Many of the projects the federal Department of Transportation is financing through the long-awaited TIGER grants go a long way toward revamping our freight and commuter rail systems, rounding out a distinctly spectacular month for transit advocates.
The list of TIGER grant recipients (.pdf) represents a real change from the traditional transportation policy that favors the almighty automobile above all else. Oh sure, there are a lot of bridges and roads in the $1.5 billion Transportation Reinvestment Generating Economic Recovery spending plan, but they didn't get a whole lot of money. Transit got roughly 26 percent according to Yonah Freemark at Transport Politic (who posted a nifty table) and rail got got about 62 percent.
In doling out the money to projects nominated by the states, the feds made it clear they wanted projects that encourage multimodal transit, connect various transportation networks and give customers more options. They also stressed livability, meaning how much the projects might improve the quality of life for the people they are meant to serve. Both factors are a huge shift away from how the government used to allocate money -- by giving it to projects that widened highways and built new roads, encouraging people to keep on driving.
Sure, there are some bridges and roads that got money, but not much -- as Elana Schor down at StreetsblogDC notes, even though roads represented 57 percent of the grant applications, they received about 12 percent of the money. That comes to about $185 million.
If that sounds like a lot, take a look at the big winners.
The top three winners are freight rail projects. They include $105 million toward two major southern freight centers for the Crescent Corridor Intermodal Freight Rail Project, a 2,500-mile, 13-state overhaul of Norfolk Southern's freight rail lines between the Gulf Coast and the Northeast U.S. The feds also smiled upon key parts of the CREATE Program, allocating $100 million to help untangle Chicago's notoriously-bottlenecked rail networks. And the DoT awarded $98 million to finance doubling CSX's cargo capacity on the National Gateway Freight Rail Corridor.
The feds also threw some significant amounts of cash at smaller projects that will augment freight rail capacity or separate rail from road.
Together these grants amount to an overhaul of the entire East Coast freight rail system. The projects could go a long way toward speeding up the national cargo delivery system, reducing shipping costs and increasing the competitiveness of American businesses. More than that, they could have a small, but significant, impact on how the rest of us travel.
How?
By taking a lot of trucks off the road. The Crescent Corridor project alone is expected to replace 1.3 million long-range truck trips annually. Freight and passenger rail generally share the same tracks, and freight trains generally have precedence because more often than not the freight companies own the tracks. Giving freight rail more movement options will free up more track and time, resulting in greater capacity and speed for passenger rail. It's a clever move by the Obama administration, which supports incrementally increasing speeds for passenger rails and bringing us closer to something resembling high-speed rail. In addition to speeding up and lowering the cost of moving cargo, these TIGER grants are one more step toward making passenger rail a palatable people-mover.
Other big winners are a number or light-rail, commuter rail and streetcar projects, which are all the rage in cities these days. Major beneficiaries include projects in Tuscon ($63 million), Dallas ($23 million), Portland ($23.2 million), Detroit ($25 million) and New Orleans ($45 million) to finance streetcar systems, or extensions of current systems. Tuscon and Dallas are two large, spread-out cities, and these streetcars might go a long way to encouraging buildup in central areas. Portland gets to extend its existing streetcar line, which should bring more people to its somewhat isolated South Waterfront development. Detroit, where economic collapse has led to a weird sprawled-out patchwork of population, will get a light-rail line that should draw residents and development to a central main drag. New Orleans also gets a residential and economic draw. Boston gets an important extension for its commuter rail, and Tulsa gets a commuter-rail-ready replacement bridge on I-244.
Somewhat surprising was all the love the DoT gave to bus rapid transit (BRT) networks, which are relatively inexpensive and unobtrusive ways to make existing transit networks more effective and more efficient. These networks give buses, usually running on dedicated lanes between dedicated stations, precedence over vehicular traffic at intersections. Some even have enclosed stations. Think of them as above-ground subways. Despite their advantages, BRT has never been a popular option in the U.S. There's nothing sexy about a bus and they're more expensive to operate than light-rail. BRT needs a dedicated lane on busy streets and has to make turns with traffic. They combine the inflexibility of rail with the ridership of a bus. And they almost always take in less money than comparable light-rail -- in this country, buses just have a stigma.
Bus rapid transit networks have found great success in some places, particularly congested cities in the developing world. They've been much less common in the United States and Europe, but if the trend started by the TIGER grants continues, we could see a lot more of them in the future. Washington, D.C., America's congested capital city, gets almost $59 million to build what will be the country's most prominent BRT system, which, of course, Yonah Freemark analyzes in detail. Las Vegas and Denver both get smaller BRT lines.
For all the money thrown at BRTs, traditional bus lines didn't get shorted. They'll get some support from TIGER, mostly in the form of transfer stations like the one in Saint Paul, Minnesota ($35 million), and Normal, Illinois ($22 million). And, of course, there's the obligatory replacement of roads and bridges that carry (*gasp!*) individual vehicle traffic, like the replacement of Doyle Drive in San Francisco ($46 million), a bridge replacement on the Kentucky-Illinois border ($20 million) and a new interchange on I-95 in South Carolina ($10 million).
There also are a few interesting oddballs -- a pedestrian and bicycle network in Philadelphia ($23 million), seaports in Maine ($14 million), a whole "green corridor" in Kansas City ($50 million), etc.
These grants continue the Obama Administration's transportation strategy of partial funding for diverse mass transits that improve the lives of the people around them. Most of the grants won't cover anything approaching the whole cost of a project. Instead, they are carefully targeted to pay for the most most crucial low-cost, high-impact aspects to ensure the whole project gets built. For example, the Crescent Corridor grant will build intermodal freight stations in Birmingham, Alabama, and Memphis, Tennessee. These stations would, in and of themselves, be very useful. But as Norfolk Southern well realizes, their most effective use is as linchpins in the $2.5 billion corridor. Not a bad return on investment.
There is criticism, probably deserved, that the DoT is spreading the money too thinly to have too much impact. And there is no guarantee that the local authorities or companies getting the help will follow through with their end of the bargain. But even in this cash-strapped, politically hostile environment, the beneficiaries will probably know a good deal when they see one.
Transit fans have been having a pretty good year. Earlier this month, President Obama's proposed budget sent waves throughout the transit community -- it was proof that he was serious about building transit projects based on livability -- how they benefit the people around them -- instead of more superhighways. Before that came the high-speed rail grant money, another section of the so-called stimulus act specifically tailored to once more make rail a viable mode of passenger transportation.
There are good projects, as Schor notes, that didn't get any TIGER money. They may yet have their chance. Obama's 2011 budget allocates another $600 million for a second round of TIGER funding.
Here's hoping the emphasis on transit and livability continues.
Photo: Flickr / David Clow - Maryland
