Fast Forward?

By Jon Davis

The still-new FAST Act doesn't just stabilize transportation funding through 2020, it also places a new strategic importance on developing a national freight network and changes how planners go about preparing projects for federal funding — in part by adding resilience planning as a performance-based factor that must be accounted for.

"This is the first time we've seen that word — resilience — added to the planning title of the legislation," says Jason Jordan, APA's director of policy, referring to language in several sections of the bill that call for "tak[ing] into consideration resiliency needs." "That is a big step."

FAST, for Fixing America's Surface Transportation, is the first long-term transportation funding law since 2005, when the four-year SAFETEA-LU, or Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, was enacted. (2012's MAP- 21, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act, was just a two-year law.)

The law's broad parameters are well known by now: $305 billion through the next five years, with $233 billion allocated for highways, $49 billion for transit, and $10.4 billion for passenger rail programs; consolidation of myriad grant programs and some streamlining of the environmental review process; and a new emphasis on developing a national freight program.

FAST by the Numbers

The FAST Act of 2015 allocates $305 billion through fiscal year 2020: $233 billion for highways, $49 billion for transit, and $10.4 billion for passenger rail programs. Here's a partial breakdown of each category. (Amounts are annual unless noted.)

HIGHWAYS

National Highway Freight Program (new): $1.2 billion

Nationally Significant Freight & Highways Projects Program (new): $900 million

Surface Transportation Program: $1 billion this year, then an additional $200 million each year

National Highway Performance Program: $500 million increase

Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality Program: $50 million increase this year, then small annual increases

TIFIA Program: Cut from $1 billion annually to between $275 million and $300 million

TRANSIT

Formula, Bus Grants: $800 million more this year, then about $200 million more annually, including:

Urbanized Area Formula Grants: $90 million increase

State of Good Repair: $350 million more this year, then $40 million increase annually

Fast Growth and High Density Program (new): $550 million

Bus and Bus Facility Discretionary Program (new): $300 million

Research & Development Demonstration and Deployment Grant (new): $28 million (but the FTA's existing R&D program loses $50 million)

Capital Investment Grants: $400 million increase

Positive Train Control grants: $200 million in FY 2017

PASSENGER RAIL

Amtrak: $8.1 billion

Divided between the National Network ($5.5 billion) and Northeast Corridor ($2.6 billion)

Federal Railroad Administration Grant Programs: $2.2 billion

Source: Fixing America's Surfact Transportation Act

Sources: Congressional Budget Office; Millennials in Motion; USPIRG. Graphic by David Foster.

The law taps $225 billion from the National Highway Trust Fund and $75 billion from general revenue — along with customs fees, sales of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the privatization of some IRS tax collections, and $6 billion from reducing a dividend paid to banks that buy Federal Reserve stock (bought when they joined the Federal Reserve System).

While this provides a stable funding stream through Fiscal Year 2020, it also means that unless Congress raises the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax (unchanged since 1993) before then, the Trust Fund will be much worse for wear. If left unchanged, the annual gap between available Trust Fund money and what's required from other revenue sources will grow to $20 billion, says Joung Lee, policy director for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

The $75 billion from general funds is essentially "the biggest patch we've seen," Lee says, adding that as kicking the can down the road goes, "this will be a mighty big can."

"We all know that by the end of 2020, we will have to grapple with the Highway Trust Fund yet again, only from a much worse starting point," he says. "The structural funding issues are going to come back again, unfortunately."

Reports from the Congressional Budget Office back that up. In January, it warned that on current trajectories neither the Trust Fund's highway nor transit accounts will be able to meet obligations in 2021.

A month earlier, articles on the American Society of Civil Engineers' Infrastructure Report Card website analyzing the FAST Act noted that when the law expires, the Trust Fund "will have received over $140 billion in general fund transfers since it began experiencing fiscal trouble in 2008.

"This also means that by the end of the FAST Act gas taxes and other transportation-related revenues will only be providing half of the dollars necessary to support investment levels, which could complicate the policy process in numerous untold ways," read the December 6 post, the first of a four-post analysis.

AASHTO's Lee adds that the law does have, however, "a couple of forward-looking pieces . . . That we'll all be hearing about," that weren't in MAP-21 or SAFETEA-LU:

• $95 million over five years, starting with $15 million for 2016 via the U.S. Department of Transportation, to look at alternative, user-based transportation funding mechanisms that could augment (or replace) the Highway Trust Fund

• Up to $5 million for a study to be done by the Transportation Research Board of the Interstate Highway System of "actions needed to upgrade and repair the Interstate Highway System to meet growing and shifting demands over the next 50 years"

The American Road & Transportation Builders Association notes that the respective goals here are to develop at least two funding alternatives that could be adopted and implemented federally, and to produce that report within three years.

Moreover, APA's Jordan says, the fact that transportation alternatives programs for cycling-, pedestrian-, and trails-related projects survived unscathed means the existential threats to them are largely gone.

"The optimist in me would say that maybe we've turned a corner from arguing whether these programs are important to how we make the best investments in them," he says.

Other new planning goals or factors in the FAST Act address stormwater mitigation impacts of surface transportation and enhancing travel and tourism. Lee notes those aren't prescriptive goals, but are mentioned as desirable outcomes. "Transportation planners already think about those things, but now it's written into the law," he says. "It does give general focus to those areas."

But in linking travel and tourism to transportation, the law mandates that a new National Advisory Committee on Travel and Tourism Infrastructure be created by June of this year, and a National Travel and Tourism Infrastructure Strategic Plan within three years — all to advise the Secretary of Transportation on how to improve the system for tourism.

National freight planning

FAST includes about $1.26 billion annually to the states for freightrelated highway improvements, creates a National Multimodal Freight Policy, and requires implementation of the goals set out in the National Freight Strategic Plan (created in MAP-21). FAST creates two new initiatives that will together provide an additional $900 million annually for larger-scale works:

• National Highway Freight Program: $6.2 billion over five years to be distributed based on states' overall shares of highway program allocations

• Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects Program: $4.5 billion in discretionary grants over five years for projects involving rail, intermodal facilities, highway-railroad grade separations, or "projects in scenic areas"

States aiming to tap the freight program funds must create freight advisory committees and, within two years, a freight investment plan that must be updated every five years.

According to the U.S. DOT's FAST Act freight provisions web page, the Strategic Plan will "identify strategies and best practices to improve intermodal connectivity and performance of the national freight system, and mitigate the impacts of freight movement on communities." The discretionary grants will be for completion of projects "that improve safety and hold the greatest promise to eliminate freight bottlenecks and improve critical freight movements."

"That's a major, integral part of our system that we haven't looked at very much," says Madhu Narayanasamy, AICP, a project manager and transportation planner for CDM Smith in Houston, Texas.

Whit Blanton, FAICP , executive director of the Pinellas Planning Council (the MPO for Pinellas County), in Clearwater, Florida, and a member of APA's Legislative and Policy Committee, says the new competitive freight program will be similar to the TIGER grants, thus forcing planners at municipal, MPO, and state levels to integrate their efforts.

"Any time you have this shift from formula-based programs to competitive discretionary programs, then, to compete effectively, you really have to align your resources and your agency commitments," Blanton says. "The conversation we're having here at the staff level and with our board members is that the law really reinforces the importance of interagency relationships."

Narayanasamy, who is vice chairman for policy of APA's Transportation Division, agrees. Setting goals and moving forward toward federal funding will require backing up decisions with performance data, which will mean closer, or deeper cooperation, he says.

"Everybody had their own ways of ranking priorities. Now there's going to be more integrated ways of analysis," he adds. "That's going to be a new thing."

Resilience

As weather driven by global climate change forces resilience further into the spotlight, the FAST Act incorporates the concept into the performance-based measures that planners and regions must now meet to tap federal funds for transportation projects.

While it's not surprising that most performance-based measures remained unchanged, since Congress is still waiting to see how their full implementation will go, Jordan says that the inclusion of resilience into the planning process, when most other measures were kept at status quo, is significant.

Resilience here is defined by Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: The Next Generation, issued in December 2014 by APA's Planning Advisory Service. That report uses the National Academy of Sciences' definition — "the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and more successfully adapt to adverse events" — while expanding a bit for professional planning contexts.

'This is the first time we've seen that word — RESILIENCE — added to the planning title of the legislation. ... It gives MPOs a chance to be the leader on resiliency in their regions in a way that might not have been familiar to them.'
—JASON JORDAN, DIRECTOR OF POLICY, APA

But Blanton notes that until the U.S. DOT drafts and enacts rules for taking resilience into account, however, planners are pretty much on their own for doing so. His initial advice: Make sure resilience is being addressed in your project or program and that you can demonstrate that fact. More formal guidance will come eventually, he adds.

"We never got rules for MAP-21 because it was a two-year bill. We're still waiting for guidance on some things from MAP-21," Blanton says.

APA's Jordan says that the Legislative and Policy Committee will begin looking at resilience throughout the transportation planning process, and will submit comments to the DOT when the rulemaking process begins, although that start date was not known at press time. Even so, the appearance of resilience in the FAST Act should be a signal to communities that haven't begun addressing resilience planning to get going, he adds.

The new language marks a shift in how MPOs will focus on resilience, and could allow planners to nudge reluctant politicians to begin taking it into account, he says.

"This is the time to really get started because it's coming your way," Jordan says. "It gives [MPOs] a chance to be the leader on resiliency in their regions in a way that might not have been familiar to them.

"This is really going to push regional planning to contemplate those issues and look at those aspects of regional transportation planning."

Jon Davis is a policy analyst and assistant editor with the Council of State Governments' Midwest regional office.

RESOURCES

FAST Act text: tinyurl.com/ha6muez

AASHTO's FAST Act Portal: fast.transportation.org/Pages/default.aspx

CBO presentation on the Highway Trust Fund (January 2016): cbo.gov/publication/51122

National Association of Railroad Passengers Analysis of the Passenger Rail title: tinyurl.com/gvr2df5