Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 41 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (899 download)
Book Synopsis Emergency Transportation Relief by :
Download or read book Emergency Transportation Relief written by and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department of Transportation (DOT) is in the process of allocating, obligating, and disbursing the $13 billion appropriated by the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013 (DRAA) for surface transportation relief. Most of the DRAA surface transportation funds--over $10 billion--were appropriated to the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) new Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program. An FTA damage assessment in January 2013 estimated the costs of repairing facilities damaged by Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey to be about $5.7 billion. To date, FTA has obligated about $1.5 billion for 15 grants and disbursed about $499 million to reimburse transit agencies for emergency response, recovery, and repair costs. These disbursements are consistent with Congressional Budget Office estimates, and transit projects can take years to complete. Furthermore, FTA plans to use nearly half of its DRAA appropriation for resiliency projects (or projects to protect facilities from future damage), most of which will be carried out through a competitive grant process. FTA was evaluating applications when GAO completed its review. FTA's new Public Transportation Emergency Relief Program has more flexibility and fewer restrictions in funding projects compared to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation programs and the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Emergency Relief Program. For example, FEMA's Hazard Mitigation program places limits on the amount of emergency relief funds that can be used for resiliency projects, while FTA's program does not. FTA's program also has more flexibility in how funds can be used for repairs, allowing transit agencies to improve facilities beyond pre-disaster conditions. The use of emergency relief funds for projects that go beyond recovery efforts is not new--activities funded by FHWA's Emergency Relief Program have also expanded beyond repair and reconstruction. The expanding scope of emergency relief assistance illustrates the fiscal exposure the federal government faces and the challenges of establishing long-term sustainable funding for disaster relief and recovery. Although FTA and FEMA have a memorandum of agreement for assisting transit providers during emergencies, they are limited in their ability to delineate specific roles and responsibilities for future disasters. This limit is because while FEMA receives funding on an ongoing basis, FTA, to date, has only received a supplemental appropriation for Hurricane Sandy and does not know what resources it will have for future disasters. Because FTA and FEMA have the authority to fund many of the same activities by law, transit agencies may experience confusion when seeking assistance under some circumstances. FTA and FEMA have not determined how collaborative efforts, including their communications program and protocol contemplated in the memorandum of agreement, will be monitored, evaluated, and reported, but instead rely on informal communication. As GAO has previously concluded, creating a means to evaluate the results of collaborative efforts can enhance and sustain them, and informal communications between federal agencies do not ensure that collaboration is effective. Establishing more formal monitoring and evaluation of combined efforts could help FTA and FEMA ensure effective collaboration.
