Avego’s Jason Conoly brings us up-to-date on what Congress has been doing over the Summer
On August 17th, the Obama Administration announced that it would make available $473 million in unspent “earmark” funding to states for spending on transportation projects. State departments of transportation have the ability to spend this money on any eligible surface transportation projects, including highways, transit, vanpool or even real-time ridesharing projects.
Projects must be identified by October 1, and money obligated by December 31.
In recent years, Congress has earmarked funding for highway and transit projects that for whatever reason never moved forward. President Obama has decided to release funding from these “orphan” earmarks available to states to use on transportation projects at their discretion. The major stipulation is that money must be spent quickly, which makes Transportation Demand Management (TDM) projects an ideal use of funding.
In MAP-21 (Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century), the recently-enacted surface transportation bill, Congress authorized real-time ridesharing projects as an explicitly eligible use of core highway and transit formula programs.
If you are interested in learning more about how your organization can take advantage of this opportunity to implement its Real-Time Ridesharing or vanpool project, please contact Jason Conley, Avego’s Director of Government Relations at 202-318-0108 or by e-mail at jason.conley@avego.com