News Wire: US DOT puts up $8.5 million to improve transit in economically distressed areas

Trains Magazine Transit
1

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Transit Administration (FTA) today announced a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to apply for $8.5 million in Fiscal Year 2020 competitive grant funding for projects that hel…

https://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2020/03/03-us-dot-puts-up-$85-million-to-help-improve-transit-service-in-economically-distressed-areas

2

$8.5 million ? That is not even chump change. Studies will eat up all that amount!

3

Sure enough, consultants, research consortia, and institutions of higher education are listed as eligible recipients.

The areas of need for this particular program were interesting to me:

https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/docs/funding/applying/notices-funding/147836/hope-continental-us.pdf

These appear to be chronically-poor areas with little or no existing ‘public’ transit resources (or organizations providing things like paratransit for medical purposes or the mobility-impaired).

There’s a matching-grant requirement, but it is ‘not more than 10%’ so, presumably, good projects might well be 100% funded in some of these areas.