Announcement of Fiscal Year 2024 Low or No Emission Program and Grants for Buses and Bus Facilities Program and Project Selections

AGENCY:

Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Department of Transportation (DOT).

ACTION:

Notice of project selections and implementation guidance.

SUMMARY:

The U.S. Department of Transportation's (DOT) Federal Transit Administration (FTA) announces the award of a total of $1,497,553,559, including $1,107,355,187 to projects under the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 Low or No Emission Grant Program (Low-No) and $390,198,372 to projects under the Grants for Buses and Bus Facilities Program (Buses and Bus Facilities Program) and provides administrative guidance on project implementation.

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 https://www.transit.dot.gov/about/regional-offices/regional-offices. Unsuccessful applicants may contact Kirsten Wiard-Bauer, Office of Program Management, at 202-366-7052 or email ftalownobusnofo@dot.gov within 30 days of this announcement to arrange a proposal debriefing. Unsuccessful applicants that received an overall rating of Highly Recommended may potentially only receive feedback via email. A TDD is available at 1-800-877-8339 (TDD/FIRS).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

Federal public transportation law (49 U.S.C. 5339(b)) authorizes FTA to make competitive grants for the Buses and Bus Facilities Program. Federal public transportation law (49 U.S.C. 5339(c)) authorizes FTA to make competitive grants for the Low-No Program.

Federal public transportation law (49 U.S.C. 5338(a)(2)(M)) authorized $393,559,749 in FY 2024 funds for the Buses and Bus Facilities Program. After the oversight takedown of $3,513,926, the total funding available is $390,045,823 for the Buses and Bus Facilities Program. FTA is also making additional prior year funding available for this round, bringing the total available funding to $390,198,372.

Federal public transportation law (49 U.S.C. 5338(a)(2)(M)) authorized $74,963,762 in FY 2024 funds for the Low or No Emission Grant Program. An additional $1,029,000,000 was appropriated under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Law”), Public Law 117-58, after accounting for the authorized takedown for administrative and oversight expenses and the Office of Inspector General (OIG). After the oversight takedown and transfer to the OIG and the addition of prior year funding, a total of $1,108,489,337 was made available for the Low-No program in FY 2024.

On February 8, 2024, FTA published a joint Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) announcing the availability of approximately $390 million in FY 2024 Buses and Bus Facilities Program funds and approximately $1.10 billion in Low-No funds (89 FR 8741). Consistent with the NOFO, which stated that FTA “may award additional funding that is made available to the programs prior to the announcement of project selections,” FTA is electing to add prior years' unallocated funds for Buses and Bus Facilities Program and Low-No to this funding opportunity. These funds will provide financial assistance to states and eligible public agencies to replace, rehabilitate, purchase, or lease buses, vans, and related equipment; and for capital projects to rehabilitate, purchase, construct, or lease bus-related facilities. For the Low-No Program, projects must be directly related to the low or no-emission vehicles within the fleet. In response to the NOFO, FTA received 477 eligible project proposals totaling approximately $9.0 billion in Federal funds. Project proposals were evaluated based on each applicant's responsiveness to the program evaluation criteria outlined in the NOFO.

Based on the criteria in the NOFO, FTA is funding 62 projects, as shown in Tables 1 and 2, for a total of $1,107,355,187 for the Low-No Program and 55 projects, as shown in Table 3, for a total of $390,198,372 for the Buses and Bus Facilities Program. A minimum of 15 percent of the amount made available for the Buses and Bus Facilities Program is set aside for projects located in rural areas, which is reflected in FTA's selections. A statutory cap of 10 percent for any one applicant in the Buses and Bus Facilities Program is reflected as well. A minimum of 25 percent of the amount made available for the Low-No Program is set aside for projects related to the acquisition of low emission buses or bus facilities. Recipients selected for funding under the low-emission set-aside are designated in Table 2, and may implement only low emission projects.

Recipients selected for competitive funding are required to work with their FTA Regional Office to submit a 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 only eligible activities applied for in the original project application. Funds must be used consistent with the competitive proposal and for the eligible capital purposes described in the NOFO. Recipients selected for funding must implement the project in accordance with any additional considerations/priority considerations that the applicant indicated their intent to comply with in Section IV of the application's Supplemental Form, unless otherwise permitted by FTA. This includes, but is not limited to, the use of progress payments unless the vehicle manufacturer identifies to the recipient that it will provide a more advantageous price in their absence.

In cases where the allocation amount is less than the proposer's total requested amount, recipients are required to fund the scalable project option as described in the application. If the award amount does not correspond to the scalable option, the recipient should work with the Regional Office to reduce scope or scale the project such that a complete phase or project is accomplished. Recipients may also provide additional local funds to complete a proposed project. 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. 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 current FTA Apportionments, Allocations, and Program Information at https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/apportionments. Post-award reporting requirements include submission of Federal Financial Reports and Milestone Progress Reports in TrAMS (see FTA Circular 5010.1E). 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. FTA emphasizes that recipients must follow all third-party procurement requirements set forth in Federal public transportation law (49 U.S.C. 5325(a)) and described in the FTA Third Party Contracting Guidance Circular (FTA Circular 4220.1). Funds allocated in this announcement must be obligated in a grant by September 30, 2027.

Technical Review and Evaluation Summary: FTA assessed all project proposals that were submitted under the FY 2024 Buses and Bus Facilities Program and the Low-No Program competition according to the following evaluation criteria. The specific metrics for each criterion were described in the February 2024 NOFO:

1. Demonstration of Need

2. Demonstration of Benefits

3. Planning/Local Prioritization

4. Local Financial Commitment

5. Project Implementation Strategy

6. Technical, Legal, and Financial Capacity

For each project, a technical review panel assigned a rating of Highly Recommended, Recommended, or Not Recommended for each of the six criteria. The technical review panel then assigned an overall rating of Highly Recommended, Recommended, Not Recommended, or Ineligible to the project proposal.

New in FY 2024, FTA introduced a streamlined application for Tribal applicants requesting less than $1 million in order to reduce the burden of application for Tribes with smaller requests and encourage more Tribal applications. Such applicants were only required to provide a full response to Demonstration of Need and Local Financial Commitment, and a shortened response to Project Implementation Strategy. Tribes with requests of less than $1 million had to meet statutory requirements, such as attaching a fleet transition plan to zero-emission applications, but did not need to provide responses related to any Administration priorities described as additional considerations or priority considerations in the NOFO or application Supplemental Form.

Projects were assigned a final overall rating of Highly Recommended if they were rated Highly Recommended in at least four categories overall, with no Not Recommended ratings. Projects were assigned a final overall rating of Recommended if the projects had three or more Recommended ratings and no Not Recommended ratings. Projects were assigned a rating of Not Recommended if they received a Not Recommended rating in any criteria. A summary of the final overall ratings for all 477 eligible project proposals is shown in the table below.

As outlined in the NOFO, FTA made the final selections based on the technical ratings as well as geographic diversity, diversity in the size of transit systems receiving funding, additional considerations/priority considerations, including procurement methods to reduce customization, intent to use advance or progress payments, climate change and sustainability, an application's zero-emission fleet transition plan supporting a full fleet transition, workforce involvement, the creation of good-paying jobs, and the Justice40 initiative.

As further outlined in the NOFO, in some cases, due to funding limitations, proposers who were selected for funding received less than the amount originally requested.