AASHTO Journal, 29 January 2016
When the nation’s executives of state departments of transportation gather in Washington Feb. 23-26, a big focus of the meetings will be a series of discussions about what the DOTs can expect from the new “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation” law or FAST Act.
But the intensive look at the FAST Act during this year’s annual Washington Briefing of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, is only part of a series of special educational efforts. AASHTO, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration and others have been providing information for weeks on the complex law’s details, and will continue for months to come.
“Not surprisingly, considering this is one of the most important pieces of legislation in many years for state DOTs, we are finding a tremendous appetite for information about it from our state members and others in the transportation industry,” said Bud Wright, AASHTO’s executive director.
“In many ways the FAST Act did not make extreme changes in federal programs, but it is still a complex bill with new features and with at least some changes in many subject areas,” he added. “No single educational event can really cover all of it, so we are making various efforts to provide the best information we can.”
That five-year law, the first in a decade that authorizes federal surface transportation programs for longer than two years at a time, gives state DOTs and transit agencies some long-term certainty to guide their project spending plans for the first time in years. It also provides moderate increases in the federal program funding.
It also combines Amtrak authorization and other federal rail programs into the same measure for a full surface transportation law. However, unlike with road and most transit funds, the rail funding levels it set are subject to change by Congress in annual appropriation bills.
The law adds some program layers with new freight-focused carve-outs from states’ Highway Trust Fund allocations, maintains a requirement to measure transportation system performance and works in new rules on the split of some funds between states and local governments while taking more steps to speed up environmental reviews.
Each day of the Washington Briefing conference has focus sessions dealing with FAST Act implementation and its program mix. One highlight will be a Feb. 26 “listening session” about the law hosted by the BATIC Institute, which is an AASHTO Center for Excellence that works in conjunction with the USDOT’s Build America Transportation Investment Center to focus on project finance.
BATIC Institute Director Jennifer Brickett told AASHTO Journal the listening session will include presentations about how the law changes the DOT’s low-cost TIFIA infrastructure loans and a separate loan program directed for rail projects, plus other finance provisions.
And that session will allow audience members to ask questions about these program changes, she said.
As earlier reported, the FHWA’s efforts to implement the FAST Act included publication of official apportionment documents that can let the states begin tapping the new funding levels. It also set up a FAST Act website that includes presentations on its features, along with the funding notices.
The Federal Transit Administration did the same for FAST Act programs and funding under its jurisdiction, and has also posted a series of fact sheets related to transit program aspects of the FAST Act.
A team of AASHTO top executives and policy experts got a taste of how greatly the transportation community wants details about the legislation, when a 90-minute AASHTO webinar Jan. 7 about the FAST Act drew 640 separate participants signing onto the conference call by phone or computer. And since those listening in could have had more than one person per sign-in gathered around speaker phones, AASHTO officials said more than 1,000 people may have actually participated.
Joining the presentations remotely were AASHTO President Paul Trombino, the Iowa DOT director, and Vice President David Bernhardt, Maine’s transportation commissioner. They each credited the work of state DOT members and AASHTO staff for helping Congress complete the legislation.
From AASHTO headquarters, Executive Director Wright and Chief Operating Officer Jim Tymon contributed, as Policy Director Joung Lee led the fast-paced webinar and called on his team’s experts to explain various sections.
The event included a lengthy question-answer session after association specialists broke down the main topic areas. AASHTO has posted the briefing documents, Q&A, and the full-length audio on its own special FAST Act website, which already had a detailed staff analysis of the legislation.
AASHTO’s policy team, working with state DOT members on the Reauthorization Steering Committee, will also prepare a comprehensive implementation report for both the FAST Act and its MAP-21 predecessor law from 2012. It will unveil a preliminary report when that committee meets Feb. 25 at the conference, and plans to finish it by late March.
That report will aim to clarify the statutory provisions to help promote a consistent understanding of them, identify areas of concern – such as a big $7.6 billion rescission of contract authority the law would apply in certain highway program categories in 2020 – and seek to reduce redundancy and potential disruptions of the effective implementation of other provisions.