Planning & Project Development

This section of our website contains guidance on a variety of technical topics for the planning and project development of proposed Capital projects, including New Starts.

• Travel Forecasting for New Starts - This section contains materials relevant to travel forecasting for New Starts.

• Standard Cost Categories for Major Capital Projects - This section contains FTA's Standard Cost Category (SCC) Workbook as well as a guide on how to use the worksheets. The SCC is FTA's capital costing format for reporting, estimating, and managing of capital costs.  This format is required for all project sponsors in their request to enter preliminary engineering and throughout project development, construction, and at least two years into revenue operations. For questions on the SCCs, please contact Susan Herre at susan.herre@dot.gov. 

• Guidance for Transit Financial Plans - 2000. This FTA guidance explains how to develop a financial plan that meets FTA requirements.  The financial plan documents the recent financial history of the transit agency, describes its current financial health, documents projected costs and revenues, and demonstrates the reasonableness of key assumptions underlying these projections.  The financial plan is a project deliverable that FTA is required to review in order to comply with Section 3011(c)(1)(B)(i) of SAFETEA-LU, which states, in pertinent part, that "The Secretary shall not approve a grant for a project...unless the Secretary determines that the applicant has, or will have, the legal, financial and technical capacity to carry out the project, including safety and security aspects of the project."

• Making the Case Documents.  This is a 3-page narrative developed by the sponsoring agency that succinctly describes the benefits of the proposed New Starts investment, particularly in comparison to the New Starts Baseline (and other lower cost) alternative(s).  The intent of this narrative is to “make the case” for the New Starts project and to answer questions like: Who benefits from the project? How much? and Why?  The document should describe key substantiated project outcomes that justify the worthiness of the proposed New Starts investment.  These outcomes should be drawn from the alternatives analysis or other studies performed by the project sponsor that were used as the basis for selecting the locally preferred alternative.  This document is required for all projects at entry into Preliminary Engineering, and subsequent project approval points, as well as for the submittal for the Annual New Starts Report.  Two examples are provided here: New York 2nd Avenue Subway and Pittsburgh North Shore Connector.

• Procedures and Technical Methods for Transit Project Planning (Alternatives Analysis Technical Guidance) - various dates.  This guidance provides helpful information on a number of technical activities – definition of alternatives; methods used to support an adequate analysis of capital and O&M costs and travel demand analyses; and development of a project financial plan – which support the alternatives analysis study process.