Improving Capital Project Planning, Funding, Delivery, and Management: Taking your CIG Project from Good to Great (Leadership APTA)

Our group will be focusing on how agencies can take their Capital Investment Grant project(s) from good to great. The Capital Investment Grant program is the only Federal grant program for new capacity transit projects, and as such, is very competitive and oversubscribed. The projects competing for funding in this project also tend to be complex, and the process to get them from a proposed line on a map to an operating project is long and complicated.

While we are not aware of any project that has been delivered in a flawless manner through this program, there are some projects that have been more successfully implemented and/or have managed typical stumbling blocks in the program very well. Through our interviews with FTA staff, Transit Agency project leadership and consultant teams, we hope to identify the stumbling blocks for many projects in the CIG pipeline and highlight best practices that certain agencies have utilized to overcome them.  We will focus on both Small Starts and New Starts projects

We plan to potentially focus on the following areas, with more to be added as our interviews advance:

• Building local support for your project & necessary early action partnerships
• Funding challenges, and the long lead time to generate local funds
• What you need to get right during the planning phase - especially to ensure adequate ridership forecasting and project scoring
• Getting the right internal team and technical expertise in place early on
• Getting your operational teams to take the project seriously during planning and provide adequate feedback

Project Team:

• Liz Smith (coordinator) SEPTA
• LaTeeka Washington IndyGo
• Frederic Bana (SYSTRA USA)
• Sandra Fann (Sound Transit)
• Christine Beckwith (Metro Transit)