Director Jennifer Dill’s message for March 2011

With a new Congress, and especially a change in control of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I increasingly get asked what the future holds for transportation research in general and for OTREC in particular. As a national University Transportation Center, OTREC is funded by federal legislation known as the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Act: A Legacy for Users, or SAFETEA-LU. Those of you familiar with the law know that it authorizes the Secretary of Transportation to make grants to University Transportation Centers to advance research on critical national transportation issues and expand the workforce of transportation professionals.

Anyone who has given the law a closer reading might notice the dates: funding under the law only covers five federal fiscal years, 2005 through 2009. Looking out from 2011, what does that mean for OTREC, you might wonder, has the federal money dried up?

In short, no. But here’s the longer story:

OTREC started receiving federal funding not in 2005, when SAFETEA-LU officially took effect, but in late 2006. That means OTREC operates on a lag. Funding-wise, it’s still 2009 here, meaning that the original law still provides funding until Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year.

But Congress hasn’t passed a new surface transportation act. Does that mean the money runs out Sept. 30?

Again, no. Instead of passing a new multiyear transportation bill, always a tricky maneuver, Congress instead passed extensions of SAFETEA-LU, which otherwise would have expired in the fall of 2009. The extensions allow federal programs such as the University Transportation Center program to keep operating at the same funding level until a new transportation bill becomes law or the extensions run out.

So how long have things been extended? Is this part of the current budget battles?

In its most recent extension, Congress pushed funding out until Sept. 30, sparing transportation funding from the most heated federal budget debates taking place. By the end of September, optimistically, the President will have signed a new transportation bill. Or, barring that, yet another extension of SAFETEA-LU.

What if the law just expires? Does university transportation research stop on Oct. 1?

No. Remember, OTREC funding lags behind the federal act. That means that when Congress extended SAFETEA-LU to Sept. 30, 2011, it would, pending review, push OTREC’s funding to Sept. 30, 2013. And because OTREC projects take time to move through the stages from proposal acceptance to final report, we would probably receive a year’s extension to complete our already-funded work. Of course, a more likely scenario has Congress passing a reauthorization at some point before then. It may take another extension (or several) of SAFETEA-LU to get there. But we expect that Congress will eventually get there.

So what does this mean for OTREC?

We haven’t changed our mission here. We’re still dedicated to pushing forward innovative research on sustainable transportation through our theme areas of advanced technology, the integration of land use and transportation, and healthy communities. We’re still expanding the workforce of transportation professionals by creating and expanding educational programs and by making sure our research gets to the practitioners who can put it to use. We’ve just received more than 40 proposals from our four member universities and we’re excited at the opportunities this represents. In short, we intend to be here, and making a difference, for a long time to come.