ARTBA Cautions Agency About Transportation Fund Diversion Risk Under “Livability” Initiative
(Washington, D.C.)—A Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) plan to comingle highway and housing funds and contracting procedures under the auspices of “livability” must take steps to retain long-standing transportation policy. That was the central message of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) in comments submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation on the “Special Experimental Project No. 14” (SEP-14).
SEP-14 is a FHWA rule that allows states and other contracting authorities to pursue innovative and more efficient contracting procedures to expedite construction of transportation projects.
ARTBA pointed out that the proposal to jointly fund “livability and sustainability” would apply SEP-14 to purposes other than those for which it was originally designed. “[T]he SEP-14 process has been used to enable the use of contracting techniques such as cost-plus time bidding, lane rental, design build contracting and warranty clauses in order to reduce the time associated with the contracting and project delivery process for traditional highway projects,” the association said.
“Applying SEP-14 to projects geared towards livability, a notion which currently means vastly different things to different people, would take SEP-14 in an entirely new direction.” ARTBA specifically recommended that a detailed definition of “livability” be developed before committing federal funds.
Furthermore, ARTBA raised concerns about the possible diversion of highway-generated revenues to non-highway projects, noting that federal funds provided by transportation system users should be dedicated for use on transportation infrastructure. The association called on FHWA to develop mechanisms to ensure limited user fee revenues continue to be dedicated for this purpose.
A copy of ARTBA’s comments is available under the “regulatory affairs” section of www.artba.org.
Established in 1902, ARTBA represents the U.S. transportation design and construction industry in the Nation’s Capital.