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COVERAGE OF THE BUS & PARATRANSIT CONFERENCE

FTA Update: FAST Act Helps But Doesn't 'Completely Satisfy' Needs

The FAST Act provides steady, reliable funding for public transportation, beginning at $11.8 billion this fiscal year and increasing to $12.6 billion by FY 2020 when the bill will expire, but the industry has more to do, advised FTA Acting Administrator Carolyn Flowers at a Monday afternoon General Session moderated by APTA Vice Chair Doran Barnes.

“I don’t want to suggest that it [the FAST Act] completely satisfies the spending levels and needs that the Obama administration and APTA asked for,” she said at the session, a perennial favorite at APTA conferences, which also included questions from the audience to senior FTA leaders. “It is an improvement beginning, most importantly, with the addition of the new bus discretionary program.”

Flowers recounted a few of the FAST Act’s programmatic highlights:

Bus and Bus Facilities: “Adding back a competitive component to our bus and bus facility program corrects a major shortcoming of MAP-21 and is a direct result of APTA and FTA working together—shoulder to shoulder—to promote and advocate” for the industry, Flowers said. Funding starts at $213 million in FY 2016 and increases to $289 million by FY 2020. Flowers also noted that FTA has received almost $1.76 billion in requests for the $213 million in available resources, a gap she called “mind-boggling.”

Low or No Emission Vehicle Deployment: Flowers said the act provides $55 million in grants for which FTA has received $520 million in applications. “We’re going to work hard to get these awards out quickly,” she said, adding that the agency will name grantees in late summer.

Capital Investment Grants (CIG): Flowers described several important changes to this program and its components—New Starts, Small Starts and Core Capacity programs. “Most relevant for you, the FAST Act changes the threshold for Small Starts projects from $250 million in capital costs to $300 million and the threshold for CIG funds used has been increased from $75 million to $100 million,” she said. “I know that’s important because a lot of you are thinking about BRT projects.”

Rides to Wellness: This FTA initiative includes a new discretionary pilot program to better coordinate access and mobility with non-emergency medical providers and is funded at $2 million in FY 2016, increasing to $3.5 million in FY 2020. “Over the past year, more than 3.6 million Americans already miss or delay non-emergency medical treatment simply because they lack transportation,” she said.

Workforce Development: The FAST Act delivers “mixed news” for the industry, Flowers said. “Let’s be clear: This is going to be an area of major concern for our industry because more than a third of our workforce reaches retirement age in the next 10 years. And there aren’t enough younger employees in the pipeline to replace them—much less meet the growing demand” in future years.

The bad news, she said, is that the act combines workforce development, technical assistance activity and the National Transit Institute programs in one category. “That means we’re going to have to make some difficult tradeoffs—quite possibly seek additional funding from Congress on a year-by-year basis to fill those gaps,” she said.

The good news, according to Flowers, is that recipients of urbanized area state of good repair and bus and bus facility program grants can now use one-half of 1 percent of their allocation for training in addition to one-half of 1 percent for NTI training. “That may not sound like a lot—and I know it’s difficult when you’re all trying to balance your budget—but across the nation, that’s almost $76 million that’s now available to support local workforce development training and education if an agency can do so.”

Safety: Flowers touched on how FTA’s safety rulemaking, including agency safety plans, will be required for all public transit agencies, saying that FTA and the industry have an “unrelenting focus” on safety. “We are encouraging bus transit systems to begin implementing Safety Management Systems in a timely manner—whatever their size,” she said. In addition, she said the agency is also closely examining issues related to assaults on operators.

Flowers also briefly reported on FTA’s Mobility on Demand Sandbox, a pilot program launched in early May to improve the customer experience and make the industry more efficient and better integrated across modes using apps, new fare payment systems, connected vehicles and infrastructure, shared use and on-demand services. The goal of the sandbox, she said, is to ensure “everyone, everywhere, all the time” has access to high-quality transportation options.

Flowers encouraged conference attendees to apply for the $8 million in sandbox funding before the July 5 deadline.

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