The Federal Highway Administration wants its money back, and NYSDOT is obliging at the expense of two environmentally friendly federal grant programs: Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) and Transportation Enhancements (TE).
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| In the diagram above, each glass represents the amount the state can potentially spend (the apportionment) on a specific federal program. The pitcher of tea is the amount of federal money the state gets (the obligation ceiling), which can be spread among all programs.
States can only truly spend about 90% of the federal apportionments they receive, since the obligation ceiling is always lower than total apportionments. States can choose to spread their obligations evenly, funding all federal programs at about 90% — or they can fully fund some programs while underfunding others. In most states, it’s the environmentally friendly programs that suffer. The difference between apportionments and obligations is the unobligated balance, and it accumulates over time — meaning that if a state underfunds a program in one year, it can theoretically “overfund” it in the next. But in recent years, the federal government has regularly rescinded money from states’ unobligated balances due to budget constraints. |
In April, FHWA requested that states rescind, or give back, $3.15 billion in unobligated federal apportionments. New York’s share of that is just shy of $146 million.
NYSDOT has decided to distribute the rescission across five funding programs: Bridge, Interstate Maintenance, CMAQ, Transportation Enhancements, and Recreational Trails. More than one-third of the $145.8 million rescinded is taken from CMAQ, a program meant to improve air quality through transportation projects, amounting to $49.4 million dollars, or more than 28 percent of the fiscal year 2009 CMAQ apportionment.
The relatively small, but critical Transportation Enhancements program, which pays for projects like bike, pedestrian, and streetscape improvements, suffers the biggest hit. NYSDOT is sending back nearly $25 million in TE funding, an amount equivalent to 85 percent of that program’s 2009 apportionment.
Another third comes out of the Bridge program, which is losing $47.9 million or 10 percent of its 2009 apportionment. Almost 30% of New York’s bridges are in less than good condition and an unusually large number will become deficient over the next decade. A significant amount (11 percent) of the 2009 Interstate Maintenance program apportionment is also rescinded, along with $1 million from the Recreational Trails program.
A history of under-spending has allowed large unobligated balances to accumulate in the CMAQ, Bridge and Transportation Enhancements programs, making these programs a too-tempting target for rescissions. When asked why those programs had large unobligated balances, NYSDOT officials told MTR that those programs tend to be far more restrictive and can require extensive modeling and paperwork. And because projects funded through those programs are often muncipally driven, the state’s cities bear at least some of the blame. As Congress mulls over Rep. Oberstar’s transportation bill, it should consider streamlining the funding process for these environmentally-focused programs.
NYSDOT anticipates that, barring some Congressional miracle, FHWA will ask the state to rescind another $400 million before the fiscal year ends in September. This would force the state to look beyond unobligated balances and actually de-obligate funding from planned projects, something the state has never before had to do.
Image: Surface Transportation Policy Project “decoder.”
I do hope we can make a push to spend our fair share of funds on the many worthwhile off road bike and pedestrian multi-user trails before we lose them. There are hundreds of miles of proposed trails that could be started if we put our minds to getting it done. LI has been shortchanged when compared to other regions of the USA
And I have just the project in mind… building the centrally located LIGHT (LI Greenways and Healthy Trails) east – west route along NYDOT Corridors 16 and 17, which include the bulk of the abandoned LI Motor Parkway right of ways and would be very popular and accessible to hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders.
Hey this is pretty criminal that NYS DOT can’t spend it’s federal apportionments! If this was a problem why didn’t they let some folks know about it so that municipalities and others could have had a crack at coming up with projects. NYS DOT could have given CMAQ money to the MTA to spend,too! Where was NYMTC our downstate metropolitan planning organization?
[...] If the state DOT wants to invest in this part of the Bronx, there are plenty of streets which could use some improvements. The Grand Concourse is one of the deadliest streets in the city. From 2006 to 2008, five pedestrians died in traffic collisions along the corridor. The state DOT could funnel money toward pedestrian safety enhancements on local roads. Federal funding, for instance, helped build the Hudson River Greenway. But safety doesn't seem to be a high priority at the state level. As Tri-State analyst Michelle Ernst reminded us, the state DOT recently gave up 85 percent of its 2009 federal funding for ped-bike projects. [...]
[...] New Jersey has been a national leader, spending almost 85 percent of its available HSIP funding through FY2008. The spending record for the rest of the region is far worse, an indication that New York and Connecticut are not prioritizing the program. (States have some flexibility in which federal transportation aid programs they choose to receive money through. For a review of the federal transportation funding process, see MTR’s earlier coverage.) [...]
[...] Funding is always a problem and the largest funding source for trails, the federal Transportation Enhancements (TE) program, has been under attack. In recent years, the federal government has issued rescission orders that require states to return federal dollars—and many states have chosen to raid their pot for trail money instead of distributing the cuts evenly. According to the Rails-to-Trails website, “although TE receives 1 to 2 percent of all transportation funds annually, it bore the brunt of more than 10 percent of rescissions in 2006 and 2007.” NYSDOT returned 85% of its TE apportionment in 2009. [...]