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Featured Stories  Feed-icon-12x12
ANDRIANA ABARIOTES JOINS RECONNECTING AMERICA BOARD OF DIRECTORS.
Reconnecting America CEO John Robert Smith cites her outstanding skill set in the arena of community development and affordable housing

LEVERAGING FEDERAL TRANSIT FUNDS TO PROMOTE JOB CONNECTIVITY, AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Reconnecting America offers ideas on how to improve federal New Starts and Small Starts project justification criteria

RECONNECTING AMERICA ENDORSES LIVABLE COMMUNITIES ACT AMENDMENT
Letter from RA, Transportation for America and LOCUS backs creation of funding tools for TOD infrastructure

Best Practices 
Case Studies on Transit and Livable Communities in Rural and Small Town America
Offers a dozen examples of small towns and rural regions working to make their communities more livable · PDF

Bus Rapid Transit and Transit Oriented Development: Case Studies on Transit Oriented Development Around Bus Rapid Transit Systems in North America and Australia
Provides examples of BRT-based TOD along corridors Brisbane, Australia; Cleveland, Ohio; Boston, Mass.; and Ottawa, Ontario · PDF

Bus and Rail Transit Preferential Treatments in Mixed Traffic
This synthesis series reports on current knowledge and practice, in a compact format, · PDF

Projects  Feed-icon-12x12
MAKING THE TWIN CITIES MORE WALKABLE
New CTOD report provides methodology for assessing and boosting the walkability of a place

CAPTURING THE VALUE OF TRANSIT
New report by Center for Transit-Oriented Development released

FINANCING TRANSIT-ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT
Policy Options and Strategies in the San Francisco Bay Area

Handbook Navigates Chutes & Ladders Of Federal Rail Funding

New Starts Working Group creates guide for congressional staff helping communities secure federal funds

Handbook Navigates Chutes & Ladders Of Federal Rail Funding

If communities hoping to build a fixed-guideway transit project want federal funding, they must first go through the federal New Starts process. This is no easy task, but now the New Starts Working Group has developed a handbook for accomplishing this.

This handbook is designed for congressional staff to help navigate the chutes and ladders of the New Starts process.

The handbook covers New Starts basics and congressional involvement in project authorization and funding. It provides an overview of New Starts, Small Starts, and Very Small Starts – eligibility, reviews and ratings. The handbook also covers the project development process – how a project moves through the FTA ratings and evaluation process. The handbook includes "Action Steps" and adds helpful "Friendly Advice."

"The New Starts project evaluation and approval process encompasses every minute detail of transit projects from design to construction and it is all administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA)," the handbook explains. "The New Starts program is the principal federal program that enables transit systems to secure the necessary funds to build or extend fixed guideway projects. It is a multi-year process that includes extensive FTA oversight and review, annual reporting of project status and updated information, with a lot of planning, design, engineering and paperwork from initiation of the project to opening the project for revenue service."

Posted June 17, 2009

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