What is the FTA process?
A. The federal government funds some new transit projects through a New Starts Process. For regions interested in accessing the federal New Starts funds, they have developed a process for comparing major transit investments throughout the country. The New Starts Process is intended to make sure that federal funding for transit projects are compared on a level playing field. This way, a project in Boone and Winnebago Counties can be compared with a project in St. Louis or Charlotte or Sacramento or Chicago for funding by the limited federal New Starts dollars. All areas must follow a similar set of evaluation steps. At the end of the process, there are a series of criteria that the FTA will evaluate including: Effectiveness the extent to which alternatives solve the stated transportation problems in the corridor Impacts the extend to which the alternatives impact positively or negatively nearby natural resources and neighborhoods, air quality, the adjacent transportation network and fac
