[Senate Hearing 111-210]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 111-210
A FRESH START FOR NEW STARTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
HOUSING, TRANSPORTATION, AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
of the
COMMITTEE ON
BANKING,HOUSING,AND URBAN AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
ON
EXAMINING THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF THE FEDERAL NEW STARTS PROGRAM IN
FUNDING TRANSIT PROJECTS ACROSS OUR NATION
__________
JUNE 3, 2009
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban
Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut, Chairman
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama
JACK REED, Rhode Island ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
EVAN BAYH, Indiana MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii BOB CORKER, Tennessee
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
JON TESTER, Montana DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado
Edward Silverman, Staff Director
William D. Duhnke, Republican Staff Director
Dawn Ratliff, Chief Clerk
Devin Hartley, Hearing Clerk
Shelvin Simmons, IT Director
Jim Crowell, Editor
______
Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey, Chairman
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana, Ranking Republican Member
TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas
JACK REED, Rhode Island ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York MIKE JOHANNS, Nebraska
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio MEL MARTINEZ, Florida
JOHN TESTER, Montana JIM DeMINT, South Carolina
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon
Harold J. Connolly, Housing Staff Director
Michael Passante, Transit Staff Director
Travis M. Johnson, Republican Staff Director
Amit Bose, Legislative Assistant
Mitch Warren, Senior Policy Advisor
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2009
Page
Opening statement of Chairman Menendez........................... 1
Opening statements, comments, or prepared statements of:
Senator Schumer.............................................. 4
WITNESSES
A. Nicole Clowers, Acting Director, Physical Infrastructure
Issues,
Government Accountability Office............................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 20
Response to written questions of:
Senator Menendez......................................... 49
Gary C. Thomas, President/Executive Director, Dallas Area Rapid
Transit, and Vice Chair--Rail Transit, American Public
Transportation Association..................................... 6
Prepared statement........................................... 39
Response to written questions of:
Senator Menendez......................................... 50
Richard Sarles, Executive Director, New Jersey Transit........... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 41
Mariia Zimmerman, Policy Director, Reconnecting America.......... 10
Prepared statement........................................... 44
Response to written questions of:
Senator Menendez......................................... 54
(iii)
A FRESH START FOR NEW STARTS
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3, 2009
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community
Development,
Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met at 2:03 p.m., in room SD-538, Dirksen
Senate Office Building, Senator Robert Menendez (Chairman of
the Subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR ROBERT MENENDEZ
Senator Menendez. This hearing will now come to order. Good
afternoon, everyone. Today the Banking Subcommittee on Housing,
Transportation, and Community Development will have its first
hearing on public transit as we prepare to write the
reauthorization of the surface transportation bill. I want to
thank Chairman Dodd and Senator Shelby for their continued
leadership on transit issues, and I look forward to working
with them and Senator Vitter on crafting a strong transit
title.
Public transit has not always had the easiest time in
recent years. The previous administration and many in Congress
seemed more concerned about transit justifying its existence
rather than trying to make transit flourish. This has meant an
increasingly onerous system for transit agencies to get through
in order to get funding. Projects have to be justified on a
rigid cost/benefit analysis that can often ignore factors like
economic development.
Transit agencies have had to do stringent modeling on
projected ridership 2 years out, even though these systems will
be in service for decades. And often, as new requirements have
been added, agencies have had to go back and redo work already
completed to meet new standards.
These new requirements have resulted in the new starts
process taking 15 to 20 percent longer, according to the FTA,
and these delays, along with the added costs associated with
them, mean that we are not building new transit projects at the
rate we could or should be.
I want to be clear on one point. I am not questioning the
excellent work of the Federal Transit Administration. They have
done a remarkable job of promoting transit in recent years.
What I am saying to the FTA and to the transit agencies is that
now, it appears to me, is the time to unleash transit. The
leadership of President Obama, Chairman Dodd, and the new FTA
Administrator Peter Rogoff means that transit is no longer
something we need to justify; it is something we need to
understand is central to many of our Nation's core policy
issues.
Transit can help us rebuild our economy by creating jobs
and fostering smart economic growth. Transit systems can help
us out of our housing crisis because new transit can increase
property values and lower rates of foreclosure. Transit can
help us improve our energy security by lowering our consumption
of oil. And transit can also help us lower greenhouse gas
emissions to help solve our climate crisis. There are few
things that bring together all of those possibilities as public
transit can.
I have personally seen these benefits in the success of the
Hudson-Bergen Light Rail in New Jersey, which created new
riders, new ratables, new businesses and investment, new
employment opportunities, and environmental improvement all
along New Jersey's Gold Coast. And I could continue to extol
the benefits of transit, but instead I will let the decisions
of our constituents speak for themselves.
Transit ridership is higher now than it has been in 40
years. Communities around the country, including Denver,
Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, Atlanta,
Sacramento, Norfolk, and Charlotte have all made substantial
investments recently in transit. So it is not just a question
of meeting our policy goals; it is also a question of meeting
increased demand for transit.
This administration has already signaled its intent to meet
this demand in the Recovery Act, which had $750 million in
transit funding, created $1.5 billion in additional commitment
authority for new transit projects, and I am sure that transit
will play a significant role in the $1.5 billion Transportation
Investment Generating Economic Recovery Discretionary Grants
program.
So as I see it, our job for this reauthorization is to
continue the work of the Recovery Act and provide the funding
and a more streamlined process to ensure transit can meet its
potential. When we are done, transit can come out of the
shadows and finally be a proud part of the country's
transportation policy and its future.
Seeing no other colleagues at this point--we will recognize
them when they get here--let me turn to our witnesses.
Ms. Nikki Clowers is currently the Acting Director of
Physical Infrastructure with the Government Accountability
Office. In this role, she has led evaluations examining the
Federal Transit Administration's New Starts program. Ms.
Clowers has been with GAO for 11 years and has done a lot of
work reviewing the New Starts program, so we look forward to
learning from their insights.
Mr. Gary Thomas is the President and Executive Director of
the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART). In this role, Mr. Thomas
is responsible for a 13-city transit system over a 700-square-
mile area with bus, light rail, commuter rail, and paratransit
services. Mr. Thomas is also Vice Chair of Rail Transit for the
American Public Transportation Association.
Let me welcome Mr. Richard Sarles, who is the Executive
Director of New Jersey Transit, whom I have worked quite a bit
with--you do not look worse for the wear, Richard, so we
appreciate your service--the third largest transit agency in
the Nation. Mr. Sarles is responsible for the agency's bus,
light rail, commuter rail network which has been used by more
than 240 million people every year. It has been a tough time to
be head of New Jersey Transit. We have several major capital
projects going in various stages of construction or planning,
we have record ridership, and we have severe budget
constraints. And you have managed to guide New Jersey Transit
through all of this and to be able to do it without raising
fares this year, which I for one appreciate.
Ms. Mariia Zimmerman is Policy Director at Reconnecting
America, a national transportation nonprofit devoted to
improving the connection between transportation systems and the
communities they serve. Mariia brings over a decade of
experience working on Federal transportation policy, both in
the Federal Transit Administration and on Capitol Hill with
Chairman Earl Blumenauer.
Thank you all very much. I would ask each of you to keep
your testimony to about 5 minutes. Your full written testimony
will be entered into the record, and with that, Ms. Clowers,
let us start with you.
STATEMENT OF A. NICOLE CLOWERS, ACTING DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, GOVERNMENT
ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Clowers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having me here
today to speak about FTA's New Starts program, both challenges
that the program faces as well as options to improve it.
As you know, the New Starts program is the primary source
of Federal funding for major transit projects throughout the
country. However, there are growing concerns that the process
has become too time-consuming, too complex, and too costly.
Minimizing the delays and costs of project delivery has never
been more important as all levels of Government face severe
financial stress.
The bottom line is that there are options to help projects
move through the process more quickly. However, it is important
that we strike the right balance between speeding project
development and maintaining a robust evaluation process.
My testimony will address two topics: first, challenges we
have previously identified with the program; second, potential
options to expedite project development. In terms of
challenges, we have previously identified three key issues.
First, the New Starts program has experienced a great deal
of change over the last decade. Although these changes were
generally intended to make the program more rigorous, the
frequent changes have at times caused confusion and rework on
the part of project sponsors, leading to delays in project
development.
Second, the current New Starts evaluation process does not
capture all project benefits, such as economic development, as
you mentioned. As a result, the process may underestimate the
benefits of certain projects.
Third, while project sponsors and the industry experts we
interviewed generally value the rigor of the New Starts
process, many are concerned that the process has become too
complex, too time-consuming, and too costly, leaving some to
question whether pursuing New Starts funding is worthwhile.
For example, one project sponsor told us that constructing
a project with New Starts funding delays the timeline for the
project by as much as several years, which in turn leads to
increased project costs, since inflation and expenses from
labor and material increase with delay.
With regard to options to expedite project development, we
have identified a handful of potential options in our ongoing
work, which are described in my written statement. Each of
these options has advantages and disadvantages to consider. I
would like to highlight two of these for you today.
One option is to tailor the New Starts evaluation process
to the risks posed by the project. Specifically, the level of
oversight by FTA and the number of requirements to be fulfilled
by a project sponsor could vary based on the project's cost and
scope as well as the experience of project sponsors. This would
allow low-risk projects to move through the process more
quickly as well as allow FTA to more efficiently use its
limited oversight resources.
Another option is to combine one or more of the project
development phases. For example, the preliminary engineering
and final design phases could be collapsed into a single phase.
This would reduce the number of FTA approvals needed to advance
the project through the process. Currently FTA must approve a
project's advancement into the different phases. Gaining these
approvals can cause delays as project development essentially
stops as FTA determines whether the project can advance, and
FTA's reviews can take anywhere from a few weeks to many
months. Thus, combining project development phases would reduce
the number of stops and starts projects currently experience
and reduce the potential for delay.
In summary, there are several challenges confronting the
New Starts program, notably concerns that the process has
become too complex, too time-consuming, and too costly.
However, there are options to help expedite project
development. Options to speed project development must be
balanced with the need to preserve the rigor and accountability
of the New Starts program.
We look forward to working with the Subcommittee to further
explore these options during the upcoming reauthorization, and
this concludes my testimony, Mr. Chairman. I would be pleased
to answer any questions that you or the other Members of the
Subcommittee may have. Thank you.
Senator Menendez. You are under time and on budget. That is
always good news.
Ms. Clowers. That is what we try to do at GAO.
Senator Menendez. Thank you very much.
Before I turn to Mr. Thomas, let me turn to my
distinguished colleague from New York, Senator Schumer.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHARLES E. SCHUMER
Senator Schumer. Thank you. First, I want to first thank
Senator Menendez and Senator Vitter for holding this important
hearing. I thank the witnesses. I apologize. I cannot stay for
the hearing with other obligations, but I wanted to be here
because I think New Starts is a great idea, and I am glad you
are having this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
From the Internet to common markets, from higher education
to startup businesses, the economy is fundamentally based on
interconnectivity. Allowing ideas and the people who devise
them to move ever more freely from place to place. That is why
safe and smooth highways and bridges matter. It is why better
and faster rail travel matters. And it is why inexpensive,
reliable mass transit matters. With the unpredictability of
fuel prices and growing traffic congestion, it is now more
important than ever that Americans have an affordable
alternative means of transportation.
In 2007, Americans took 10.3 billion trips on U.S. mass
transit. That is the highest number taken in 50 years. Today we
are in a very promising place. We have an administration that
understands and is willing to invest in the growing demand for
transit and an American public whose imagination has been
captured by the promises that modernized transportation systems
can deliver. So the environment is ripe to move in a bold new
direction.
To take advantage of these new opportunities, we have to
prioritize the improvement to the Federal Transit
Administration's New Starts program, a major capital investment
program that helps localities build fixed guideway systems. New
Starts has been incredibly important to my home State. In New
York City, East Side Access, the Second Avenue Subway, and a
joint project spearheaded by my colleagues, the Chairman of
this Subcommittee, Senator Menendez, along with Senator
Lautenberg are all beneficiaries of New Starts. The projects
will play an instrumental role in relieving roadway congestion
and reducing New Yorkers' carbon emissions.
The East Side Access project brings Long Island Railroad
commuters to a new terminal underneath Grand Central Station in
Manhattan, allowing them to avoid the congested headache that
is Penn Station.
The Second Avenue Subway project will create a two-track
subway line along Second Avenue from 125th Street to the
financial district in Lower Manhattan, creating a critical but
presently missing link in New York City's subway map.
The ARC Tunnel--and I am sure my friend from New Jersey can
speak about this, and has probably mentioned it already--will
double commuter rail capacity between New York and New Jersey
via two new railroad tunnels underneath the Hudson.
The existing tracks that are in use are bursting at the
seams in terms of capacity on both sides of Manhattan--on the
East River for East Side Access, on the West Side for the
Hudson River. You get one train stalled during rush hour, and
everything comes to a standstill because things are so
congested. So the project is going to provide riders with
welcome relief.
But the New Starts program is not without its shortcomings.
The entire project development process takes anywhere from 6 to
12 years. This is a lifetime for localities gasping for fresh
air, anxious to get cars and their accompanying pollution off
their streets. It took almost 9 years for both East Side Access
and Second Avenue Subway to receive their Full Funding Grant
Agreements. ARC is still awaiting the FFGA. Part of the delay
is due to the FTA's heavy oversight role over each step of the
project's development.
While I agree that the Federal Government must monitor the
use of its funds carefully, especially in multi-million-dollar
capital projects, I believe the Federal Government must not act
as a roadblock to the project's completion. Congress must
examine ways to make the New Starts program more efficient so
that our localities are encouraged not discouraged from
applying for projects.
Another important note on transit investment I would like
to make is that as we approach the new reauthorization bill, I
am going to reiterate the importance of striking a proper
balance between highway funding and mass transit funding. We
all remember last summer when the Highway Trust Fund nearly
dried up. The Bush administration's solution was to inject it
with funds--funds that would be robbed from mass transit.
Bottom line: You cannot rob Peter to pay Paul. Mass transit
funds are more precious than ever, and we must dismiss any
future proposal to subtract funding from mass transit.
Again, I want to thank Senator Menendez for holding this
hearing, thank the witnesses, and I will look forward to
reviewing the record and seeing their testimony.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Senator Schumer, for your
tremendous advocacy in this regard.
Mr. Thomas.
STATEMENT OF GARY C. THOMAS, PRESIDENT/EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR, DALLAS AREA RAPID TRANSIT (DART), AND VICE CHAIR--
RAIL TRANSIT, AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION (APTA)
Mr. Thomas. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee,
on behalf of Dallas Area Rapid Transit and the American Public
Transportation Association, we thank you for this opportunity
to testify before you today on the Federal Transit
Administration's New Starts program, which provides essential
funding to cities like Dallas who seek to improve mobility and
air quality by establishing new transit services. Changes must
be made to the program that will help streamline the Federal
transit program, reduce the administrative burdens on transit
agencies like ours, and help speed project delivery.
Now, when you think about public transit in the United
States, DART may not be the first transit authority you think
of, and let me tell you a little bit about what is going on in
north Texas. North Texas is the fastest growing region in the
United States. It is the fourth largest region in the United
States. DART serves 13 cities in just a portion of that region,
2.2 million people, over 700 square miles, and we started that
process in 1983, so we are relatively young when it comes to
public transportation certainly in the U.S.
We opened our first light rail section in 1996, and then we
had an expansion in 1997 and 2002. So we opened with a 20-mile
starter system. Between 2001 and 2004, we expanded to a total
of 45 miles on the ground. In that second expansion, we
received a $333 million Full Funding Grant Agreement. We
actually came in ahead of schedule and under budget on that
project, which created somewhat of a dilemma because it had not
happened very many times in the past. We worked very closely
with our delegation to reapply some of those funds back to the
north Texas area.
As we continue to try to provide this response to the
insatiable desire for good transportation choices in north
Texas, where people spend 60 hours on average a year stuck in
traffic--not in traffic, but stuck in traffic--we continue to
look at how we can continue to grow. So we have 45 miles of
light rail on the ground. We also provide commuter rail between
Fort Worth and Dallas. We operate the HOV lanes, and of course,
buses, paratransit systems, and other multimodal opportunities
for people to use, and we are in the process of doubling our
light rail system again. We have the longest light rail
construction project underway in North America right now, 28
miles, the Green Line. Often when I talk to folks in north
Texas and ask, ``Do you ride the system?'' ``Well, Gary, it
does not go where I want it to go yet. And how quickly can you
make that happen?''
So we are in the process of building the 28-mile Green
Line; 21 miles of that is federally funded, $700 million Full
Funding Grant Agreement that we received on July 3, 2006. That
represented 47 percent of the project cost; 53 percent is
locally matched. And then, of course, that balance of the 28
miles, the final 7 miles is all locally matched.
The process that we went through to get to that point was
often long and arduous, and to be quite frank with you, sir,
the FTA was very helpful in that process. They have extremely
bright people and very helpful people, but the process was
cumbersome, oftentimes, and it changed multiple times, as we
heard earlier in the testimony, as we went through that
process. But we received that Full Funding Grant Agreement.
That project, the first phase of that project will open
September 14th of this year. The rest of that Green Line
expansion will open in December of 2010, but we are not
stopping there. We have already got an additional 9 miles under
contract that we just awarded this January as we head toward
DFW airport and another 5 miles as we head out to the eastern
suburbs of the Dallas area.
So total right now today, we have 42 miles of light rail
under construction. And as we talk to the community, it is,
``OK, Gary, that is $1.63 billion of construction. What are you
going to do next? How quickly can you get that next piece? When
are you going to do this piece?'' And we are looking at how we
can make that happen as we continue to expand our system.
We owe a lot to our north Texas delegation, and, of course,
Senator Hutchison, who serves on this Subcommittee, we
appreciate what she is doing. As we look forward, the funding
is absolutely critical, $123 billion is absolutely necessary
over the 6-year period for transit in the new bill. We would
like to strengthen the role of the regional FTA offices in the
New Starts process. We really believe that we need to reform
the ratings standard to take more benefits of the other
criteria: land use, TOD, environment. We have almost $8 billion
of transit development already around our stations, and, of
course, a greater use of pilot and demonstration projects would
be beneficial. We have got a second alignment downtown Dallas
that is a perfect opportunity for this. It does not meet the
current criteria, but it is absolutely essential, as all lines
feed into downtown so that we do not create a bottleneck in the
future.
I look forward to working with the Subcommittee as we
continue to develop these rules, and I appreciate the
opportunity to be here today.
Senator Menendez. Thank you very much.
Mr. Sarles.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD SARLES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NEW JERSEY
TRANSIT
Mr. Sarles. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure and I appreciate
the opportunity to give testimony today on the New Starts
process.
Congress and the Obama administration, through the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act, have sent a strong signal to the
American public that improving and expanding public
transportation is a priority.
It is precisely because we stand at the gateway of a new
era in transit investment that it is critical to ensure that,
going forward, we have the most expeditious and transparent
process to deliver critically needed projects both at the
agency and Federal levels.
First, let me say that we are very pleased to be working
with FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff. The Administrator is an
extremely knowledgeable transportation expert with considerable
experience with New Starts through his work on the Senate
Appropriations Committee. He has been a friend to transit for
many years and has already hit the ground running, working with
us closely in New Jersey to advance New Starts projects. I look
forward to his leadership and partnership at FTA.
The FTA has an important, welcomed oversight role in the
New Starts process that was designed to realize the benefits
for money expended and to ensure both the competitive nature of
the program and the proper usage of Federal funds.
What I hope to address today is the fact that the FTA, like
New Jersey Transit, has limited resources to devote to these
valuable oversight responsibilities. FTA must focus its
resources to assure that the costs and benefits of a project
are fairly presented and that a grantee has in place the
requisite organization, funding, processes, and controls to
advance and sustain a project. The FTA does not have nor should
have the expertise to plan, engineer, and construct major
projects. Nor should it request or demand reams of
documentation with multiple revisions from clearly experienced
agencies to prove that they know how to plan, engineer, and
construct a New Starts project.
While we have worked through the years on multiple New
Starts projects that have yielded tremendous benefits, our
experience shows a more recent trend toward layers of oversight
that can create risks to project schedules and budgets.
Specifically, New Jersey Transit has completed four New
Starts projects since the program's inception, including the
Frank R. Lautenberg transfer station, the Hudson-Bergen Light
Rail Segments 1 and 2 that you referred to earlier, and the
Newark Light Rail extension. In addition, New Jersey Transit
has also completed the Riverline Light Rail project with State
funds only. The total value of these projects was $3.9 billion.
Let me share New Jersey Transit's experience with the New
Starts process on two major projects--one in operation, and one
about to break ground this month.
The first, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail project, which is
operational today, offers frequent and convenient service
through seven cities along the Hudson River waterfront.
It is important to note that during the project's early
stages then-Mayor Menendez of Union City was not only an
advocate of the project, but convinced New Jersey Transit to
add a station in Union City, which now has over 5,000 daily
riders. The HBLR----
Senator Menendez. By the way, Mr. Sarles, at that time--you
were not the Executive Director, but at that time I was told
that was not going to happen. And I told them, ``Then we are
not going to have a rail line.'' It is the most highly traveled
passenger location of the entire system, is it not?
Mr. Sarles. It was a very wise decision.
Senator Menendez. Thank you. All right. You can have as
much time as you need.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Sarles. The HBLR has been a huge driver for economic
development in Hudson County. In fact, in a region where cities
are shrinking, Jersey City in the last quarter-century has
gained about 30,000 residents, 27,000 jobs, and 18 million
square feet of prime office space.
New Jersey Transit's experience with FTA in securing Full
Funding Grant Agreements for the HBLR in the late 1990s was
fairly straightforward.
New Jersey Transit, in partnership with the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey, is also in final design and will
soon break ground on the Access to the Region's Core (ARC)
project--the first new rail tunnel to be built under the Hudson
River in 100 years. That was referred to before. This $8.7
billion project will generate some $45 billion in new regional
economic activity while providing riders with more frequent,
direct, and reliable service. The tunnel will accommodate a 50-
percent increase in the number of daily passenger trips beneath
the river, taking 22,000 cars a day off area highways, and
reducing greenhouse gases and other pollution by more than
66,000 tons per year.
The New Starts process in 2005, when we began submitting
information for ARC, has changed substantially from the days of
the HBLR. Some changes were positive. For instance, FTA
required a fleet management plan for all transit modes, a
financial plan, a 2030 rail operating plan, and a land use and
economic development analysis. The process enforces a
discipline on the logic used to develop and analyze a plan,
which is useful so that comparisons can be made between
different proposed transit projects and also so that the
proposing agencies have the resources and skills they need to
implement the project. I welcome that discipline.
However, in an environment where investments need to be
accelerated to boost the economy and protect the environment,
review timetables need to be balanced against the need to
progress through the process with a focus on completion.
For example, the current New Starts process has evolved to
include many more layers of review, and re-review, which are
sometimes onerous and can unnecessarily slow an agency's
ability to advance on a reasonable schedule. Even modest
changes to a project now result in more process. In fact, I can
say with some certainty that if a mayor requested an additional
station for a New Starts project today--a request that would
improve the project through increased ridership and economic
development--the result would be project delay and cost
overruns or increases.
With these experiences in mind, I recommend the Committee
consider the following steps with respect to reforming the New
Starts process. In order to meet the administration's
objectives while providing appropriate oversight, the program
should embody five fundamental principles:
One, establish a true partnership between the Federal
Government and State and local governments seeking to improve
public transit bound together by mutual respect rather than red
tape.
Streamline the New Starts process so that predictability of
the process is a priority. One way to accomplish this is to
make it more of a ``procurement'' type process.
Three, realign the review process to account for the
experience of more established transit agencies.
Four, acknowledge the fact that the FTA has become the
minority funding partner and further recognize that a Full
Funding Grant Agreement limits the exposure of the FTA to fund
more than a specified amount of the proposed project's total
cost. At the same time, the local agencies bear the risk of
cost increases, including those due to delay in decisionmaking.
Five, encourage the expansion of public transit consistent
with concerns about production of greenhouse gases and energy
consumption. The weight given to evaluation criteria categories
should be revisited.
I deeply appreciate the Committee's leadership on this
matter. It is absolutely critical that if we are to achieve the
ambitious agenda of building and expanding transit
infrastructure across the country, we need to streamline the
Federal process and work more urgently together as partners at
the Federal, State, and local level. I am grateful for the
opportunity to offer our thoughts today on how we can work
together to build a better transportation network.
I would be glad to take questions.
Senator Menendez. Thank you very much.
Ms. Zimmerman.
STATEMENT OF MARIIA ZIMMERMAN, POLICY DIRECTOR, RECONNECTING
AMERICA
Ms. Zimmerman. First of all, thank you for your long-time
leadership on transit and economic development issues, Senator
Menendez. It is a great pleasure to be here today, and in my
organization's work managing the federally funded Center for
Transit-Oriented Development, we have been engaged in a number
of research projects over the last 5 years to look at the New
Starts program and, as a co-founder of the Transportation for
America Campaign, are looking at opportunities in the next
transportation bill.
In a report that Reconnecting America released last year,
we found over 400 rail, bus, rapid transit, and streetcar
projects that are being proposed in almost 80 communities
across the country at a proposed worth of $248 billion--far
more than can be funded through the Federal transit program
alone and at the current rate would take almost 100 years to
build these projects.
Regions are aggressively seeking to use transit investments
to help focus growth, create sustainable foundations for
economic development, and provide mobility options for
residents. My organization joins a growing chorus of voices
that asks Congress to significantly increase funding for public
transportation in the upcoming transportation reauthorization,
and as part of overall energy and climate change legislation
that may be before the Senate this Congress.
Increased investment in public transportation should be
viewed as part of a larger goal to build and maintain an
integrated national transportation system. And last month,
Senators Rockefeller and Lautenberg introduced S. 1036, the
Federal Transportation Policy and Planning Act of 2009. This
legislation establishes a unifying mission for the Federal
surface transportation program and sets needed and achievable
performance targets. This Subcommittee may want to consider
strengthening that bill to reinforce the linkage between
housing and transportation through adding performance targets
that ensure low- and moderate-income communities also share in
the benefits of a new and improved transportation system. And
to help meet growing demand for transit, the New Starts
program, as we have all mentioned, must be significantly
reformed.
My organization supports a rigorous and transparent review
process; however, the unlevel playing field between the current
process for planning, designing, and constructing a new transit
line unduly burdens these projects with extra costs and delays.
Our research on existing and proposed transit projects
shows that actual ridership on many recently built transit
lines is higher than predicted by FTA's Transit System User
Benefit model. This raises significant concerns about the
substantial weight placed on these model results, and we
believe validates the need to maintain a multi-measure
approach.
Additional suggestions to improve the New Starts project
delivery process that we believe warrant more consideration by
Congress include:
The development of a metropolitan mobility program that
could allocate formula funding for small start capital transit
investments, thereby increasing the threshold and maintaining
an exemption for smaller-scale transit projects;
The advancement of a set of interrelated expansion
projects, similar to the approach taken by Salt Lake City and
being pursued by Houston, Texas;
And reconciliation of the major capital investment
alternatives analysis with the NEPA Alternatives Analysis
requirement to create one integrated comprehensive approach
instead of a confusing two-step process.
Finally, I would like to highlight some of the social
equity needs of transit-supportive land use policies. As the
transit-oriented development market demand increases, as you
have seen in New Jersey's Gold Coast, the threat of
displacement will force the loss of potential affordable
housing options.
We commend the recently announced HUD-DOT interagency
sustainability partnership. But in regards to the New Starts
process, we feel that more can be done and should be done to
simultaneously improve project delivery and reward affordable
housing preservation and creation. One idea is to allow
communities to count mixed-income housing investments within a
half-mile of a proposed transit station as a match against
requested Federal dollars. We also believe that focusing the
Federal review process on the Federal portion of funding would
help to incentivize local actions in the realm of economic
development.
Another option is to reward communities that implement
mixed-income housing policies in the land use evaluation
measure, thus moving beyond just reporting on the number of
low-income households to actually rewarding those communities
that take steps to ensure long-term affordability for families
of a mix of incomes.
The Federal New Starts program sets the rules for
engagement in how communities coordinate proposed transit
investments with larger regional decisions, and as noted, we
believe the challenges facing our Nation on climate change,
economic security, energy security, and competitiveness require
us to make a greater effort to fund transit in a more timely
and cost-effective manner for transit properties and
communities.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before
the Committee today. My organization looks forward to working
with you and this Committee in the upcoming bill.
Chairman Menendez. Well, thank you very much. Thank you all
very much for some very good testimony. We appreciate it.
So we will start rounds of questioning, and I don't know if
other colleagues will make it. If not, believe me, I have a
series of questions.
Let me start with you, Ms. Clowers. You note in your
testimony, in your full written testimony, that economic
development is a benefit that is not considered when FTA rates
New Starts projects, and I worry that a project like the
experience we had in New Jersey along the Hudson-Bergen Light
Rail, and even listening to Mr. Thomas about some of what he
described in the development in the DART region, but in the New
Jersey context alone, it generated well over $5 billion in
housing development alone, without even getting into the
commercial aspects of it. It would not be fairly rated if it
had come through the process today rather than in the 1990s. So
how can we create a fair measure of economic development so
that it can become part of the New Starts process?
Ms. Clowers. As you stated, economic development is
currently not considered or weighted in the evaluation process.
Cost effectiveness and land use are each weighted 50 percent in
the evaluation process. The Transportation System User Benefit
does capture some economic development benefits. However, we
found in the past that it doesn't capture all the economic
development benefits that a project might bring. There are
models out there that would allow you to predict economic
development benefits that project sponsors can use and some
project sponsors have those models. They can be quite
expensive.
Another way to incorporate that information into the
process, if you don't want to go the quantitative approach of
using models, is to use a more qualitative approach. Currently,
that is what is done with land use. FTA considers the transit-
friendliness of the policies that a community may have in
determining the land use benefits and a similar approach can be
taken for economic development.
Chairman Menendez. Any other thoughts on that? Does anyone
want to jump in? Mr. Thomas?
Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir. I think the modeling is a good idea.
The land use policies in our particular case are also a good
idea, but it is somewhat of a challenge with 13 different
member cities because they all approach it a little bit
differently. What we would also like to see is some of the
historical practices that have already occurred around the
stations, which I think tend to influence other developers and
tend to gain momentum as we go forward. As I said earlier, we
have almost $8 billion of development that is either occurring
around stations or already has occurred around the stations, so
I think that historical perspective and the past practices of
what has gone on around those stations, I think is also very
important.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Sarles?
Mr. Sarles. If I may add, on a very large project, such as
the ARC project, use of an economic model makes sense and we,
in fact, did that. On the smaller New Starts, not necessarily a
small New Start project but smaller ones, I think more of a
qualitative approach works best in that you see how the
localities have zoned around the proposed station so that, in
fact, will encourage that kind of economic development.
Chairman Menendez. Ms. Zimmerman?
Ms. Zimmerman. Thank you. We actually have done a fair
amount of work on this, as well, through the Center for
Transit-Oriented Development and commissioned some different
reports to look at this. One of the issues we found frustrating
to this point has been, I think, a confusion over the
definitions of economic development, particularly coming out of
the administration. When we talk to practitioners who are
looking at economic development, they are really looking at the
land valuation increases and what policies are communities
doing to create tax increment financing tools, business
improvement districts, public-private partnerships, developer
agreements, and there is a host of these kinds of qualitative
things that can be evaluated and measured versus more of a pure
economist perspective of looking at sort of microeconomic
trends which involve detailed modeling.
And we feel that there are ways through these qualitative
measures that it could be analyzed, and that there is a clear
distinction between land use and economic development if we
work to clearly define what we mean by these terms. And we do
find in countries, in Canada and Europe and other places, they
take more of a full cost-benefit analysis to look at the full
range of costs and benefits. That may be another approach that
we would want to consider to sort of get at these bundle of
issues in the next bill.
Chairman Menendez. Let me ask you, Ms. Clowers, again, GAO
has taken some extensive looks at the New Starts program and
you have issued several reports to the agency. One of the
issues that I have raised time and time again and we heard it
here on the panel is that the New Starts process should really
be quicker. I mean, a decade--there is nothing that a decade
ago is more expensive then than it is now. It is far more
expensive now, after a decade, and that is a challenge. The
question is what recommendations you all may have when it comes
to how do you shorten the process while still ensuring a fair
vetting process.
Ms. Clowers. That is a very good question. We do in our----
Chairman Menendez. I only ask good questions.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Clowers. Absolutely.
Chairman Menendez. Just kidding.
Ms. Clowers. We have identified a number of options to help
streamline the evaluation process. As I mentioned before, we
could tailor the evaluation process to the risk posed by the
projects. We also could apply changes to the New Starts program
or process only to future projects. So, for example, if you are
already in preliminary engineering and FTA makes a change to
the process, you would not apply the change to that project.
Through our past work, we have found that is a significant pain
point for project sponsors. They feel like the goalposts are
always changing on them and it again requires rework and delays
and cost. But as you mentioned, it is key that we strike the
right balance between speeding project development and
maintaining a robust evaluation process because we have held up
the New Starts program as a model for other agencies in terms
of the rigor and analysis that goes into selecting these
projects.
I would go back to the idea of looking really at the risks
posed by the projects and determining the right balance. What
is the risk posed to the Federal Government? For example, you
could tailor the process so that if you are requesting more
Federal funds from FTA, you would experience greater Federal
oversight than if you are requesting less.
Chairman Menendez. What about Mr. Sarles' comments--I was
taking down your five notes--a recognition that while a full
funding agreement is something that is desirable to get a
project going, it also limits the Federal Government's risk,
right, to the extent that that is the extent of their
engagement. So if their costs go up, it is the other entity,
New Jersey Transit or others, who ultimately are the ones
responsible for the difference.
Ms. Clowers. Correct.
Chairman Menendez. You know, I have heard full-funding
agreements described in many ways. I never really thought about
it in the context of limiting the government's risk. I think it
is worthy of noting.
I want to ask you one other question and then I will turn
to the others. There were a series, I think, and I would like
you to talk about it--you know, we all understand that a
program goes through evolutions and adds things as it learns
more experiences with specific projects, but can you identify
for the Committee some of the major requirements the FTA added
outside of the statutory process via the regulatory and
administrative changes in the last administration?
Ms. Clowers. I think one of the most significant regulatory
changes was the introduction of the Transportation System User
Benefit, which is used to help calculate cost effectiveness. As
you know, SAFETEA-LU identifies cost effectiveness as a project
justification criteria that FTA must use to evaluate projects,
and then FTA then looks at those criteria and develops certain
measures. And the TSUB measure was a significant change. I
think that was in the early 2000s. When that rolled out, that
caused a great deal of problems for project sponsors. It was a
new calculation that was very complex, led to rework and some
delays of projects.
Other requirements that would fall more into the
administrative regulatory realm, they mentioned risk
assessments for projects and those risk assessments have
evolved over time in terms of its complexity and the timing of
the risk assessments. They have also introduced ``make the
case'' documents where projects are required to submit a three-
to four-page narrative that explains the benefits of the
projects in layman's terms. That might not sound like a lot of
work in terms of the three to four pages, but there is a lot of
back and forth between project sponsors and FTA in terms of
getting the document to look like what FTA wants.
There has been a significant number of other changes made.
I think about 3 years ago, we identified about 16
administrative or regulatory changes that FTA had made, and
importantly, a number of those changes had not been made with
the review and comment period. And so we recommended to FTA
that they ensure that all project sponsors have an opportunity
to review and comment on proposed changes because we think that
is important to get both input from the project sponsors, sort
of real-world perspective about what those changes will do, and
also to avoid confusion and delay.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Sarles, Senator Schumer mentioned
something that we have all regionally been working on and break
ground Monday, I understand, the new Trans-Hudson Rail Tunnel
project, and that has undergone an incredibly strenuous
process. If you could change one thing about the New Starts
program, what would it be so that the next nationally
significant project can complete the process in less than a
decade, which is what this took?
Mr. Sarles. If there was one thing I would do, it is to
considerably improve the predictability of the process, the
timing of it. As it is set up now, there really is no specific
deadline to move on to the next phase of the evaluation.
I had mentioned in my testimony to maybe have sort of like
a procurement process, where every year, once a year,
properties that are interested in applying for the New Starts
program have to submit their proposal. The FTA could then spend
2 months evaluating them and scoring them and picking out the
successful ones, and the ones that were unsuccessful will have
an opportunity to come back, learning from the first round.
Interestingly enough, yesterday, I was at the FRA's
workshop on implementing the $8 billion high-speed rail
stimulus program and they talked about exactly that process,
where they are going to submit, I think toward the end of this
month, guidance. In 2 months, organizations are to submit the
applications, and they are going to have a first round of
choices after evaluating the various proposals. Something like
that moves things along, gets decisions made, and continues on.
Chairman Menendez. Mr. Thomas, you in your testimony, you
mentioned that adding capacity in the core area of your central
business district as the type of project that does not meet the
current New Starts requirements. How do you think, and do you
think we should make projects such as expanding station
platforms or similar efforts a part of the future New Starts
program, or do you think core capacity should be its own
program?
Mr. Thomas. You know, I think at every level, as you
improve a system, I think those should be opportunities for
Federal funding. Now, I also think that the level of review by
the FTA should be commensurate with the size of the project. In
other words, one of the challenges we have right now is that it
doesn't really matter what size the project is. You get the
same approach and the same level of review.
So if it is a station expansion that may be absolutely
critical to the continued success of the system and to the
folks that are riding the system, if you have to go through
that same process, you are going to, as Mr. Sarles said, early
on, you have got to make a decision. Am I going to follow the
Federal process? Am I going to pursue Federal funds or am I
not? And we as providers have to make that decision early on in
the process because sometimes that can mean millions of dollars
of additional cost and years of additional time, and so we have
got to weigh those risks. But I think all projects certainly
should have the opportunity.
In our particular case, our system right now is a hub-and-
spoke kind of system. We are early in our development of the
second Downtown Dallas alignment. Although we will have almost
93 miles on the ground by 2014, all of those lines come into
downtown, and by adding that second alignment, the TSUB number
really doesn't work out. We don't meet the criteria. But it is
absolutely vital to the success of the system that we don't
bottleneck through that single alignment that we have right
now. And so I think there is certainly a need to either change
the criteria to allow those types of projects or to have more
flexibility and demonstration projects on how we can do some
things differently and what those options might be.
Chairman Menendez. Ms. Zimmerman, let me ask you, you
mentioned in your oral testimony about the survey your
organization has done with reference to how many more projects
seeking New Starts funding there are than, in fact, funding
that is available. Do you have an estimated amount of annual
New Start funding that would address the need you anticipate in
the next transportation bill so that we can seek to accomplish
some of our economic recovery, energy savings, and land use
costs?
Ms. Zimmerman. Sure. Thank you. Of the almost 400 projects
that we have identified, a number of those for reasons cited
are going outside of the New Starts project, and I think it is
actually a fair expectation that the Federal Government does
not need to pay for every single new transit project in the
country. But we do feel that the Federal funding level should
be significantly increased. It has been about one to one-and-a-
half to now $1.9 billion for New Starts funding per year. We
think that we should see at least $6 to $8 billion per year in
the next bill or through bringing in other additional climate
change monies or other revenues to help move this forward. We
also believe that by tailoring the Federal financial
contribution to the Federal risk, we could also unlock really a
tremendous amount of local and private investment that actually
would like to happen in transit.
But right now, you are actually penalized from bringing in
more private or local revenue. There are a number of projects,
for instance, where they have wanted to do a tunneling project
or they wanted to do stationary improvements. Of course, that
adds to the cost and they actually have local money or private
entities who are willing to pay for that cost, but right now,
you are penalized for anything that adds any cost to a project.
And so both increasing the Federal New Starts funding levels,
which we think could help get through the pipeline, but also
really opening up to leverage the tremendous interest that is
out there by the private sector right now.
Chairman Menendez. Great. One last question. Mr. Sarles,
the agency, New Jersey Transit, is among others that has
delivered, in your case, four New Starts projects. So it is a
mature agency, and there are others, as well, that have
succeeded in this regard. Should such agencies with a proven
track record be able to forego the step of proving they are
capable of delivering a New Starts project on time and on
budget? If there is a case to be made for that--I am not
advocating it, I am not sure whether that is--but it seems to
me that if you have a historical pattern of engaging,
succeeding, and meeting or in some cases being on time or early
and under budget, that why do we have to go through the whole
process in that particular context of the process. Would that
help reduce project delivery time and costs and free FTA's time
to assist other projects that are new to the process?
Mr. Sarles. A most emphatic yes to that.
Chairman Menendez. Could you use the microphone, for this
gentleman down here? I heard you, but----
Mr. Sarles. I will get trained yet. A most emphatic yes.
FTA should focus on where the risk areas are, and if we have in
our case demonstrated time after time that we can deliver
significant projects within the criteria, and we have already
proven it, then we don't have to make reams of paper submittals
to prove that we have the competence to do it.
Chairman Menendez. Any other thoughts on that?
Mr. Thomas. I certainly agree, and I can appreciate both
sides. As we went through this last and most recent FFGA
process, we had gone through a couple of FFGAs prior to that,
both at the very least on schedule and on budget. And as I
said, the 2000-2001 version was ahead of schedule and under
budget, and right now, we are in that same process where we are
ahead of schedule and under budget again. So I think that that
track record certainly ought to count for something, because
those processes transcend the people in the organization,
basically showing that you have got the processes in place that
allow that to happen, that force that to happen, that put the
controls there to encourage those kinds of performances. So
those things transcend the people, yes, sir.
Chairman Menendez. Yes, Ms. Zimmerman?
Ms. Zimmerman. I would add a slight addendum to that,
however, in that I think what we have seen in our research is
because particularly the cost effective index model and other
things are so complex they require a tremendous amount of
technical capacity. We are seeing most of the recent New Start
projects that have received FFGAs are sponsored by larger
agencies with more technical capacity, and that have been
through the ratings process before. So while I think we should
be recognizing that, I think we also need to be aware there are
a lot of new communities and medium-sized communities that are
wanting to invest in transit, and right now, the current
process is very hard for them, not having that capacity to do
it.
The Small Starts program, which was supposed to be a
streamlined process, you know, we still don't have the guidance
that actually has a streamlined process. FTA came up with a
very Small Starts process, but I think for those communities
that are new to the process or smaller communities, I would say
the current system really does unduly burden them in going
through it. So I think it is balancing both those needs.
Chairman Menendez. Well, you can achieve both, though.
Ms. Zimmerman. Yes.
Chairman Menendez. You could achieve helping new entities
be able to have a legitimate but fully vetted timeframe and
having seasoned entities that have a proven track record not
necessarily have to go through that element, right?
Ms. Zimmerman.
[Nodding head.]
Chairman Menendez. I would be remiss after everything we
went through in Congress in trying to get transit funding, how
are you both doing in terms of deploying those funds, if you
could give us a sense of it.
Mr. Sarles. We received $424 million applying to 14
projects. Five of them are already underway. Jobs have been
created and people are working. We have put shovels in the
ground on a couple of new contracts already. We have others out
to bid. We will have all the money obligated well within the
timeframe.
Mr. Thomas. I am envious of Mr. Sarles, but certainly
appreciative of the $62 million that we received. We applied
that to the first phase of the Orange Line as well as some
additional parking and radio communications systems. We have
already received the first half of that $62 million, so it is
putting quite a few people to work.
We also received an advance on our Full Funding Grant
Agreement, moving a 2014 payment up to this year, $78 million.
And while we stress that is not new money, certainly the time
value of money is new and that equates to $10 million. So it
allows us to pursue additional projects, as I said earlier, as
the region continues to ask, how can we get these other
projects advanced? We have a 2030 plan, Mr. Chairman, that
people are already trying to figure out how we can advance
projects by up to 15 years sooner in our financial plan, and so
we are looking at every possible opportunity of project
delivery as we go through that review, including the Buy
America Bonds that are available now.
We anticipate going to the bond market here in about a week
and a half for about $1 billion of bonds, $750 million in Buy
America Bonds and $250 million in the tax-exempt bonds. It is
going to benefit our financial plan tremendously. We do a 20-
year financial plan that identifies what we can spend and when
we can spend it. But we have estimated--we have actually
budgeted a 5.25 percent interest rate on that bond issuance,
and if we were to do it last week, the combined rate based on
that issuance would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 4.3
percent, which all those things combined put us in a much
better situation, certainly as we look at what the economy is
doing throughout the country. It puts us in a good situation.
Chairman Menendez. So the aggressive timeframes that the
Congress put in there are being met by both of you?
Mr. Thomas. Yes, sir.
Mr. Sarles.
[Nodding head.]
Chairman Menendez. Thank you very much.
Let me thank all the witnesses for their testimony, seeing
no other colleagues here at this point. Your entire, as I said,
written statements will be entered into the record and the
record will remain open for 1 week for Members' questions, for
their statements and other supporting documents. If, in fact,
you do get questions from the Committee, we urge you to be as
responsive as quickly as possible to them and we appreciate
your collective appearance.
With that, the Subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
[Prepared statements and responses to written questions
supplied for the record follow:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF A. NICOLE CLOWERS
Acting Director,
Physical Infrastructure Issues, Government Accountability Office
June 3, 2009
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF GARY C. THOMAS
President/Executive Director, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), and
Vice Chair--Rail Transit, American Public Transportation Association
(APTA)
June 3, 2009
Introduction
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, on behalf of Dallas
Area Rapid Transit (DART) and the American Public Transportation
Association (APTA), we thank you for the opportunity to testify before
you today and to submit our written testimony on the Federal Transit
Administration's (FTA) New Starts program. The New Starts program,
which provides essential funding to cities like Dallas, Salt Lake City,
Charlotte, Phoenix, and Portland who seek to improve mobility and air
quality by establishing new transit services needs a ``fresh start.''
Changes must be made to the program that will help streamline the
Federal transit program, reduce administrative burdens on transit
agencies and help speed project delivery.
About APTA
APTA is a nonprofit international association of nearly 1,500
public and private member organizations. This includes transit systems
and high-speed, intercity and commuter rail operators; planning,
design, construction, and finance firms; product and service providers;
academic institutions; transit associations and State departments of
transportation. APTA members serve the public interest by providing
safe, efficient, and economical transit services and products. More
than 90 percent of the people using public transportation in the United
States and Canada are served by APTA member systems. I have the
pleasure of serving as the Vice Chair--Rail Transit of this great
organization.
About DART
Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) provides direct access throughout
Dallas and 12 surrounding cities with modern public transit services
and customer facilities tailored to make each trip fast, comfortable
and affordable. Our extensive network of bus and rail services moves
more than 220,000 passengers per day across our 700-square-mile service
area.
To promote ridesharing, we also operate a system of high occupancy
vehicle (HOV) lanes allowing carpoolers to bypass freeway traffic jams.
More than 145,000 commuters use our HOV lanes each weekday.
Through 2013, the DART Rail System is slated to double in size to
90 miles. With $700 Million in assistance from the New Starts program,
DART is currently constructing the Green Line from Southeast Dallas to
the northwest through downtown Dallas, past the American Airlines
Center, the Dallas Medical/Market Center, and Love Field Airport, to
the cities of Farmers Branch and Carrollton. At 28 miles, this is the
longest light rail construction project underway in North America.
Revenue service on this corridor will begin September 14 of this year.
We will add light rail service to Rowlett, Irving and DFW International
Airport between 2011 and 2013. A second alignment in the Dallas central
business district will begin in 2016.
Current State of the New Starts Program
I thank the Subcommittee for allowing me to share our views on the
New Starts program as you begin efforts to write the transit title of
the next surface transportation bill. As this Subcommittee is well
aware, we face extraordinary challenges as we look for ways to finance
our transportation needs. The mass transit account of the Federal
Highway Trust Fund is on a path to insolvency. While the transit
account is in less immediate danger than the larger highway account,
the balances in both are falling at a rate that will undermine their
ability to support current obligation levels. We support maintaining
the current basic Federal transit funding structure: a separate Mass
Transit Account (MTA) within the Highway Trust Fund, crediting the MTA
with at least 20 percent of motor fuel taxes, and preserving the
current 20 percent General Fund contribution to the transit program.
Even with that funding structure in place, the New Starts program
needs a fresh start. Changes must be made to the program that will help
streamline the Federal transit program, reduce administrative burdens
on transit agencies and help speed project delivery. Many of the
agencies receiving these funds are in fast-growing regions. These
agencies have to be creative, resourceful, and nimble to respond to
increased congestion and decreased mobility. In our area of North
Texas, for example, we are again this year the fastest growing region
in the United States. Over the past decade we have added a million new
residents--a trend that is continuing. This year commuters in our
region will spend 60 hours stuck in traffic. We simply must build more
transit infrastructure, and we must do so today.
With the assistance of both the FTA headquarters and regional
office staff, DART successfully navigated the New Starts program for
the Green Line receiving just under 50 percent of the Federal project
cost. The New Starts program provided DART with an additional funding
source that allowed for the use of local dollars on other expansion
projects, benefiting our customers and sustaining our capital expansion
program.
As reported in the ``New Starts Program Assessment'' prepared by
Deloitte Consulting in 2006 for FTA, the New Starts program submittal
requirements or guidance changed several times during the development
of the Green Line project. This led to $100 million dollars in
additional finance charges and escalation costs as a result of
continuing review, as well as 6-8 months of delay by FTA to review the
regional travel demand model and user benefit calculation that did not
significantly alter our findings. Nevertheless, the New Starts program
is a valuable funding mechanism and should be continued, but with
modifications.
We began development of the Green Line in 1998 and received our
Full Funding Grant Agreement (FFGA) in July 2006. We made our first New
Starts submittal in 2000 and made a subsequent submittal each year
thereafter. We completed alternatives analysis in 13 months,
preliminary engineering in 48 months and final design in 12 months. The
additional time for preliminary engineering was directly related to
resolving the alignment issue adjacent to Love Field Airport. All local
parties wanted a direct connection via a tunnel and had identified the
financial resources to pay for most of the cost that could have made
for a better project. However, the additional capital cost had a
substantial impact on our user benefit calculation that would have
resulted in a ``Not Recommended'' rating. We strongly suggest that the
cost calculation should only consider the Federal project cost--local
sponsors should be able to add project features at their own expense
without harming their cost-effectiveness rating.
The role that the FTA regional office plays in the New Starts
process needs to be better defined and strengthened. It is through
these staff that transit properties work on a daily basis and who have
a greater understanding of the local issues and the purpose and need of
a project. The regional staff has traveled the local corridors and has
been stuck in the same congestion problems we are trying to explain to
Washington. Regional staff members have ridden DART and understand the
need for change and the value of the improvement. During the Green Line
project, DART requested headquarters staff to come visit Dallas and see
what we were describing and experiencing, but they were unable to do
so. The local staff, who had seen the DART project first hand had to
defer to headquarters because that's where the reviews took place. It
is cases like this one that point out the need for the regional office
to have a stronger role in project review.
Recommendations for Improving the Programs Application and Evaluation
Process
The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity
Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) expires at the end of the current
fiscal year.
As Congress considers a new authorization bill, APTA has developed
a set of recommendations that calls for a significant increase in
Federal transit investment and improvements within the New Starts
program.
Both DART and APTA urge Congress to provide FTA no less than $12.4
billion to fund public transportation programs, representing the first
year's installment of public transportation investment. This level is
consistent with APTA's recommendations for FY2010 under the next
surface transportation authorization bill. APTA also recommends a
significant increase in Federal public transportation investment, with
no less than $123 billion provided over the six-year period.
In addition to seeking an increase in funds, we recommend several
key changes to the New Starts program structure. These changes will
help streamline the Federal transit program, reduce administrative
burdens on transit agencies and help speed project delivery. These
include:
We encourage a simplified and streamlined review, rating
and approval process for all New Starts projects. Projects are
currently strangled in red tape, which unnecessarily delays
project construction and increases project costs.
Strengthen the role and involvement of the FTA regional
office in the New Starts process including both reviews and
determinations. The local office has a clearer perspective of
local issues and how the transit improvements will benefit that
specific community.
Re-establishment of an exempt category of New Starts
projects that require small amounts of funding.
We support major reforms to the New Starts rating standard.
The current standard, as implemented by FTA, does not
adequately take into account the full range of benefits due to
New Starts projects, especially land use, economic development
and environmental benefits. In addition, the cost calculation
should only consider the Federal project cost--local sponsors
should be able to add project features at their own expense
without harming their cost-effectiveness rating.
Re-establish the Program of Interrelated Projects provision
of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act
(ISTEA). Local sponsors should be able to advance multiple
projects simultaneously in such a program in order to reduce
costs.
Greater use of Pilot and Demonstration projects to
acknowledge the fact that not all projects fit the requirements
of the New Start programs. Our Central Business District
Transit Study (D2) is an example. We need to provide for
additional capacity in the core area, but do not currently meet
the requirements of a New Start. We would like to work with FTA
to develop and implement a Demonstration Project to develop new
criteria for nontypical projects.
There should be an opportunity to explore new ways to be
flexible and responsive to changing conditions such as
increasing fuel costs. As you know, transit agencies around the
Nation were challenged to respond to the dramatic ridership
increases due to rising fuel prices. Perhaps a pool of
emergency operating funds could be made available to support
agencies as they deliver more service in response to an
immediate need without extensive time lost in processing.
Summary
We face both remarkable opportunities and serious challenges in the
days ahead. President Obama recognizes the central importance of our
transit systems to our quality of life and the quality of our
environment. He has spoken of the need to invest adequately and to
invest efficiently. The President has stressed repeatedly the role that
public transportation must play in reducing pollution, including
greenhouse gas emissions, and moving towards energy independence by
diminishing our reliance on foreign oil.
We look forward to working with the Subcommittee to make the
necessary changes and investments to grow the public transportation
program. We urge the Subcommittee to invest in public transit by
authorizing the funds necessary to sustain the growing interest and
value that public transit provides in communities across the country
through the New Starts program. Finally, we support the efforts of
Congress thus far to invest in a sustainable high-speed rail system and
encourage your Subcommittee to continue building upon the foundation
established in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It
is an exciting time for public transportation and a critical time for
our Nation to continue to invest in transit infrastructure that
promotes economic growth, energy independence, and a better way of life
for all Americans.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my presentation to the Subcommittee. I
will be happy to answer any questions you have. Again, thank you for
the opportunity to testify before you today.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD SARLES
Executive Director,
New Jersey Transit
June 3, 2009
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Vitter and distinguished Members
of the Subcommittee--my name is Richard Sarles and I am the Executive
Director of NJ TRANSIT. NJ TRANSIT is the Nation's largest statewide
public transportation system providing nearly 900,000 weekday trips on
2000 buses, 3 light rail lines, and 11 commuter rail lines.
Congress and the Obama Administration--through the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)--have sent a strong signal to the
American public that improving and expanding public transportation is a
priority.
It is precisely because we stand at the gateway of a new era in
transit investment that it is critical to ensure that, going forward,
we have the most expeditious and transparent process to deliver
critically needed projects both at the agency and Federal levels.
First, let me say that we are very, very pleased to be working with
FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff. The Administrator is an extremely
knowledgeable transportation expert with considerable experience with
New Starts through his work on the Senate Appropriations Committee. He
has been a friend to transit for many years and has already hit the
ground running, working with us closely in New Jersey to advance New
Starts projects. I look forward to his leadership and partnership at
FTA.
The FTA has an important, welcomed oversight role in the New Starts
process that was designed to realize the benefits for money expended,
and to ensure both the competitive nature of the program and the proper
usage of Federal funds.
What I hope to address today is the fact that the FTA, like NJ
TRANSIT, has limited resources to devote to these valuable oversight
responsibilities. FTA must focus its resources to assure that the costs
and benefits of a project are fairly presented and that a grantee has
in place the requisite organization, funding, processes, controls and
personnel to advance and sustain a project. The FTA does not have nor
should have the expertise to plan, engineer and construct major
projects. Nor should it request or demand reams of documentation with
multiple revisions from clearly experienced agencies to prove they know
how to plan, engineer, and construct a new starts project.
While we have worked through the years on multiple New Starts
projects that have yielded tremendous benefits, our experience shows a
more recent trend towards layers of oversight that can create risks to
project schedules and budgets.
Specifically, NJ TRANSIT has completed four New Starts projects
since the program's inception, including the Frank R. Lautenberg
transfer station, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Segments 1 and 2, and
the Newark Light Rail extension project. NJ TRANSIT also completed the
Riverline Light Rail project with State funds only. The total value of
these projects was $3.9 billion.
Let me share NJ TRANSIT's experience with the New Starts process on
two major projects--one in operation, and one about to break ground
this month.
The first, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail (HBLR) project, which is
operational today, offers frequent and convenient service through seven
cities along the Hudson River waterfront.
And it is important to note that during the project's early stages,
that then-Mayor Menendez of Union City was not only an advocate of the
project, but convinced NJ TRANSIT to add a station in Union City--which
now has over 5,000 daily riders. HBLR has been a huge driver for
economic development in Hudson County, in fact, in a region where
cities are shrinking; Jersey City in the last quarter-century has
gained about 30,000 residents, 27,000 jobs and 18 million square feet
of prime office space.
NJ TRANSIT's experience with FTA in securing Full Funding Grant
Agreements for the HBLR in the late 1990s was fairly straightforward.
NJ TRANSIT, in partnership with the Port Authority of New York and
New Jersey, is also in Final Design and will soon break ground on the
Access to the Region's Core (ARC) project--the first new rail tunnel to
be built under the Hudson River in 100 years. This $8.7 billion project
will generate some $45 billion in new regional economic activity while
providing riders with more frequent, direct and reliable service. The
Tunnel will accommodate a 50 percent increase in the number of daily
passenger trips beneath the river, taking 22,000 cars a day off area
highways and reducing greenhouse gases and other pollution by more than
66,000 tons per year.
The New Starts process in 2005, when we began submitting
information for ARC, had changed substantially from the days of the
HBLR. Some changes were positive. For instance, FTA required a fleet
management plan for all transit modes operated by NJT, a financial
plan, a 2030 rail operating plan, and a land use and economic
development analysis. The process enforces a discipline on the logic
used to develop and analyze a plan, which is useful so that comparisons
can be made between different proposed transit projects and also so
that the proposing agencies have the resources and skills they need to
implement the project. I welcome the discipline.
However, in an environment where investments need to be accelerated
to boost the economy and protect the environment, review timetables
need to be balanced against the need to progress through the process
with a focus on completion.
For example, the current New Starts process has evolved to include
many more layers of review, and re-review which are sometimes onerous
and can unnecessarily slow an agency's ability to advance on a
reasonable schedule. Even modest changes to a project now result in
more process--in fact, I can say with some certainty that if a Mayor
requested an additional station for a New Starts project today--a
request that would improve the project through increased ridership and
economic development--the result would be project delay and cost
increases.
With these experiences in mind, I recommend the Committee consider
the following steps with respect to reforming the New Starts process.
In order to meet the Administration's objectives while providing
appropriate oversight, the program should embody five fundamental
principles:
1. Establish a true partnership between the Federal Government and
State and local governments seeking to improve public transit
bound together by mutual respect rather than red tape.
2. Streamline the New Starts process so that predictability of the
process is a priority. One way to accomplish this is to make it
more of a ``procurement'' type process.
3. Realign the review process to account for the experience of more
established transit agencies.
4. Acknowledge the fact that the FTA has become the minority funding
partner and further recognize that a Full Funding Grant
Agreement limits the exposure of the FTA to fund more than a
specified amount of the proposed project's total cost. At the
same time the local agencies bear the risk of cost increases,
including those due to delay in decision making.
5. Encourage the expansion of public transit consistent with
concerns about production of green house gases and energy
consumption. The weight given to evaluation criteria categories
should be revisited.
True Partnership
Transit agencies need to renew partnerships with FTA that are bound
together by mutual respect and trust, not one bound together by red
tape. Over the years, additional requirements, many to do with the
level of detail for reporting information and how different sets of
analytic results need to link together, have been added to the New
Starts process. The FTA should be aggressive in reviving the spirit of
partnership that should exist between transit agencies and the Federal
Government and permit more flexibility in project development.
Streamlined Process
One option worth considering is streamlining New Starts into more
of a ``procurement'' type process. Rather than continuous reviews of
projects, reorganize the new starts process as though FTA is
``procuring'' transit expansion projects. All proposals would be due on
a specific date each year and would be evaluated in a process similar
to evaluating a design build proposal--a value based proposal. Projects
would be scored and the value put against their respective costs. After
reviewing proposals from various transit agencies, FTA would execute
FFGAs for the best projects that year.
Again, many components of the New Starts process are helpful and
necessary--what is needed is predictability. I can't emphasize this
enough--the timetable for the New Starts process, including receiving
approvals, should be known and certain. Today the length of time to go
through the process is difficult to predict, so the projects become
even more difficult to schedule. In the early 1980s, New York City made
similar improvements to its land use review process. Today there is a
``clock'' that moves project review from start to finish in a specified
amount of time.
Established and Experienced Public Transit Agencies
While the FTA is seeking to employ a process it intends to be fair
and complete, it should also acknowledge that there is less need to
probe the management and operations of more established and experienced
transit agencies that have demonstrated the ability to build and
operate public transit systems and receive triennial reviews by the
FTA. Staff and funding resources are too limited at all transit
agencies and the FTA, to spend time on multiple, sometimes unnecessary
reports.
Federal Funding Participation
Project reporting and oversight by the FTA should reflect its
relative commitment of capital funding to the total project cost.
Oversight responsibility should reflect the fact that a Full Funding
Grant Agreement provides a cap on the Federal funding responsibility
and the fact that the FTA is the minority funding contributor.
Accounting for New Concerns
Our Nation's appropriate new focus on reducing green house gas
emissions and the use of petroleum based fuels requires that the
criteria used in deciding which projects should receive Federal funding
should be changed. There is also a need to recognize the positive value
of transit investment in stimulating economic development consistent
with the aforementioned concerns. The strong emphasis now given to the
Cost Effectiveness Index and how the mathematics behind the Index is
organized should be revised to encourage construction of more transit
lines as a means of achieving a reduction in green house gas emissions
and energy use rather than limiting them.
I deeply appreciate the Committee's leadership on this matter. It
is absolutely critical that if we are to achieve the ambitious agenda
of building and expanding transit infrastructure across the country, we
need to streamline the Federal process and work more urgently together
as partners at the Federal, State, and local level. I am grateful for
the opportunity to offer our thoughts today on how we can work together
to build a better transportation network.
I would be glad to take your questions.
______
PREPARED STATEMENT OF MARIIA ZIMMERMAN
Policy Director,
Reconnecting America
June 3, 2009
Chairman Menendez, Ranking Member Vitter, and distinguished Members
of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today. I am Mariia Zimmerman, Policy Director for Reconnecting America,
a national nonprofit dedicated to using transit investments to spur a
new wave of development that improves housing affordability and choice,
revitalizes downtowns and urban and suburban neighborhoods, and creates
lasting value for our communities. Reconnecting America is a cofounder
of the Transportation for America campaign, and we also host the
national Center for Transit-Oriented Development (CTOD), a partnership
with two other groups: the Center for Neighborhood Technology and
Strategic Economics.
CTOD is federally funded to provide standards, guidance, and
research on transit-oriented development (TOD), including a web-based
resource of best practices and cutting edge research, and the National
TOD Database, the only database of every existing and planned fixed
transit station in America. We provide technical assistance to the 40
regions that either have transit or are planning to build new transit
lines.
Today I would like to share with you some of the larger trends that
are reshaping consumer preferences, business trends and the real estate
market, creating an unprecedented opportunity for transit in defining
the future sustainability of our communities. The way the Federal
Transit Administration evaluates proposed transit investments has a
direct bearing on whether or not regions are able to fully realize the
potential of these trends.
In a 2008 study by Reconnecting America, we found that the demand
for transit is soaring across the country, with 400 new rail, streetcar
and bus rapid transit projects proposed in almost 80 communities across
the country at a proposed worth of $248 billion--far more than can be
funded through the Federal transit program alone. \1\ Transit ridership
is at a 52-year high; since 1995, ridership has increased 38 percent;
nearly triple the rate of population growth. \2\ There are a host of
reasons for this boom in demand for transit. Mayors value transit in
helping to spur urban regeneration and reduce traffic congestion.
Businesses value transit because employees can get to work on time and
transit is viewed as a key amenity in attracting the highly desirable
``creative class'' to local economies. Developers see an untapped
market for housing near transit and are designing new products and new
neighborhoods to meet this demand. And, communities recognize that when
all the pieces come together, transit can be a powerful tool to improve
quality of life and help lower costs of living.
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\1\ ``Jumpstarting the Transit Space Race: How the New
Administration Could Make America Energy-Independent, Create Jobs and
Keep the Economy Strong.'' Reconnecting America, 2008.
\2\ American Public Transportation Association, 2009.
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CTOD has estimated the demand for housing near transit to increase
to almost 15 million U.S. households by the year 2030, roughly a
quarter of all renters and buyers, and a more than doubling of demand
from the 6 million households that live near transit today. \3\ This is
a tremendous potential increase. If we are to come even close to
achieving it, we need more transit investment and we need to reduce
regulatory barriers that still make mixed-use, more compact development
illegal in many communities. In addition, we need to maximize
opportunities to leverage public resources and reduce the funding and
bureaucratic silos between housing, transportation, and economic
development.
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\3\ ``Hidden in Plain Sight: Capturing the Demand for Housing Near
Transit.'' Reconnecting America, 2005.
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Regions are aggressively seeking to use transit investments to help
focus growth, create a sustainable foundation for economic development
and provide mobility options for residents. Take into consideration
Denver. In 2004, residents of the region voted to tax themselves to
build five new transit lines in 15 years. They're making a $6.4 billion
investment in their future and focusing a significant percentage of
regional growth into neighborhoods around each station. Virtually every
major job center will now be connected by transit and the remaining 50
stations will accept about a quarter of the region's housing. In
Orlando, the Central Florida commuter line will not only provide much
needed congestion relief, but will provide the impetus for community
revitalization in those towns with transit stops. The proposed Gold
Line in Los Angeles is seen as a central strategy to curb sprawl in the
Inland Empire and focus growth around the Claremont Colleges and a
thriving medical complex. We're seeing similar investments in the Twin
Cities, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Salt Lake City, Atlanta,
Sacramento, Norfolk and Charlotte, North Carolina--regions that even a
few years ago wouldn't immediately come to mind as transit-based
places.
Given the tremendous demand for new transit service, many
communities are seeking new ways to fund and expedite project
development. Federal funding for new transit lines has remained
relatively stable, between $1.5 billion and $1.9 billion annually,
while the time to successfully navigate the Federal New Starts process
has increased from 5 years in 1991 to 10 years in 2004. \4\ To cite one
example, both the Seattle, Washington, streetcar, which did not go
through the New Starts process and Charlotte, North Carolina, South
Corridor light rail line, which did, opened at the end of 2007. But the
Seattle streetcar was proposed 5 years after the Charlotte project.
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\4\ ``Planning for the Future: New Starts Projects Must Address
Next Generation of Transit Projects.'' APTA, October 2006.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The relatively low level of transit investment in the United States
stands in stark contrast to funding in other parts of the world. China,
for example is dedicating $88 billion for construction of 1,062 miles
of rail over the next 6 years. India has announced it will spend $56
billion to expand its rail system over the next 5 years. In London, the
United Kingdom is spending $32 billion on just one subway project--the
74-mile Crossrail subway in London.
It is clear from the growing domestic demand for transit, and the
need to address our global competitiveness and reduce our dependence on
foreign oil that more transit investment is warranted. My organization
joins a growing chorus of voices that asks Congress to significantly
increase funding for public transportation in the next surface
transportation reauthorization, and as part of overall energy and
climate legislation that may also be before the Senate this Congress.
Increased investment in public transportation should be viewed as
part of a larger national goal to build and maintain a national
transportation system that includes a well connected and integrated
highway, transit, and rail network. Last month, Senators Rockefeller
and Lautenberg introduced S. 1036, ``The Federal Transportation Policy
and Planning Act of 2009.'' This legislation sets a bold new vision for
Federal transportation policy in order to address the current and
future needs of our economy, energy, environment and health. The
measure establishes a unifying mission for the Federal surface
transportation program and sets needed and achievable performance
targets, including goals to increase system safety, to repair and
maintain existing assets, and to reduce congestion and carbon emissions
through increased use of transit, rail, marine, and nonmotorized
transportation. The Transportation for America campaign supports this
legislation and hopes that these performance targets will be
effectively integrated into the Federal transportation planning process
as part of the next transportation bill.
As Congress works to reform Federal transportation policy, it will
be important to ensure that it benefits those communities that have
been historically disadvantaged by how our Nation has chosen to invest.
This Subcommittee may wish to see included performance targets which
speak to the critical need to better coordinate transportation with
housing, land use and social equity goals--all objectives which fall
within your Subcommittee's jurisdiction. Towards this aim, T4America
recommends the following additional national transportation performance
targets:
Achieve zero percentage population exposure to at risk
levels of air pollution;
Reduce average household combined housing + transportation
costs 25 percent; and,
Increase by 50 percent essential destinations accessible
within 30 minutes by public transit, or 15-minute walk for low-
income, senior, and disabled populations.
In addition to providing more Federal resources for transit and
clearly articulate a set of national transportation objectives, the
Federal partnership can also be improved through major reform of the
Federal New Starts process. I commend the Subcommittee for beginning to
address this important issue through today's hearing. There appears to
be general agreement that the current program has lost its way and
become overburdened by existing statutory and regulatory requirements.
My organization supports a rigorous review process to ensure that
Federal investments are being wisely made and to ensure transparency
and oversight. However, the unlevel playing field between the current
process for planning, designing, and constructing a new transit project
versus a new highway project severely handicaps transit projects from
moving forward and unduly burden transit projects with increased
project costs.
We recognize the challenge the administration has in developing a
fair and rigorous review process. We are encouraged by some of the
proposed changes in the May 2009 Proposed Guidance on New Starts/Small
Starts Policies and Procedures, particularly reinstating a multi-
measure evaluation rating system. I'd like to use my testimony to
highlight two measures particularly important to my organization: land
use and economic development.
There is a growing concern among local project proponents, whether
real or perceived, that including a full range of amenities,
streetscape improvements, and pedestrian safety enhancements in a
proposed transit project will jeopardize Federal funding. Yet these are
the very features that help maximize walking trips to transit and
create high value urbanism. Local concern over meeting the Federal Cost
Effectiveness Index has lead some communities to shortchange the number
of transit stations, rail cars, or corridor enhancements that would
help meet or even exceed 20-year ridership projections.
Our research shows that actual ridership on many recently built
transit lines is higher than predicted by the FTA's Transit System User
Benefit or ``TSUB'' model. \5\ This raises significant concerns about
the substantial weight placed on these model results, and we believe
validates the need to maintain a multi-measure approach to evaluating
projects, including qualitative and quantitative measures.
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\5\ ``Destinations Matter: Building Transit Success.''
Reconnecting America, May 2009.
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The overall data show that the majority of recent rail lines built
with Federal funding through the New Starts program are performing at
least as well as pre-construction projections. Some lines, such as
Minnesota's Hiawatha Light Rail and the Metro Red Line in Houston are
outperforming their ridership estimates 15 years ahead of projections.
It is interesting to note that some of these lines would not have been
funded if rated solely on their Cost-Effectiveness rating. For example,
the Hiawatha Line received only a low-medium Cost Effectiveness rating.
This presents both good and bad news.
The good news is that over performing lines give transit agencies
and communities the momentum and political capital to expand their
transit systems to benefit more of the region. The bad news is that
these over performing lines indicate that cost reductions in the
planning stage are resulting in a shortage of transit vehicles, parking
spaces, inadequate tracking or maintenance facilities or may have
contributed to a downgrading of technology.
Reconnecting America continues to support changes made in SAFETEA
to raise the significance of land use, and to add economic development
to the list of project justification criteria. These are not
insignificant changes. They recognize what we know about the potential
power of transit investments to generate a host of benefits, beyond
cost and travel time savings.
Such an approach is similar to that taken by Canada and the United
Kingdom in allocating their national transportation funding. Those two
countries give much stronger consideration in their analysis to a full
range of benefits including environmental impacts, specifically the
reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and for Canada, consideration of
economic development benefits as measured by public/private rates of
return. I find it curious that other countries, and indeed American
developers, companies and even local economic development agencies can
separate and evaluate land use and economic development, yet our
Federal Government continues to find this a challenge.
Strictly defined from a traditional economist's perspective,
economic development is the measure of productivity derived from a
specific investment--a difficult and abstract concept. The
practitioners' definition for economic development encompass the much
easier to measure realm of real estate development, employment gains,
access to jobs, concentration of economic activity and return-on-
investment. This approach can include the capitalization of user
benefits (e.g., users expending less on transportation costs and travel
time which can be spent on other goods and services), redistributive
economic development benefits represented through revenue generation
from increased property values and ridership, and the benefits of
agglomeration, or the potential for increased business transactions due
to densification and proximity of uses. There are a number of proxies
that could be used to evaluate potential economic development impacts
of transit investments, ranging from housing, employment and population
projections to developer agreements, local financial contributions to
the corridor and targeted public finance tools such as Business
Improvement Districts and tax increment financing. In short, we believe
that there are a number of commonly used indicators of economic
development that could be incorporated into the transit project
evaluation process.
We do not agree with the argument that economic development and
land use are too difficult to measure separately, but we do feel that
given the confusion over these terms it may be useful to better define
each in the next transportation bill or to develop a fresh New Starts
process that incorporates more of a ``warrants'' approach in the
evaluation process to help to expedite project delivery. The basic
concept is that a set of corridor and project characteristics and
conditions (referred to as warrants) would be established. These could
include factors related to employment and population density, or
threshold ridership levels, for example. FTA would determine that
projects meeting these pre-defined warrants have met the statutory
criteria and would be advanced into New Starts or Small Starts project
development, and could be recommended for funding.
Additional suggestions to improve the project delivery process for
New Starts that warrant more consideration by Congress include:
Development of a metropolitan mobility program that could
allocate formula funding for small start capital transit
investments, thereby avoiding the Federal review process but
still ensuring these projects are evaluated through existing
Federal environmental and planning requirements.
Advancement of a set of interrelated expansion projects,
similar to the approach taken by Salt Lake City, Utah, and
Houston, Texas.
Reconciliation of the major capital investment alternatives
analysis with the Alternatives Analysis requirement in NEPA, to
create one integrated comprehensive analysis instead of a time-
consuming and confusing two-step process.
I'd also like to highlight some of the social equity needs of
transit-supportive land use policies. Over the past 5 years, CTOD has
worked with the Federal Transit Administration, HUD, AARP, and
affordable housing advocates on a series of reports highlighting the
importance of transit to racially and economically diverse
neighborhoods. Neighborhoods within a half-mile of a fixed transit
station are home to a greater share of a region's lower-income
households, and also contain a high number of federally assisted
housing stock. \6\ The data also shows that in three-quarters of these
``transit zones''--defined as the half-mile radius around stations--
households have one car or no cars. \7\ This low-rate of auto ownership
indicates that residents do realize the cost-savings that comes from
lower auto ownership. Our work, sponsored by the Brooking Institution,
found that while the average American family spends roughly 19 percent
of its household budget on transportation, households with good access
to transit spend just 9 percent. \8\
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\6\ ``Preserving Opportunities: Saving Affordable Homes Near
Transit.'' National Housing Trust and Reconnecting America, 2007.
\7\ ``Preserving and Promoting Diverse Transit-Oriented
Neighborhoods.'' Center for Transit-Oriented Development for the Ford
Foundation, 2006.
\8\ ``The Affordability Index: A New Tool for Measuring the True
Affordability of Housing Choice.'' Center for Transit-Oriented
Development and the Center for Neighborhood Technology for the
Brookings Institution's Urban Markets Initiative, 2006.
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But as the demand increases and the market heats up for land and
housing in these neighborhoods, the threat of displacement will force
households to lose potential affordable transportation and affordable
housing options if they are pushed out of transit accessible
neighborhoods. The affordable housing opportunities that are lost
cannot be regained without an enormous public expenditure.
One way to ensure the market provides housing opportunities for
families of all income levels is through well-designed policies that
ensure that housing near public transit is permanently affordable to
families at a mix of incomes--both on the rental side and on the
ownership side. The New Starts program and transportation
reauthorization provide Congress an opportunity to encourage localities
to make investments and adopt land use policies to support both
proposed transit investments and address long-term affordability.
Reconnecting America, together with the National Housing Conference,
has convened a group of national housing and transportation
organizations to help identify ways that our Federal housing and
transportation programs could be better coordinated.
We commend the recently announced HUD-DOT interagency
sustainability partnership and look forward to working with both
agencies to identify and implement strategies that make it easier for
communities to successfully integrate housing and transportation
investments. In regards to the New Starts process, we feel that more
can be done to simultaneously improve project delivery and reward
affordable housing preservation. One idea we are vetting is to allow
communities to count investments in housing affordable to families with
a mix of incomes within a half-mile of a proposed transit station as a
match against requested Federal dollars. Another option may be to
reward communities that implement mixed-income housing preservation and
creation policies in the land use evaluation measure; thus moving
beyond just reporting on the number of low-income households currently
residing in a proposed corridor, to actually rewarding those
communities that take steps to ensure long-term affordability to
households at a mix of income levels. For example, a growing number of
States including New Jersey, North Carolina, Illinois, and California
already give higher credit in the allocation of State low-income
housing tax credits to areas well served by transit.
The Federal New Starts and Small Starts program sets the rules for
engagement in how communities coordinate proposed transit investments
with larger regional decisions about population growth and economic
development. Our Nation is facing significant challenges to maintain
our economic competitiveness, address energy security, meet the demands
of projected population growth, and preserve our quality of life.
Expanding the number of regions with high quality transit, and growing
existing transit systems is critical to achieving these goals.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to appear before the
Committee today, and my organization looks forward to working with you
on giving the New Starts and Small Starts program a fresh start in the
next surface transportation bill.
RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM A. NICOLE CLOWERS
Q.1. Some have said that the FTA may be using the approval
process to slow down some projects to fit the amount of
commitment authority they have available. Do you think that is
true? If so, should there be a mechanism for FTA to use so that
it can prioritize projects rather than just slowing some down
with red tape?
A.1. According to FTA officials, the number of projects
recommended for funding each year reflects the project's
readiness for a full funding grant agreement, not the amount of
commitment authority available. Specifically, to be eligible
for an FTA funding recommendation, proposed New Starts and
Small Starts projects must complete the appropriate steps in
the planning and project development process and, per SAFETEA-
LU, receive an overall project rating of medium or higher.
Furthermore, FTA officials told us that not all project delays
can be attributed to FTA or the New Starts process. FTA
officials cited a number of reasons that a project could be
delayed during preliminary engineering or final design that are
outside FTA's control, such as changes to a project's scope,
changes in local political leadership, or the loss of local
financial commitment.
In contrast, many within the transit industry point to the
New Starts process as being the cause for delays in project
development, arguing that the process has become too time
consuming, costly, and complex. To expedite project development
within the New Starts program, industry stakeholders and
consultants, and transportation experts we interviewed
identified the following options. While each option could help
expedite project development, each option has advantages and
disadvantages to consider. In addition, each option would
likely require certain trade-offs, namely reducing the level of
rigor in the evaluation process in exchange for a more
streamlined process.
Tailor the New Starts evaluation process to risks
posed by the projects. FTA could adopt a more risk-
based evaluation process for New Starts projects based
on the project's cost or complexity, the Federal share
of the project's costs, or the project sponsor's New
Start experience. By adopting a more risk-based
approach, FTA could allow select projects to move more
quickly through the New Starts process and more
efficiently use its scarce resources.
Consider greater use of letters of intent and early
systems work agreements. The linear, phased evaluation
process of the New Starts program hampers project
sponsors' ability to utilize alternative project
delivery methods, such as design-build, according to
project sponsors. These alternative project delivery
methods have the potential to develop a project cheaper
and quicker than traditional project delivery methods
can. However, project sponsors told us it is difficult
to attract private sector interest early enough in the
process to use alternative project delivery methods
because there is no guarantee that the project will
ultimately receive Federal funding through the New
Starts program. To encourage the private sector
involvement needed, project sponsors, consultants, and
experts we interviewed suggested that FTA use letters
of intent or early systems work agreements.
Consistently use road maps or similar project
schedules. Project sponsors said that FTA should more
consistently use road maps or similar tools to define
the project sponsor's and FTA's expectations and
responsibilities for moving the project forward.
Without establishing these expectations, project
sponsors have little information about how long it will
take FTA to review its request to move from
alternatives analysis to preliminary engineering, for
example. This lack of information makes it difficult
for the project sponsor to effectively manage the
project.
Combine two or more project development phases.
Project sponsors and consultants told us that waiting
for FTA's approval to enter preliminary engineering,
final design, and construction can cause delays. While
FTA determines whether a project can advance to the
next project development phase, work on the project
essentially stops. To reduce the ``start/stop''
phenomena project sponsors described, FTA could seek a
legislative change to combine two or more of the
statutorily required project development phases.
Apply changes only to future projects: Project
sponsors told us that the frequent changes to the New
Starts program can result in additional costs and
delays as project sponsors are required to redo
analyses to reflect the changes. To avoid this rework,
some project sponsors, consultants, and experts we
interviewed suggested that FTA apply changes only to
future projects, not projects currently in preliminary
engineering.
------
RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM GARY C. THOMAS
Q.1. How do you envision a program to help transit agencies
create additional core capacity in their city centers? Do we
alter New Starts criteria or do we create a new program? If
possible I would appreciate hearing specific suggestions on how
the next bill could address this urgent need.
A.1. A core capacity constraint is defined as a limitation on
transit system capacity that prevents service expansion,
without significant capital investment, to meet growing
ridership demand. Ridership has or can be expected to exceed
the system's design capacity.
In many of the largest urban regions in the Nation, transit
plays a key role in the regional transportation system and
``transit bottlenecks'' have the potential to contribute to
travel delays and decreased mobility. The issue is most
pronounced on commuter rail, heavy rail and light rail systems
in large metropolitan areas that have faced rapid increases in
ridership over a number of years. As transit ridership
continues to rebound, a number of the Nation's largest cities
like New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Dallas are facing
this issue and may need to make significant capital
investments. The demographics of increasing urbanization and
limited options for roadway expansion means that the issue of
core capacity is likely to become more significant and affect
an increasing number of urban systems. The issue has potential
regional and even national significance for the Nation's
transportation system. Some of the most important
considerations in developing a national approach to the issue
include:
The lack of an industry definition for a transit
bottleneck does not readily allow for an assessment of
the national need for capital investments to address
current bottlenecks--though a recent survey by APTA
suggests the identified need approaches $25 billion;
Potential short-term effects of not addressing
transit bottlenecks include an increase in transit
operating cost, reduced reliability, and an inability
to meet regional travel demand;
The negative effect of transit bottlenecks on
transit service has the potential to shift travel from
transit to the automobile in major urban centers and
increase regional highway congestion, potentially
reducing regional air quality;
Potential long-term effects include a dispersal of
residential and job growth away from existing transit
lines to areas not as readily served by transit; and
FTA's current funding structure does not
specifically target core capacity constraints with a
designated funding source and large capital projects
intended to address core capacity compete with an
already highly competitive underfunded New Starts
Program.
Transit Bottlenecks at DART
DART light rail ridership has increased significantly over
the past several years. On average, more than 65,000 people a
day are riding light rail during the week, compared with 63,000
riders during the same period last year. This increase in
ridership is occurring while unemployment rates are up and
regular gas is selling for about $2.40 on average as opposed to
the $4 a gallon rate last summer. As a result of this increased
ridership and anticipated future demands for service, DART is
advancing a major construction program to double the size of
the system to meet the anticipated additional demand. Without
significant capital investment to expand the core capacity of
the system, it is likely that DART will be unable to address
growing demands. As ridership continues to grow, we will be
operating near or in excess of our physical capacity.
No single source of information exists that effectively
frames the magnitude of the core capacity issue nationally. A
more specific definition of a bottleneck or core capacity
constraint is necessary for transit agencies to consistently
identify these constraints and provide a national picture of
need. Some agencies have identified specific projects that very
likely fall into the definition. DART is conducting a Dallas
Central Business District Transit Study to address the issues
of regional transit capacity, service reliability, providing
operational flexibility through downtown Dallas for all transit
services, and improving access and circulation. A recent survey
conducted by APTA estimated the cost of addressing existing
core capacity issues at almost $25 billion, although the
variation in cost across agencies suggests that a consistent
definition is not being applied. Continued increases in
ridership--expected by a number of large urban transit
systems--are likely to increase the number of systems facing
core capacity constraints.
How Can Bottlenecks Be Fixed?
The relative challenge of solving bottlenecks varies.
Bottlenecks might be addressed through minor capital
improvements or relatively inexpensive operations strategies,
or they can be very hard to resolve, such as where there are
limits on the line-haul capacity of rail lines into the cores
of major metropolitan areas such as New York or Washington, DC.
Specific strategies to address transit bottlenecks will vary
depending on the identified constraint. Specific ``point''
improvements can be made, but the nature of the problem may
require more systemic approaches--fixing one point may just
transfer the problem to a different point on the same line.
Potential strategies to address core capacity or
``bottlenecks'' include:
Changes in transit operations;
Managing peak demand through fare policies or other
targeted efforts to spread the peak demand;
Upgrading existing equipment to allow for increased
operations (e.g., switching or electrical);
Expanding capacity on existing lines (e.g.,
addition of a passing tracks or additional track);
Expansion of station facilities (e.g., platform
expansion, station egress expansion); and
Construction of parallel facilities on a new
alignment.
Proposal: National Transit Bottleneck Mitigation and Core Capacity
Program
Core capacity constraints are currently addressed through a
variety of funding sources through FTA, though no targeted
program is in place and the source of funds varies.
1. The New Starts program is the first option and the major
funding source for the three New York MTA projects,
East Side Access, the Second Avenue Subway, and the
ARC.
2. Rail modernization is an option for needed investments to
upgrade existing rail systems that result in an
enhanced system capacity.
3. Formula funds are an option, though the total dollars
available are limited. Finally, some flexible funds
under the Federal Highway Administration programs may
also be used for transit purposes, at the direction of
the State, such as the Congestion Mitigation and Air
Quality (CMAQ) in nonattainment areas and the Surface
Transportation Program (STP).
There are several options available to develop a more
systematic, national approach to target core capacity
constraints. The first is to use the existing New Starts
Program with an expansion of funding and the second is to
establish an independent program specifically targeted at core
capacity on existing systems.
Expansion of the New Starts Program
A number of existing projects in the New Starts Program, as
discussed in this paper, are using the New Starts Program to
fund projects that are attempting to relieve core capacity
constraints. The current funding stream for New Starts does not
provide sufficient funding for the multitude of projects that
have been justified with less than $1.5 billion in funding
proposed for the program in Fiscal Year 2007. The actual
Federal share of funding for projects is now at 50 percent or
less (even though the projects remain eligible for funding at
the 80 percent level) and projects still face delays due to a
lack of funding. By effectively rationing New Starts dollars
with this lower Federal match, compared to the 80 percent
Federal match for new capacity highway projects, the
inadvertent result is that a transit investment may become less
competitive in regional prioritization plans, particularly when
leveraging of Federal funds is considered.
The advantage to expanding the existing New Starts Program
is that it has developed a detailed process to evaluate the
user benefits of projects that can be applied to core capacity
projects. However, there are two important issues to consider
with the current process. First is the possibility that a core
capacity project may not be deemed eligible under New Starts
definitions, which require the inclusion of certain fixed
guideway infrastructure elements. Second is how such projects
might rate according to the established New Starts criteria
measures. Because some core capacity projects are likely to
involve upgrades to existing transit elements that improve
operations and reliability but do not result in major changes
to travel time--the key measure used by FTA to rate New Starts
projects--the projects may not be deemed ``meritorious.''
A further disadvantage is the sheer magnitude of cost of
these projects and the political implications of projects that
benefit only a single metropolitan area. A single core capacity
project, like the East Side Access project at $7.8. billion,
with more than $2.6 billion proposed from the New Starts
Program, is almost twice the annual funding for New Starts.
This project would consume a large share of the New Starts
Program funding and potentially delay a number of other
projects across the country. This has political implications
and sets up direct competition between large urban centers with
older transit systems and many smaller to mid-size urban
regions attempting to introduce rail into their regional
transportation systems. Projects at the scale of those
attempting to address core capacity issues often face funding
delays and are under pressure to increase the share of local
funding. In the case of East Side Access, Federal funding is
proposed at just 34 percent of the project.
Distinct Core Capacity Program
An alternative, given the potential benefits of some of
these investments, is consideration of a targeted program to
address transit core capacity constraints. Similar to the New
Starts Program, any targeted program should establish a
mechanism to assess the relative value of projects based on
specific criteria and user benefits. The program should provide
the flexibility to fund a range of potential strategies. The
challenge is to establish a new program, with sufficient
funding, without taking away funding from existing capital
programs. If insufficient funding is provided to a targeted
program, projects with significant funding requirements would
likely face delays due to insufficient funding. Further, the
targeting of funding to what may be a small number of existing
systems may create equity issues for other urbanized areas that
have adopted their own strategies and supplied their own funds
to provide adequate transit capacity.
Demonstration Project
DART is proposing that the new Transportation Authorization
Bill or under FTA's research activities authorized by 49 USC
5312, Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment
Projects include new demonstration projects that would look at
the current capacity and ridership of a select number of
transit systems to determine how close they are to capacity and
project when they will reach capacity. The study would also
look at the cost and effectiveness of various infrastructure
investments (automated operation, additional vehicles,
substations, energy storage technologies, track structure
improvements, etc.) to increase capacity and how long it would
take to put them into place. Ultimately, the study will provide
sufficient information for the issue to be thoroughly addressed
by the FTA and the Congress.
------
RESPONSE TO WRITTEN QUESTIONS OF SENATOR MENENDEZ
FROM MARIIA ZIMMERMAN
Q.1. You indicated in your testimony that your organization has
suggestions on how to institute an economic development measure
for the New Starts program. Should the measure be qualitative
such as zoning laws and land use planning, or should it be
based on some sort of economic modeling?
A.1. In our work on economic development impacts of transit
investments, Reconnecting America has identified both a set of
localized economic impacts being pursued by localities and
regions as part of the reason behind their support for fixed-
guideway investment. This includes not only the job creation in
building a new transit line and in operating it, but the
desired increase in property values, economic activity and
long-term community benefits associated with the investment.
These types of benefits are not well captured by current
economic models that predict economic development. Such models
tend to be used for evaluating regional economic development
impacts associated with redistributive growth. Both have merit,
but also trade-offs in terms of their ability to ensure that a
project's economic development benefits are evaluated in a
reliable, predictable and easy to use process that ensures that
they are distinguishable from other criteria.
Reconnecting America has recommended to FTA that it pursue
a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures of economic
development. We recommend that FTA require project sponsors to
provide benchmarks on a set of qualitative measures backed by
quantitative data and applicable across project types to
describe the anticipated economic development impacts and
identify the commitment of public and private revenue towards
development and infrastructure improvements within the transit
corridor. \1\
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\1\ The term corridor refers to the geographic area/alignment of
the transit investment, be it a traditional light rail corridor, a
fixed-guideway route for bus rapid transit (BRT), or a streetcar
alignment. Similarly, the term stations includes both rail stations and
fixed streetcar or BRT stops.
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Potential metrics that could be implemented today include :
A. Determination of the Economic Development Environment for
the Proposed Project
Existence of development agreements and other
private sector financial contributions towards proposed
transit project or ancillary infrastructure
improvements (i.e., sidewalk, sewer, station area
improvements) and tied to focusing new development and/
or serving existing development around the transit
stations.
Existence and extent of Urban Renewal Districts,
LIDs, BIDs and Tax Increment Financing with funding
allocated to the transit corridor (not representative
of new private revenue, but rather reflect a commitment
of public revenue within transit corridor towards
necessary infrastructure improvements that can generate
further economic development).
Projections regarding affect of proposed project
on the number or proportion of properties with an
improvement-to-land value ratio of greater than one in
the project area.
Describe the project's proximity and relationship
to: (1) other primary transit lines and/or facilities;
(2) employment centers; (3) activity centers; (4)
economic development zones; (5) central business
districts, (6) other.
Existence and extent of TOD-supportive
comprehensive plan amendments and transit overlay
districts--this should be given greater weight in the
Transit-Supportive Land Use review, not included as an
economic development measure.
B. Anticipated Economic Development Impacts of Proposed
Project
Projections of new and existing housing and
commercial space to be developed within half-mile
radius of proposed station locations. \2\
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\2\ For streetcar projects which typically include a larger number
of stops in close proximity, this could be measured as the amount of
housing and commercial space to be developed within half-mile buffer of
the alignment.
Projections of population/household growth within
half-mile of proposed station locations. \3\
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\3\ Ibid.
Projection of new and existing employment and
diversity of job types within one-mile buffer of the
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proposed corridor.
Projected tax receipts from increased values and
economic activity occurring within the proposed
corridor as a result of the transit investment.
Projected transportation efficiencies (e.g., cost
per trip and estimated transportation cost savings to
households within the corridor).
Describe any past experience with similar
existing projects that have had effects similar to
those anticipated by the project and describe how past
development experience within the proposed project area
has differed from that of the existing projects. Use
quantitative and qualitative descriptions, with
documentation when available.
Q.2. FTA says that it is difficult to distinguish environmental
benefits of one project from another, but from what we hear
from transit agencies they believe they have to buy the
cheapest and most inefficient equipment available in order to
keep the project with a good cost benefit rating. Is there a
way to reward projects that attempt to maximize environmental
benefits of their projects without jeopardizing the cost/
benefit analysis process?
A.2. There is currently no incentive in FTA's cost-
effectiveness index to acquire additional property, incorporate
sustainable design in facilities or to add any additional costs
to the project. If we want to shape land use and development,
there needs to be land use policies and station area plans, but
also some incentive to acquire property or engage in value
capture to shape economic development. Data from the green
buildings community has documented higher upfront costs for
sustainable building design and materials, many of which are
recaptured within several years. However, incorporating such
design technologies is not encouraged under current policy.
Finally, there are diminutive environmental benefits when
comparing one transit project to another or even one transit
project to the overall region. Moreover, the environmental
impacts of the project over the forecast period are enhanced to
the extent there is a greater emphasis on development since we
have enough data on the relationship of transit and land use on
reducing VMT. However, those benefits are reduced when measured
at a project level as opposed to regionally until the system is
built out. In order to address these challenges, the following
policy changes may be warranted:
Allow project sponsors to remove or apply a weight
to project costs associated with improved environmental
and energy efficiency so that these are not penalized
in the project development process and cost
effectiveness index.
Amend Title 49, Section 5309 funds for land
acquisition to specifically allow land acquisition for
transit-oriented development as part of development of
corridors under subsections (d) and (e).
Require environmental analysis to consider regional
benefits that capture corridor and network
environmental benefits.