The last blog shared information about transportation issues facing our nation. However, we didn’t really delve into how funding decisions made by state and federal agencies affect our local transportation projects. There are big impacts, since local projects are predominantly funded from those larger “pots” of money.

A large portion of the funds for transportation projects comes from the federal government. The feds distribute those funds to state Departments of Transportation, which in turn disburse funds to local jurisdictions. That means individual States have a big say in which projects are funded and completed using federal money.

And that can lead to competition between state and local projects. Both states and local jurisdictions have their own transportation programs and both have claims to federal funds. But because there is never enough money to fund all of the projects that are planned, there are times when local projects don’t receive full funding. It is times like these, when money is tight at all levels, when local projects may suffer because State projects take precedence.

The Connector is in an interesting situation in terms of all of these funding decisions because it doesn’t really fall into a formal project “category.” As a large local capital project, it’s somewhat of an anomaly. There may be local projects that are a fraction of the size of the Connector, and state projects that are comparable in size, but there are almost no similar 35-mile local facilities.

Many large capital projects like the Connector are state projects that have a built-in force behind them, funding them and moving them forward. Because the Connector is a local project, it doesn’t have the high level of visibility that a state project would have with those making State funding decisions. That’s fine to a certain extent, since the majority of the initial project funding comes from local taxes, but presents challenges when we have to battle it out for higher-level funding. It means we have to be more creative to find the funding to complete the project—and that can be a very important challenge.

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