- Granting Agency: Department of Transportation, 69A345 Office of the Under Secretary for Policy
- Appropriation Amount: $5,000,000
- Grant Amount: Award Ceiling $5,000,000, Award floor $100,000, No match
- Announcement Date: January 6, 2022
- Closing Date: April 11, 2022
Purpose: To designate and fund an RIA that will: 1) serve a defined geographic area; 2) act as a resource to qualified entities in the geographic area in accordance with Section 1441 of the FAST Act; and 3) demonstrate the effectiveness of an RIA to accelerate the delivery of eligible projects through the Bureau’s innovative financing programs including the TIFIA credit program, and, to the extent applicable, the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) credit program and Private Activity Bonds (PABs) and other innovative financing methods.
Eligible Expenditures: (see Federal Notice for more details)
Establish regional infrastructure accelerators to assist entities in accelerating TIFIA-eligible projects through innovative financing strategies. This assistance can be in the form of any of the following, based on the needs of the project(s) that the applicant proposes to assist:
a. Project planning;
b. Studies and analysis, including feasibility, market analysis, project costs, cost-benefit analysis, value for money, public benefit, economic assessments, and environmental reviews;
c. Revenue forecasting, funding and financing options analyses, application of best practices, innovative financing/procurement, and public-private partnerships, where appropriate:
d. Preliminary engineering and design work;
e. Statutory and regulatory compliance analyses;
f. Evaluation of opportunities for private financing, project bundling and/or phasing;
g. Enhancement of rural project sponsors’ capacity to use the TIFIA credit program and to the extent applicable, the RRIF credit program, PABs, and other innovative financing methods, helping to bundle projects across multiple smaller jurisdictions to create a project at a scale that is more appropriate for the Bureau’s credit assistance, and pool the jurisdictions’ resources to apply for TIFIA credit assistance and, to the extent applicable, RRIF credit assistance and PABs, as well as leveraging DOT’s Rural Opportunities to Use Transportation for Economic Success (ROUTES) Initiatives’ [4] products and offerings; and
h. Other direct, project-specific support as appropriate.
Eligible Applicants:
A U.S. public entity, including a state, multi-state or multi-jurisdictional group, municipality, county, a special purpose district or public authority with a transportation function including a port authority, a tribal government or consortium of tribal governments, MPO, regional transportation planning organization (RTPO), Regional Transportation Commission, or a political subdivision of a State or local government, or combination of two or more of the foregoing.