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This Report to Congress fulfills the requirements of Section 3033 of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which called for a study of the Urbanized Area Formula Program administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), focusing on the needs of small urbanized areas that provide unusually intensive transit service. Specifically, Section 3033 directs the Secretary of Transportation to "conduct a study to determine whether the formula for apportioning funds to urbanized areas under section 5336 of title 49, United States Code, accurately reflects the transit needs of the urbanized areas and, if not, whether any changes should be made either to the formula or through some other mechanism to reflect the fact that some urbanized areas with a population between 50,000 and 200,000 have transit systems that carry more passengers per mile or hour than the average of those transit systems in urbanized areas with a population over 200,000."
A Federal Register Notice announcing the study, along with a request for comments on its design, was published on July 9, 1999. Outreach sessions were held in Sacramento, CA, and Washington, DC, during that same month. Many helpful written and oral comments, received from parties interested in the study, have been incorporated into this report.
The first section of this report outlines the formula grant programs administered by the Federal Transit Administration. It is followed by a discussion of the existing and potential transit needs that cities have, and how the formula factors used relate to these needs. The third section characterizes small, transit intensive cities, which are the focus of the study, and some of the funding issues that they face.
The next two sections involve data analysis. The first disaggregates recent federal transit funding by urbanized area size, showing the differences among size categories in funding relative to population and service levels. The second analyzes potential changes to the formula and other funding alternatives that would result in small transit intensive cities receiving a greater share of federal funding.
The study also includes a discussion of other issues related to the urbanized area formula program, many of which were raised by commenters on the study. The report concludes with the findings and recommendations of FTA regarding the Urbanized Area Formula Program.
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