Announcement of Fiscal Year 2016 Low or No Emission Grant Program Project Selections

AGENCY:

Federal Transit Administration

ACTION:

Notice.

SUMMARY:

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announces the selection of projects with Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 appropriations for the Low or No Emission Grant Program (Low-No Program), as authorized by the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act (FAST) Act. The FAST Act authorized $55 million for competitive allocations in FY 2016. On March 29, 2016, FTA published a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) (81 FR 17553) announcing the availability of Federal funding for the Low-No Program. These program funds will provide financial assistance to states and eligible public agencies for the purchase or lease of low or no emission vehicles that use advanced technologies and for related equipment or facilities use for transit revenue operations.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Successful applicants should contact the appropriate FTA Regional Office for information regarding applying for the funds or program-specific information. A list of Regional Offices can be found at www.fta.dot.gov. Unsuccessful applicants may contact Tara Clark, Office of Program Management at (202) 366-2623, email: Tara.Clark@dot.gov, to arrange a proposal debriefing within 30 days of this announcement. A TDD is available at 1-800-877-8339 (TDD/FIRS).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

In response to the NOFO, FTA received 101 proposals from 32 states requesting $446 million in Federal funds, indicating significant demand for funding for low or no emission capital projects. Project proposals were evaluated based on each applicant's responsiveness to the program evaluation criteria outlined in the NOFO.

FTA is funding 20 projects as shown in Table 1 for a total of $55 million. Recipients selected for competitive funding should work with their FTA Regional Office to finalize the grant application in FTA's Transit Award Management System (TrAMs) for the projects identified in the attached table to quickly obligate funds. Grant applications must include eligible activities applied for in the original project application. Funds must be used consistent with the competitive proposal and for the eligible capital purposes established in the NOFO and described in the FTA Circular 9030.1E.

In cases where the allocation amount is less than the proposer's total requested amount, recipients must fund the scalable project option as described in the application. If the award amount does not correspond to the scalable option, for example due to a cap on the award amount, the recipient should work with the Regional Office to reduce scope or scale of the project such that a complete phase or project is accomplished. Recipients are reminded that program requirements such as cost sharing or local match can be found in the NOFO. A discretionary project identification number has been assigned to each project for tracking purposes and must be used in the TrAMs application.

Selected projects are eligible to incur costs under pre-award authority no earlier than the date projects were publicly announced, July 26, 2016. Pre-award authority does not guarantee that project expenses incurred prior to the award of a grant will be eligible for reimbursement, as eligibility for reimbursement is contingent upon other requirements, such as planning and environmental requirements, having been met. For more about FTA's policy on pre-award authority, please see the FTA Fiscal Year 2016 Apportionments, Allocations, and Program Information and Interim Guidance found in 81 FR 7893 (February 16, 2016). Post-award reporting requirements include submission of the Federal Financial Report and Milestone progress reports in TrAMs as appropriate (see Grant Management Requirements FTA.C.5010.1D and Urbanized Area Formula Program: Program Guidance and Application Instructions C9030.1E). Recipients must comply with all applicable Federal statutes, regulations, executive orders, FTA circulars, and other Federal requirements in carrying out the project supported by the FTA grant. For selected projects that involve partnerships, the competitive selection process will be deemed to satisfy the requirement for a competitive procurement under 49 U.S.C. 5325(a). All other recipients must follow all third-party procurement guidance as described in FTA.C.4220.1F. Funds allocated in this announcement must be obligated in a grant by September 30, 2019.