MPO Funding

On August 10, 2005, the President signed into law the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU).  With guaranteed funding for highways, highway safety, and public transportation totaling over $244 billion, SAFETEA-LU represents the largest surface transportation investment in our nation's history.  The two landmark bills that brought surface transportation into the 21st century - the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) and the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) – shaped the highway program to meet the nation's changing transportation needs. SAFETEA-LU builds on this firm foundation, supplying the funds and refining the programmatic framework for investments needed to maintain and grow our nation's vital transportation infrastructure.

Once funding is authorized at the federal level, it is sent to urban areas through state departments of transportation for funding multi-modal projects in each region's short and long-range plans.  Various funding categories are established at the statewide level in order to properly administer the State's transportation funds.

• Federal Highway Administration web site

     Funding Categories

Funding is then distributed to each MPO area through various formulas. With declining federal and state gas tax revenues due to more efficient vehicles, and a decrease in driving due to higher gas prices and an unpredictable economy, it has become difficult to reasonably project future funding streams for programming projects in the area's long range Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP).  Also, certain categories of state funding (Proposition 12 and 14) and federal funding (economic stimulus) are non-sustaininable funding sources and are also not predictable. Therefore, the MPO will continue to seek new partnerships and to identify funding programs as they become available in order to advance transportation projects.  

• Funding category can be found in the Financial Chapter of the MTP.
• These funding categories can be found at www.dot.state.tx.us

    Types of Funded Projects

Projects listed in the long range transportation plan are selected through the MPO's technical analysis and public involvement process.  Since the long range plan is a financially constrained plan, projects may only be programmed up to the amount of anticipated funding for the 25-year period covered in the plan.

     Future Funding

The transportation infrastructure needs of the region are far greater than future funding amounts anticipated over the next 25 years.  Diversions of the State and Federal fuel tax create a significant deficit in the amount of funding available for transportation projects. However, even if these diversions were removed, the MPO and its planning partners would still need to continue to find innovative ways to preserve, maintain, and expand the region's transportation infrastructure.