Each quarter, we take a look at state progress with implementing the Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP). For the quarter covering April to June 2018, states obligated nearly $131 million in TAP funding, with all states except for three making forward progress. (Obligation means that the state DOT has committed funding to a local TAP project and is a key step towards actually getting the project built or implemented.)
Last month, the Safe Routes Partnership released the 2018 version of Making Strides: State Report Cards on Support for Walking, Bicycling, and Active Kids and Communities. The report cards rank states on their policy approaches on a range of areas, including Complete Streets, school siting, physical activity planning, and more.
After waiting until nearly halfway through FY2018 to set spending levels, Congress is out of the gate quickly on the FY19 appropriations process. The process of setting spending levels is easier this year, because the FY18 spending package included a two-year agreement on funding levels that were significantly more generous than what the Trump administration had proposed. As an example, the transportation-housing spending max spending level for FY19 is more than $1 billion higher than the FY18 cap, w
The US Department of Transportation has announced that the long-standing TIGER program, in which USDOT awards up to $25 million apiece to multimodal transportation projects across the country, has been renamed the BUILD program. The renaming of TIGER signals USDOT’s intention to put the Trump administration’s stamp on it.
Six months into fiscal year 2018, Congress has finally set spending levels for federal agencies and programs. The $1.3 trillion omnibus appropriations bill includes great news for many programs for which the Trump administration proposed elimination or significant cuts.
A week ago, Congress reached agreement on overall spending caps, which would allow for significant increases in defense and domestic spending in FY2018 and FY2019. Their agreement includes an additional $10 billion per year for two years to put towards different kinds of infrastructure investments (broader than just transportation). Congress now has about six weeks to divide those overall increases into the funding allocations for federal programs and agencies.
On January 30, President Trump delivered his state of the union. A few sentences in his speech referenced the long-delayed infrastructure package, as he called on Congress to pass a bill that would pair any Federal dollars with state, local, and private investments to “build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways, and waterways.”
There was a pile-up of legislative priorities in December, and Congress ended up getting a tax bill through but punted action on spending levels, the DACA immigration policy, and stabilizing the health insurance market to 2018. This means that January is now full of deadlines.