A TIGER a Year Keeps the Air Clear?

Much has been made of the Department of Transportation's popular TIGER grant program. When I wrote about these innovative new grants, I concluded that the TIGER program's overwhelming popularity shows how a competitive, performance-based grant program can drive state and local investment patterns by highlighting certain national objectives - in this case job creation, economic development, safety, environmental sustainability, and livability, among others.

In other words, if the feds put money on the table, and attach a few strings related to national goals, states and locals will rise to the occasion, each in their own way.

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - the economic stimulus - TIGER only runs through 2011 (much to the chagrin of those receiving funding).

Join me in a thought experiment though: what if Congress authorized DOT to run a TIGER-type program every year until 2050? And what if, instead of multiple objectives, this program had oil dependence and climate change as its core goals? If offering states and locals $1.5 billion over 2 years can generate the response that TIGER did, such a program focused on energy and climate security could drive significant progress in cutting oil use and carbon pollution from our transportation system.

So what's the chance that this idea will become anything more than an idea? Well that depends upon the fate of the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act...  

This legislation passed out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last week. While the bill still has several more hurdles to clear in the Senate, this momentum is reason to be hopeful that legislation like Kerry-Boxer could be sent to the President this year. And sitting squarely in the beginning of the Kerry-Boxer bill is a program much like the scenario I described above, based on legislation introduced earlier this year by Senators Tom Carper and Arlen Specter. The House version of the bill has similar provisions.

That means that upon passage of comprehensive climate and energy legislation, the Department of Transportation would be able to offer clean transportation grants to state and regional government. Averaging about $1.5 billion each year, the grants would support direct investment in clean, efficient transportation in local communities all around the country.

A portion of these grants would be for states and metropolitan regions to develop low-carbon transportation investment plans to ensure that the money is well spent on needed local transportation projects, and well targeted at cutting oil consumption and carbon emissions. But the vast majority of the funding would support implementation of these plans, building projects that will make our transportation system more sustainable.

Funding would be awarded competitively, based on the relative contribution of a plan or project to achieving energy and climate goals, in a way that accounts for regional and local differences in travel, economy, and infrastructure. This acts as a perforamnce incentive, which also helps to ensure that plans are both ambitious but achievable.

If (when!) Kerry-Boxer and its clean transportation grants pass,  I think that well see a fair number of states and locals falling all over each other to show how clean, mean, and green they can be. This sort of flexible, performance-based investment, geared toward national objectives, is exactly the direction we need to be heading with our transportation policy. And not only on energy and climate, but on a broader set of transportation priorities. Then, maybe the Transportation Efficiency Act will start to live up to its name...