#oh re corruption: its usually pretty subtle and indirect and less often to the benefit of local politicians than it was historically

[secondwhisper]

Lee tagged me on this one because I worked with INDOT for about five years. Most of that time was spent as a scoping engineer for roadway projects, but I did have some other roles, and I had some familiarity with coworkers who interfaced with highway and transit grants.

So, let's dissect the contest idea. Oh god this got so long I'm sorry.

Yes, generally speaking, grant funding pretty much is already a contest. You get a lot of applications, and you choose the best few big ones + the best few small ones (the small ones sort of fill in the gap left when the next big project would cause budget overrun). So why is this contest not just a grant application or RFP? The premise being each jurisdiction¹ is tasked with submitting² three proposals³.

Grants are usually opt-in. This "contest" sounds like it would be required. What is the consequence for a jurisdiction¹ not submitting to the "contest"? Normally for a grant, the consequence of not applying is that you definitely don't get the funding. But if you demand each state¹ provide three proposals², and they don't meet that, what's the consequence? Are we pulling federal funding from bridges, roads, ports, existing transit?

1. Why am I saying "jurisdiction" where the original post said "state" and "metro area". The state does not design, construct, or maintain local infrastructure. Each state has jurisdiction over state and national routes in its borders (plus some other weird stuff sometimes). The State of Illinois, for example, might provide some of the funding (via grant awards) for Chicago transit development, and will definitely want to review the proposals to make sure the funding is appropriate & that state code / design standards are met, but the state crucially does not actually develop that infrastructure! So who does? The local jurisdiction! Often, that's an individual city or town. But when we're talking about a metro area, ie serving the city core(s) & their suburbs (but still not the rural surrounds...), you've entered the world of the Regional Planning Commission.

So, if we're saying each state's three largest metro areas (whether the cities themselves or their affiliated regional planning commission) need to submit² proposals³, who faces the consequences if they don't? The core city(/ies), every municipality in the metro area, the regional planning commission, the county/parish, the state?

Speaking of metro areas by state, does this mean Kansas City and Chicago-Hammond-Kenosha and Louisville-Scottsburg and Spokane-CDA and DC get to double- or triple-dip, because they cross state lines? Does it make a difference if they share one regional planning commission, or if the metro area is large enough to support multiple regional planning commissions? What about transnational metro areas?

Speaking of metro areas by state, does this mean Maryland and Virginia get to propose rail connections to DC, but DC itself doesn't get their share of the pot, since DC is after all not a state (and only have the one metro area)? So, do we include territories? Do the American Samoan people or does the fed get to decide what their 3 metro areas are? (They only have one zip code after all, and colonial vs traditional organizational divisions are from what I can tell an ongoing tension.) Can an indigenous nation get in on the contest funding, with or without a federally recognized reservation? Do they still have to identify three metro areas? (What would it mean for their sovereignty if they have to propose a plan?)

2. Why am I saying "submit a proposal" when the original post said "design a proposal". I basically just wanna be really clear that the scoping process and the design process are distinct steps that both need funding. Scoping is the part of the process where we say "how far should this line go" and "where are the problem areas that will need more attention" and "are there any obvious environmental or archaeological concerns near the project area" and produce initial drawings and estimates. Scoping usually does this for two to five project options (what if we add a signal vs what if we add a roundabout, what if we install a subway vs what if we install a streetcar, what if we add a sixth interstate lane vs what if we buy two new train cars), and then compares the alternatives, choosing one to suggest for full design. For large projects like new³ rail transit, that'll be consulted out instead of done in-house, and consultants are expensive, so I hope that every jurisdiction required to submit to this contest gets a guaranteed consulting budget regardless of proposal success. (I believe that a scoping report is what is most commonly submitted to grant proposals, not a design.) If the scoping report identifies an alternative preferable to doing nothing, and if the estimated budget and timeline work out, the project continues being developed. Then, public interest meetings are held, preliminary environmental/archaeological/historic investigations are conducted (with intensive investigations and reports if necessary), and geotechnical investigations happen. Only then does a design get produced! The design will have things like material specifications, utility relocates, construction phasing, and a much more accurate estimate. This design will also be prepared by a consultant and will also be expensive, so if a full design is necessary to submit to this grant-contest, I'd hope that every jurisdiction is also guaranteed design consultant funding regardless of proposal acceptance. The original post only indicated that grant-contest awards will be for construction cost, which means that jurisdictions that can't spare much budget for an initial high-quality consultant report are gonna be sooooooo screwed over in deliberations. (And if the award only covers construction, will small jurisdictions try not to get selected, or be pushed toward a P3, because if awarded they wouldn't be able to dedicate an adequate operating & maintenance budget post-construction?)

(Anyway the whole concept -> scope -> investigations -> design -> construction process does take a long time usually. That's good. It might take months to get adequate public feedback, and more months to analyze those responses and iterate with a community to see what works. You might have to redo the proposed route because of a previously undocumented burial ground. You might have to tell your design consultant it's so obvious they copied and pasted this analysis from another report and they'd better redo the whole thing before trying to submit it for real. You might have to spend three years on soil and water remediation due to an old refinery or dry cleaner. You might find out that there's a bedrock shelf where you thought it was a smooth slope and now your bridge has to be redesigned. A sinkhole might open up and you should probably not just pave over it and pretend it never happened. Not all delays are bullshit. A lot of political pressure to do things quickly is bullshit.)

3. What exactly is meant here by "rail transit proposal"? That is, what are we asking each jurisdiction to actually propose? If we're looking to expand the reach of rail transit, that likely excludes proposals to buy a few new streetcars for an existing line to run service a bit more frequently, and certainly excludes simple operational funding of existing lines. Does double-tracking an existing line count as sufficiently new construction? Extending a current line? Restoring a station that went defunct forty years ago? Or do we only consider proposals that add new lines or create new rail systems? Could Los Angeles or Nashville or Aguadilla get a public funicular or two with rail transit contest funding? A funicular isn't quite a train and definitely serves a different purpose than most urban light rail. Could Indianapolis, IN, get trolleybus infrastructure to count for rail funding, since urban light rail is illegal there? A trolleybus doesn't have tracks, but it does have a set route with overhead cables.

My point with "what even counts as rail" is less that jurisdictions might push for something that's literally not rail, it's that in a grant-contest award scenario, there will be a deliberations committee. Their criteria for "best" are probably things like "lowest cost per track mile" and "serves the most people" and "most thorough operational plan / most likely to succeed" and "looks most like what we expected". I say this because I have been at funding deliberations where we argue things like "I know it has to be done eventually but more than $20M for half a mile of port connector is just so expensive" and "sure, [festival town] still doesn't have ADA compliant crossings, but the permanent population is only like 12 people" and "do we trust [infamously corrupt city] to actually see this one through or is the army corps going to get involved again" and "wait remind me how we fund buggy routes, are they trails or roads, let's table that one for now you might need to bring that to a different deliberations meeting". Alaska, Hawaii, and overseas territories are going to have absolutely exorbitant construction costs due to materials import. If Wisconsin needs heated rails due to heavy ice and snow, well, that's a cost that Missouri need not factor in. Does Arizona want to elevate the tracks for monsoon season resilience, well, that's a lot more materials both on the train lines and to make the stations accessible, and anyway the population density is so low compared to New Jersey, it just won't serve that many people. If Gilette, WY, where the only public buses are paratransit, submits an elaborate proposal for six tram lines, they're simply not going to look reasonable when compared to a city like Denver, CO, that might be looking to add one airport spur to a well established light rail system. If Aguadilla wants a funicular, or Indianapolis wants a trolleybus, or the Gullah-Geechee Nation say that trains don't make any sense on the Sea Islands but they would like transit funding for a public ferry system thank you very much, well. Is our goal public transit generally, trains specifically, or something in between?

70% and 50% awards suck ass especially if jurisdictions are required to submit proposals. Federal grant monies for infrastructure are usually 80/20 federal to local (sometimes the state has secondary grants to cover some or all of the 20% for localities that need it, and they frequently do need assistance with that 20% even for normal road resurfacing contracts). Can you imagine being fucking idk, Bangor, ME, and you submit a $500M brand-spanking-new 10-mile-long streetcar proposal to this mandatory USDOT "contest" and you "win" an award of $250M that you have to spend on only the construction (not even the design) of this project, and you don't know where that other $250M is gonna come from but now you gotta find it somehow because you "won"? And no major construction project comes in under budget anyway. A normal 80/20 grant might not have even been feasible because you're fucking Bangor, ME, and now you got stuck with a 50/50. (Bangor, the third largest city in Maine, operates the entire city on an annual budget of $130M. The whole city, not just transportation infrastructure.) The funding on this from the feds would have to be upwards of 85%, ideally closer to 95%, if you want any smaller or more remote community to have a chance of actually constructing anything, even with state assistance.

So like, say this is ultimately a $50 billion grant pool. Fifty one-billion-dollar-ish awards. That's surprisingly feasible for the feds if they're really truly committed (the BIL was like $1.2 trillion; the annual average federal infrastructure allocation if I'm reading correctly is like $920 billion). (It just, you know, doesn't usually spend much of that on transit.)

Constructing things on time and on budget with competent workers is gonna be hard if there's a national scramble for rail construction. Remote areas and areas without a temperate climate and areas with lots of brownfields are going to have additional cost complications that mean they will get less mileage (of a certain quality at least) for the money. Jurisdictions that already operate light rail are best equipped to convince others that their populace will embrace light rail and that they can operate light rail competently and that their drivers and pedestrians know how to behave around light rail. This is a problem with existing grant funding infrastructure and part of why we don't seem to see much progress in public transit.

Where existing (state) transit grants go is, from my limited knowledge of one state, as follows. A portion goes to municipal public fixed-route buses. The rest of it goes to small-town and rural paratransit. A lot of these programs have one or two accessible buses and two to four part time drivers. Grant awards pay for fuel, driver's wages, maintenance on wheelchair lifts, cleaning, and even the occasional new bus. Door-to-door paratransit is immensely important and, somehow, both more and less expensive than you'd think. Door-to-door paratransit service cannot be replaced by light rail. (Indiana's single commuter rail line mostly gets federal funding, iirc, not state. And Amtrak is a separate thing.) I don't have a good sense of where federal transit grants go, but it can be discovered if you're willing to wrangle some .gov links and tables and publications.

Hey did you know that public infrastructure grant applications often have a question like "how does this project further [jurisdiction]'s 20-year plan?" or 50-year plan or whatever. Your city or county or regional planning commission probably already has a long-term "vision" of their infrastructure and neighborhoods and developing tax sources and stuff. These plans can be changed and I'm not really experienced on the regional/urban planning end of things, but like. These visioning plans already exist. (They just might not have light rail on them.)

Oh, in case it wasn't clear, each funding source (federal government, state government, city government, private grant entity) will have designated pools for different transportation infrastructure types. Like, maybe it'll be 40% bridges, 25% minor highway, 20% major highway, 5% commercial (ports, airports, local commercial rail), 4% institutional (military, recreation, prisons), 4% misc (at-grade rail crossings, bike infrastructure, scenic railways and canals), 2% public transit. Those are suuuper rough estimates of a somewhat typical federal/state distribution; cities are gonna be pretty different. These proportions are designated at allocation (federally, some states) or encoded into state law (some other states I think). So all the grant proposals from all the transit councils might be awesome and valuable and worthwhile, but the total allocation is never gonna go over that 2% or whatever of the total available infrastructure budget. Bridges are really expensive. And most wear and tear on highways and bridges is due to water/weather + commercial traffic (semis) so unfortunately just building more public transit will not meaningfully reduce the cost of highway maintenance long term, that's a freight logistics problem and a climate (change) problem.

I'm not saying it's impossible, it's pretty possible, it's just that this contest premise adds some unusual complexities and also skims over some pretty normal complexities. I don't know how much of the public infrastructure development process is understood by the general public so I'm sorry if I over-explained any parts of this.

I think it would be really interesting to do a program where each state is tasked with designing a rail transit proposal for their largest 3 metro areas and then the federal government awards a really large grant, like 70% of construction cost to the 30 best proposals, and like a 50% to the next 20 best. I think it would seriously improve transit and give us long term plans for the vast majority of major US cities. The one issue is I don't know how viable the USDOT running a contest would be