Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation released application guidelines for $600 million in new federal transportation grant funding called TIGER II.
TIGER II is a pool of competitive transportation grants that state and local governments, tribal governments, transit agencies, port authorities, metropolitan planning organizations are eligible to apply for. The grants range from $10-200 million to help pay for highway, public transportation, rail, or port infrastructure projects and must have a 20 percent local funding match. $140 million of the total funding is allocated for rural projects.
The funding is essentially a follow up to the original $1.5 billion TIGER grants that were given out as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act last winter. As part of the Reinvestment Act, TIGER I projects were meant for quick stimulation of the economy. Seattle got $30 million to help pay for the $200 million redesign of the “Mercer Mess.”
This new pool of funding provides Seattle an excellent opportunity to try and make farsighted transportation investments in things liken the woefully underfunded Bicycle Master Plan, the city’s 10-year plan for improving bicycle infrastructure.
In grand terms, implementation of the BMP would have a long-lasting effect on pollution, health, and congestion, but with a 70 percent funding shortfall, the BMP is decades from completion. The U.S. DOT is giving priority to TIGER II projects with long-term outcomes and benefits. Those long-term outcomes are broken down into five primary criteria: state of good repair (improving existing facilities), economic competitiveness, livability, environmental sustainability, and safety. Complete streets projects succeed in every one of those criteria.
Okay. Here’s the grant application.
Improving Existing Facilities: Over $42 million of the BMP is devoted to making improvements to existing infrastructure by adding bike lanes, improving roadway crossings, and adding signage.
Economic Competitiveness: According to completestreets.org, Complete streets have been shown to boost the economic viability of neighborhoods. Instead of roads designed to move cars as quickly from point A to point B as possible and encourage travel to a single destination, streets with good bike and pedestrian infrastructure encourage people to make an unplanned stop into a store that catches their eye. The more people stop and shop, the better a neighborhood fairs, the stronger the city’s economy.
Livability: The DOT defines the livability criterion as “fostering livable communities through place-based policies and investments that increase transportation choices and access to transportation services for people in communities across the United States.” Safe bicycle infrastructure most certainly helps increase transportation choices and access to transportation services. If infrastructure was in place for people to comfortably ride the first and last miles of their trip to and from the bus or light rail stop, intracity travel would be vastly easier. People would save on gas and parking money while reducing pollution and congestion.
Environmental Sustainability: It almost goes without saying that improving Seattle’s bicycle infrastructure would increase its environmental sustainability. It’s been said time and again that safe infrastructure is the biggest barrier to cycling-as-transportation in the US. Though Seattle has other barriers such as weather and hills that will no doubt keep some people off the bike, improved infrastructure would increase the number of cyclists, without a doubt.
Safety: Like environmental sustainability, the final priority area, safety, is pretty self-evident. Improved bicycle infrastructure makes the roadways safer for all users whether they’re on two wheels or four. Well designed bike lanes (particularly buffered lanes and cycle tracks) help separate bikes and cars. That separation gets rid of the need for drivers to swerve into the opposite lane and gun it around a bike (though honestly, if you just wait a few goddamn seconds you’ll get your chance to pass without risking life and limb). Additionally, improved signage and dedicated facilities increase driver awareness which helps keep drivers from absentmindedly running a cyclist down because they didn’t expect one to be there.
The balance of cost to benefit is also an important factor to consider in this second round of grants. The first round of TIGER grants ranged from a few million up to $100 million for a big rail project, but most fell in the $20-40 million range. The funding pool for TIGER II is less than half of the original, and $140 million is on available for rural projects, making it likely that grants will be much smaller this time. Transportation dollars spent on bicycle infrastructure stretch further than those spent on infrastructure for cars. $10 million buys you 200 miles of painted bike lanes (it costs $50k per mile of lane according to walkinginfo.org, a site funded by the US DOT). That same $10 million can’t even buy you one urban freeway mile.
Applying to fund the BMP would mean, of course, that the South Park Bridge, would not get federal funding once again despite being a worthy project. (Some people felt slighted when South Lake Union received funding and South Park did not). But, again it comes down to cost vs. benefit. Funding and implementing a part of the BMP could have a large impact on the viability of bicycling-as-transportation in Seattle. It would be impossible to fund and implement part of the South Park bridge and $10 million is a drop in the bucket for a project that will cost over $100 million to complete.
The U.S. DOT showed it’s support of long-term bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure projects in the last round of TIGER grants. Seattle is in a great position to receive federal funding that will help complete the Bicycle Master Plan, help the city reach its stated goal of carbon neutrality by 2030, and help the city become a healthier more livable place.
