Pittsburgh Agency to get TOD Grant

The Port Authority of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh was one of 20 recipients of Federal Transit Administration pilot program grants in its Transit Oriented Development Planning program.

The agency will receive $560,500 to plan for TOD on a 9.1 mile dedicated bus rapid transit corridor in the Upper Mon Valley.

FTA said in a news release that it will award $11.03 million in grants that support local planning and strategies to increase transit access and encourage ridership through mixed-use and mixed-income development near public transportation projects.

Ten of the projects involve rail public transit. No Ohio projects were selected in this round of funding.

GAO Calls for More Clarity on TOD Decisions

The U.S. Department of Transportation needs to do a better job of evaluating proposals for transit-oriented projects, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has concluded.

GAO recommended that the USDOT’s Build America Bureau better document its decisions and follow procedures when reviewing TOD projects.

The agency also called on the Federal Transit Administration to develop a plan to evaluate its pilot program.

TOD projects typically seek to encourage the development of housing and businesses along transit lines as a way of increasing ridership.

In its investigation, the GAO noted that two federal financing programs administered by the Build America Bureau involve TOD projects.

The bureau has not approved financing for any TOD projects since 2016 and failed to clearly document its eligibility decisions, the GAO’s report said.

GAO said that without a clearly documented rationale for eligibility decisions and procedures for making decisions, project sponsors lack reasonable assurance that the bureau is reviewing projects consistently.  The USDOT concurred with the GAO’s recommendations.