TxDOT CUTS ENHANCEMENT FUNDS

By Ella Tyler

The Texas Department of Transportation has indefinitely suspended the state Transportation Enhancement Program, which distributes federal grants to local governments for projects that “encourage diverse modes of travel, increase the community benefits to transportation investment, strengthen partnerships between state and local governments, and promote citizen involvement in transportation decisions.” The grants are informally referred to as STEP grants.

If you have walked or biked on the White Oak Bayou, Braes Bayou, or Hermann Park trails; enjoyed the landscaping on the Gulf Freeway, Hardy Toll Road, or Bellaire Boulevard; or visited Allen’s Landing, you have been a beneficiary of these funds. Other area projects funded by the grants include the Fort Bend County courthouse restoration, Dickinson Depot restoration, the Mustang Trail project in Alvin, League City’s bikeways project, and pedestrian improvements in West University. In the program’s fifteen years, more than $466 million has been distributed to 505 different enhancement projects across Texas.

At the time the program was cancelled, thirty-two projects in the Houston Galveston area – building a bridge to connect the two sides of Memorial Park, repair of the Battleship Texas, beautification of the Turning Basin and NASA Parkway, building a trail along Spring Branch Creek, and beautification along Highway 225, for example – had grant applications pending.

Ramona Davis, executive director of the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, which is organizing opposition to the move, said, “Everyone should be up in arms about these cuts.”

A grants officer with a local foundation said that the impact of the cuts goes beyond the loss of the federal funds. She is concerned that local governments’ matching funds will now be spent on other kinds of projects.

The decision to suspend the program was an administrative decision made by TxDOT, according to Barbara Cogburn, director of the Landscape Design Enhancement department, a section of the TxDOT Design division. She said the Texas Transportation Commission met yesterday, December 14, and heard a lot of thoughtful, well prepared testimony from supporters of the program, but did not vote on the issue.

TxDOT decided to ax the program when the federal government cut $305 million from the $14.5 billion 2004-09 allocation for Texas because of the cost of the Iraq War and hurricane reconstruction. This is roughly a two percent cut in the appropriation.

The November 20 letter from Texas Transportation Commission chair Ric Williamson to the entities that had submitted grant requests said, “[The funds cut] put us in the position of having to choose between congestion-relief projects and enhancement projects.”

Apparently, the Federal Transportation Agency has not objected to the Texas plan. Williamson’s letter said, “Under each rescission [of highway funds] we provided [the Federal Highway Administration] with a list of categories to be cut, with the majority of the cuts coming from the transportation enhancement program.”

David Bush with the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance said, “Even though federal law requires that 10 percent of federal transportation funding is to go to enhancement projects, this move has met with no resistance from the federal agency.”

According to Bush, “Texas is the only state, so far, that has responded to federal funding cuts by eliminating the enhancement program, but the National Trust for Historic Preservation has joined our fight against these cuts to be sure that other states don’t follow the Texas lead.”

State representative Garnett Coleman believes that funding of local projects was scrapped so that the Trans-Texas corridor would have sufficient start-up money. “They saved their pet projects and sacrificed economic development and quality of life projects,” Coleman said.