Title
Request Authorization to Submit Federal Highway Administration Grant Application and Enter Into Grant Agreement (Ordinance S-44734)
Description
Request to authorize the City Manager, or his designee, to: (1) apply for Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Advanced Transportation and Congestion Management Technologies Deployment Initiative discretionary grants for a federal amount not to exceed $14 million; and (2) enter into agreements with the FHWA or the U.S. Department of Transportation for the purpose of accepting the awarded grants. Further request to authorize the City Treasurer to accept and the City Controller to disburse the funds for purposes of this ordinance.
Report
Summary
The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act or "FAST Act" established new program funding in 2016, in part through the FHWA, to make competitive grants available for the model deployment of sites for large scale installation and operation of advanced transportation technologies to improve safety, efficiency, system performance and infrastructure return on investment in rural and urban areas throughout the country. The deployments are expected to provide benefits such as reduced traffic congestion and improved travel time reliability; optimize multimodal system performance, and cost savings to transportation agencies, business, and the traveling public.
The City of Phoenix is seeking award of two components of the grant described below:
The Public Transit Department will submit a grant application for up to $7 million in federal funding to assist in the implementation of the planned regional Fare Collections System upgrade project. The new system would also move away from magnetic-striped, paper passes toward electronic fare media, including mobile tickets and smartcards. The account-based electronic fare media will allow for greater control of reduced fares at the point of sale. The initial phase will deploy mobile ticketing region-wide for fixed route bus and light rail services while the second phase will create a smartcard system (account-based reloadable smartcard).
The Street Transportation Department will submit a grant application for up to $7 million to develop a transit signal priority (TSP) strategy in coordination with our voter-approved plan for 75 miles of bus rapid transit (BRT). The first BRT route is scheduled to open in 2023 and will include a TSP strategy to improve traffic and transit progression. Grant funds will be used to determine software, control, and activation/detection equipment and implementation path necessary to deploy the desired TSP, including estimations of cost. The first implementation will be a pilot engaging TSP during peak periods to evaluate and optimize traffic and transit progression in highly congested corridors. Although TSP is being implemented with BRT, the technology will be designed to coordinate with the existing signal system and can be used to address traffic congestion in other areas of the City.
Financial Impact
FHWA grant applications for this project require a minimum 50 percent non-federal cost share. The Public Transit Department's local match will come from regional Public Transportation Funds (Proposition 400), for the non-federal share for the region. The Street Transportation Department's local match will come from the Department's Capital Improvement Program budget.
Department
Responsible Department
This item is submitted by Deputy City Manager Mario Paniagua and the Public Transit and Street Transportation departments.