SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

The competitive funding allocations announced in this notice are authorized by Section 5339(b) of Title 49, United States Code. Federal public transportation law at 49 U.S.C. 5338(a)(2)(M) authorizes $246,514,000 million for competitive allocations in FY 2018. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 appropriated an additional $161,446,000 for the Bus Program for FY 2018. After the statutory set aside for oversight, $366,293,150 was available for competitive grants under the Bus Program.

On June 21, 2018, FTA published a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) announcing the availability of $366,293,150 in competitive funding under the Bus Program. These funds will provide financial assistance to states and eligible public agencies to replace, rehabilitate, purchase, or lease ( printed page 8394) buses, vans, and related equipment, and capital projects to rehabilitate, purchase, construct, or lease bus-related facilities. In response to the NOFO, FTA received 339 project proposals from 51 States and territories requesting approximately $2 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 107 projects, as shown in Table 1, for a total of $366,162,440. 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. 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.

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 also may 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, which was September 25, 2018. 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 FTA Fiscal Year 2018 Apportionments, Allocations, and Program Information and Interim Guidance found in 83 FR 33018 (July 16, 2018). Post-award reporting requirements include submission of the Federal Financial Report and Milestone progress reports in TrAMs (see FTA.C.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 guidance as authorized by 49 U.S.C. 5325(a) and described in FTA.C.4220.1F. Funds allocated in this announcement must be obligated in a grant by September 30, 2021.

Technical Review and Evaluation Summary: FTA assessed all project proposals that were submitted under the FY 2018 Bus Program competition according to the following evaluation criteria. The specific metrics for each criterion were described in the June 21, 2018 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.

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 project 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 category. A summary of the overall scores is shown in the table below.

Overall Project Ratings (eligible submissions):

As outlined in the NOFO, FTA made the final selections based on the technical ratings as well geographic diversity, Departmental objectives, and/or receipt of other recent competitive awards. As further outlined in the NOFO, in some cases, due to funding limitations, proposers that were selected for funding received less than the amount originally requested.

84 FR 8393