviewing the full list of applications under the first round of FASTLANE and working with USDOT to ensure that in the future, funding is more focused on significant freight awards, as Congress intended. There are vast freight needs across the country and this type of infrastructure investment yields the highest return.”
   Now in its eighth funding round, the TIGER competitive grant program is appropriated annually by Congress with the intent of generating economic recovery through infrastructure investments.
   Despite the program’s broad eligibility, goods movement infrastructure historically competes well in the discretionary grant program because of its weight as an economic multiplier. While investments benefiting goods movement have earned as high as 53 percent of total funding in previous rounds of TIGER, the DOT awarded just 26 percent of total funding to only 11 projects out of 40 winners – an all-time low, CAGTC said.
   Successful freight projects under TIGER VIII included Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Rosecrans/ Marquardt grade separation project, which will separate a busy freight railroad mainline track from motor vehicle traffic; and the Port of Portland’s Marine Terminal Freight and Jobs Access Project, which will build a grade separation over a busy marine terminal rail lead and increase connectivity between the port and the National Highway System.
   CAGTC also called for more transparency about how decisions were made to fund projects.