Tanya Snyder

In a meeting with transportation reform advocates last week, Secretary Ray LaHood indicated that the administration’s proposal will drop early next year. Today Kienitz tipped his hat to the reform community in describing the goals the administration has in mind:

That’s the word from the DOT, which announced on Friday that it had received about $19 billion in applications for nearly 1,000 projects “from all 50 states, U.S. territories and the District of Columbia.” The volume of applications, which range from “highways and bridges to transit and ports,” far exceeds the $600 million available in TIGER II funds.States competing for TIGER II money need to show that their transportation projects will have significant economic and environmental benefits at a city-wide, regional, or national level. Since the money is awarded at the discretion of DOT using set criteria, not disbursed through the rote formulas that govern most transportation funding, it’s been a catalyst for innovative transportation projects.

The second is that administration officials are still fine-tuning the policies and programs they want to see in the next transportation bill. Polly Trottenberg, assistant secretary for transportation policy at U.S. DOT, said she wants to adjust the way her agency distributes competitive grants. She called the TIGER program too reactive — letting states and regions propose isolated projects and then choosing the best among them. She’d rather have more latitude to help regions start broad new reforms. DOT, she said, is looking to the administration’s education grants program, Race to the Top, for inspiration. They’re tentatively calling the transpo version “Wheel in the Sky” (yes – like the Journey song) but Trottenberg didn’t seem to think that name would stick.