23 U.S.C. § 117 — Nationally significant multimodal freight and highway projects

(a) Establishment. This section creates a competitive grant program for freight and highway projects that matter nationally or regionally. The program's goals are to: improve the safety, efficiency, and reliability of moving freight and people in rural and urban areas; boost the economy and make the U.S. more competitive globally; cut highway and freight congestion and bottlenecks; connect different freight transportation modes better; make critical highway and freight infrastructure more resilient and protect the environment; improve roads that matter for national energy security, including roads that carry energy equipment; and address how population growth affects the movement of people and freight. (b) Grant Authority. The Secretary of Transportation may award competitive grants under this program. Each grant must be at least $25,000,000, unless the law says otherwise. The Secretary may keep up to 2% of the program's funds for the National Surface Transportation and Innovative Finance Bureau to review grant applications, and may pass part of that money to the agencies that award and oversee the grants. (c) Eligible Applicants. The Secretary may give grants to: a State or group of States; a metropolitan planning organization serving an urban area over 200,000 people; a local government or group of local governments; a political subdivision of a State or local government; a special-purpose district or public authority with a transportation role, like a port authority; a federal land agency that applies jointly with a State; a tribal government or group of tribal governments; a multistate corridor organization; or a multistate group combining any of these. Applicants must submit an application in whatever form, timing, and content the Secretary requires. (d) Eligible Projects. Except for small projects under subsection (e), a grant may only fund a project that is one of these types: a highway freight project on the National Highway Freight Network; a highway or bridge project on the National Highway System, including projects that add capacity to the Interstate System or that sit in a national scenic area; a freight intermodal or rail project, or a project inside a freight rail, water, port, or intermodal facility needed to connect that facility to other transportation; a railway-highway grade crossing or separation project; a wildlife crossing project; a project at or connected to an international border crossing that is owned by a government and increases how much traffic the crossing can handle, including adding lanes or technology; a project on a marine highway corridor the Secretary has designated, if it connects to the National Highway Freight Network and is likely to cut on-road vehicle emissions; or a highway, bridge, or freight project on the National Multimodal Freight Network. The project's costs must be expected to reach at least the smaller of $100,000,000, or - for a project in one State - 30% of that State's most recent apportionment under this chapter, or - for a project spanning more than one State - 50% of the largest participating State's most recent apportionment. Limitation: no more than 30% of each year's grant funds (fiscal years 2022-2026) may go to the freight-facility-connector projects described above, and those projects only qualify if they will significantly improve freight movement on the National Highway Freight Network and if the federal grant money only pays for parts of the project that benefit the public. This 30% cap does not apply to railway-highway grade crossing or separation projects, and for a multimodal project it only applies to the non-highway part. (e) Small Projects. The Secretary must set aside at least 15% of each year's grant funds for projects that meet subsection (d)'s eligibility rules but not its cost minimum. Each small-project grant must be at least $5,000,000. In choosing these projects, the Secretary must weigh their cost-effectiveness, their effect on mobility in the State and region, and their effect on safety along freight routes with major hazards such as high winds, heavy snow, flooding, rockslides, mudslides, wildfire, wildlife crossing the road, or steep grades. At least 30% of this set-aside must go to rural-area projects, using the rural definition in subsection (i)(3). (f) Eligible Project Costs. Grant money can pay for early-stage work - planning, feasibility studies, revenue forecasts, environmental review, preliminary design, and other pre-construction work - and also for construction, rebuilding, repair, buying land and improving it, environmental mitigation (including replacing culverts or cutting stormwater runoff to help aquatic habitat), construction contingencies, buying equipment, and operational upgrades that directly improve how the system performs. (g) Project Requirements. For projects other than small projects under (e), the Secretary can only select a project if it will bring national or regional economic, mobility, or safety benefits; is cost-effective; helps meet one or more of the national goals in section 150; is based on completed preliminary engineering; has stable, dependable non-federal funding lined up to build, maintain, and operate it, plus a reserve for unexpected cost increases; could not be finished easily without this federal help; and is expected to start construction within 18 months of the funds being obligated. (h) Additional Considerations. In picking grants, the Secretary must also weigh: use of new financing methods, design, construction techniques, or technology; use of non-federal money; geographic diversity among winners, balancing rural and urban needs; making freight infrastructure more resilient to natural hazards like the ones listed in subsection (e); whether the project helps a shared corridor used by a multistate corridor organization; and giving priority to States where neither the State nor anyone in it has won a grant under this section before. (i) Rural Areas. The Secretary must set aside at least 25% of each year's grant funds (including money set aside under (e)) for rural-area projects. If there are not enough qualified rural applications to use up that money in a given year, the leftover money goes instead to small-project grants under (e). "Rural area" here means an area outside an urbanized area of more than 200,000 people. (j) Federal Assistance. Federal share: except for small projects or pilot-program grants under (q), the federal share of a project's cost cannot exceed 60%; for small projects under (e), it is 80%. Maximum federal involvement: other than for pilot-program grants, other federal money can cover the non-federal share, except that in a State with 80 or fewer people per square mile (per the 2010 census), the cap on total federal help follows section 120(b), and in other States total federal help cannot exceed 80% of the project's total cost. Federal land agencies: despite any other law, a federal land management agency (as described in subsection (c)) may use other federal money, besides funds from this title or title 49, to cover its non-federal share. (k) Efficient Use of Non-Federal Funds. Between being selected for a grant and signing the grant agreement, a recipient may spend its own non-federal money on the project, and that spending counts toward its required non-federal cost share, if the Secretary approves. To get approval, the recipient must apply describing the planned activities, justifying them (including how the project's scope, schedule, and budget would suffer if not approved), and stating the activities' risk level. The Secretary decides whether to approve. Any money spent this way must still follow all other applicable rules, including the grant agreement's terms. Spending money early this way does not affect the signing of the grant agreement, does not obligate the federal government to repay the money if the agreement is never signed, and does not stop the recipient from spending more non-federal money later to meet its cost share. (l) Treatment of Freight Projects. A freight project funded under this section is treated as if it were on a federal-aid highway, no matter what other law might say. (m) TIFIA Program. At an applicant's request, the Secretary may use its grant money to pay the subsidy and administrative costs needed to give the applicant federal credit assistance under chapter 6 for the same project. (n) Congressional Notification. At least 60 days before giving a grant, the Secretary must send Congress a report evaluating and justifying the project and stating the grant amount. Congress can block the grant by passing a joint resolution disapproving it before that 60-day period ends. (o) Applicant Notification. Within 60 days of picking a grant recipient, the Secretary must tell every unsuccessful applicant in writing that they were not chosen, and offer them a written or phone debrief explaining how their application was evaluated and why it wasn't picked. An applicant who wants the debrief must ask within 30 days of getting the notice, and the Secretary must then provide it within 60 days of getting that request. (p) Reports. Annual report: within 30 days of selecting a project, the Secretary must send Congress a report explaining why, listing which of the Secretary's own criteria the project meets, and post the report on the Department's website; this applies to projects picked on or after October 1, 2021. Comptroller General: the Comptroller General must review how projects are set up, solicited, selected, and justified, and report to Congress each year, starting one year after this law's enactment, on how each project was chosen, what factors mattered, and the justification. Inspector General: the DOT Inspector General must do the same kind of review and send Congress its own findings each year, starting one year after enactment. (q) State Incentives Pilot Program. This creates a pilot program using this section's regular eligibility rules. Applications offering a bigger non-federal cost share get priority. The federal share here cannot exceed 50%, and (unlike the regular program) other federal assistance normally cannot be used to cover the non-federal share - except that money from a secured loan under section 601(a) can, if it's repayable from non-federal funds. Each year the Secretary must set aside $150,000,000 for this pilot; if applications aren't enough to use it all, the leftover goes to other grants under this section. Within that $150,000,000, at least 10% each year must go to small projects (following subsection (e)'s rules but not subsection (g)'s), and at least 25% must go to rural projects (following subsection (i)'s rules). Within two years of this pilot being created, the Secretary must report to Congress on how it's been run, including who applied, who won, whether it actually got applicants to offer bigger non-federal shares, and any recommendations for changes. (r) Multistate Corridor Organization Defined. This term means a group of States working together - through agreements, coalitions, or similar arrangements - to plan and manage transportation for a shared corridor. (s) Additional Authorization of Appropriations. Beyond Highway Trust Fund money, Congress authorizes extra funding for this section, available for three years after the year it's appropriated: $1,000,000,000 for 2022; $1,100,000,000 for 2023; $1,200,000,000 for 2024; $1,300,000,000 for 2025; and $1,400,000,000 for 2026.