DOT begins 4th round of TIGER grants

   The U.S. Department of Transportation on Tuesday said it will make $500 million available this year in the fourth round of TIGER funding for surface transportation investment. 
   Infrastructure projects will be evaluated on how they advance the Obama administration’s goals of safety, improving the nation’s economic competitiveness, livable communities, environmental sustainability, keeping assets in a state of good repair and short-term job creation.
   The competitive grant program has proven popular since its inception in 2009 with $1.6 billion made available through the Recovery Act to combat the recession. Subsequent DOT appropriations bills have each included about $500 million for the program. In mid-December, the DOT awarded 46 recipients $511 million.
   Demand has far exceeded available funds. The DOT has received more than 3,348 applications seeking more than $95 billion for transportation projects.
   The program broke the mold by giving discretion to the federal government rather than state and local governments to decide which projects deserved support and by allowing funds to be used for any surface transport mode, not just highways. It also gives much more flexibility to project sponsors – local governments, port authorities, transit agencies – in how they can use federal dollars.
   TIGER’s broad eligibility enables the DOT to support large, multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional projects that often get left out of traditional formula-based funding programs. Freight projects – rail, road and port – have been well represented in previous award rounds. States and the freight sector like the program because it gives freight projects a shot at federal money that normally gets channeled to states for road construction and maintenance. 
   The program is also more rigorous than traditional formula or grant programs in terms of the data required to quantify the social or economic outcomes expected from each project.
   For the first time, applications to a DOT grant program must include a cost-benefit analysis. Many transportation planners at state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations and private firms are unfamiliar with conducting a cost-benefit analysis and have had to be educated about the process, the difference between a cost-benefit and environmental impact analysis, and what they can and cannot count as a benefit, John Wells, the DOT’s chief economist, said last week during a panel presentation at the Transportation Research Board’s annual conference in Washington.
   Wells leads a team of economists that reviews the cost-benefit analysis of each candidate for funding.
   “I think the data-driven aspect of this program is an important innovation in the way we make decisions about infrastructure investments,” he said.
   More than a quarter of the TIGER funding has gone to freight rail projects. One of those is the Colton Crossing in California, a major rail bottleneck where the main lines of the Union Pacific and BNSF railways intersect at a grade crossing. At least 129 trains – one train every 11 minutes – goes through that part of the Inland Empire with import and other cargo headed to the interior of the nation. TIGER only provided about 20 percent of the money for the $300 million project, but it was enough to advance an effort that had bogged down by disagreement between two railroads and local governments on how to share the cost.
   The DOT said it will make $100 million of the total available in TIGER IV for high-speed and intercity rail. Priority will be given to projects that have completed permitting and design and are ready to proceed.
   Pre-applications are due Feb. 20 and applications are due March 19, the DOT said. Grants are expected to be announced in early summer, Wells said.
 — Eric Kulisch