Q&A with FRA's Szabo

On Feb. 9, HSRupdates.com caught up with Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo at the American Public Transportation/International Union of Railways’ “International Practicum on Implementing High-Speed Rail in the United States” in Chicago. He discussed the recent high-speed rail stimulus grant awards and next steps — both for the FRA and states.

HSRupdates.com: How were the decisions made on the grant awards?

Szabo: When we were first formulating the grant guidance, we chose to undertake a series of eight listening sessions across the country to engage the stakeholders — frankly, to listen to their expertise and their vision before we even started formulating how we would review the grants. From those eight listening sessions, roughly 1,200 people participated — state DOTs, all of those stakeholders that ultimately will have a part in executing the president’s vision. From there, we put out the grant guidance, made an initial round of contact with the state DOTs that put in pre-applications, and went back and met with all of them. While we could not tell anybody what to do, by asking them a series of questions, we were helping them help themselves to grade their own applications to prepare them for final submission.

When the final grants came in, we used a truly a merit-based process that looked at all sorts of components, from project readiness — how close were they to actually being ready to go? — and keeping in mind we have two goals in this: immediate job creation, as well as a transformative transportation vision, so you have to achieve both. So project readiness was a key part of it. Obviously the merits of the project — potential ridership, the return on public investment, public benefits, the level of CO2 that we’d potentially take out of the air, how much fuel consumption one would save — those kind of variables were looked at. The states’ ability to manage the project — to make sure it wasn’t only ready to go right away, but that it will truly be viable long term. These were just some of the components that we graded; there was a whole list of them.

Then, teams were put together — not just from FRA’s staff and not just from Washington, D.C. We brought in FRA employees from the regions across the country because in many cases, they know about these projects. Who knows the infrastructure better in Chicago than some of the safety inspectors that are based there? Same thing in Washington state, California, Florida. We bought in our regional folks. Folks from FTA, FAA, from the Federal Highway Administration. And that’s another thing — multimodalism was a key part of how the applications were graded. It’s not good enough just to move people from point A to point B in the city, but how do you deliver them the final mile?

So the applications essentially were graded, the cream rose to the top and then it became a matter of sorting through regional equity to make sure not one region received an undue advantage over another. We also talked about how you benefited disadvantaged areas, which was a requirement under the [recovery] act. So now that you have the merits of the project, you’re sorting through these other things, and then how do you whittle $57 billion worth of projects down to $8 billion? That was the mindset, the staff came back with recommendations, I made recommendations to the [U.S. transportation] secretary and the secretary made a decision.

HSRupdates.com: What’s the next step for the FRA? How are you transitioning so you can manage such a large-scale program?

Szabo: There are many balls in play simultaneously. Even as we were executing the program, selecting grants and making recommendations to the secretary, we were already internally preparing how the structure of our agency needed to change. We’re already interviewing new employees with new skill sets. We’re also continuing to move forward with the National Rail Plan and we have a tight timeline on that.

I couldn’t be more pleased with the efforts of the staff to meet all of these deadlines. The line I like to use is,”We’ve been doing it on a lot of caffeine and sugar.” There’s such tremendous enthusiasm among the staff and it keeps everyone motivated, but we understand that can’t carry us over the long term. We have a proposed structure that’s been shared internally and with the secretary. We’re hiring accordingly to get ourselves staffed up for the 2010 fiscal year, continuing to work on completing the National Rail Plan while we also go up for another round of grants.

HSRupdates.com: And what is the timeline for the next round of high-speed grants?

Szabo: We haven’t made a definitive decision yet. We’ve had some internal discussions and I intend to have a briefing with the secretary in the next 10 days to make some decisions, but we have another $2.5 billion available in 2010 money and I don’t think we’ll be sitting on that too long. And there’s two reasons for that: One, job creation — getting it out the door to actually implement construction is an important part of this and two, it’s quite obvious there’s a pretty good pot of high-quality projects. So while we continue to work with states to get them ready for the next round, there’s so much that is ready to go and it’s actually part of developing a continuing pipeline of projects.

HSRupdates.com: What advice would you give to states that are looking to obtain funding in future rounds?

Szabo: Two things: First off, we have set up customer service teams that are going to be working with all of the states and so much of it is going to be about capacity building — building their technical skills and helping them get ready for future rounds. Then, obviously the first time out of the box on the grants, there’s a learning curve for everybody, so we’re trying to help everyone understand how this will work and getting them ready for future rounds.

If there’s one message that I’d want to deliver to those that weren’t successful in this first round, it’s to stay in the game — that’s very important. If you take a look at those states and those corridors that were successful in this first round, for the most part, the grants went to states that have been planning and investing their own resources in passenger rail for the past decade. So by nature, their applications rose to the top. California is probably the leading example of any state in the nation as far as commitment, money spent and the level of planning they’ve done for more than a decade. California, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Washington state — these are clearly leaders that again have been active in this process for more than a decade. There are others that are newcomers for the most part to the passenger-rail process, but they did some real good work in a short timeline in getting their applications together and they need to be persistent. The interstate system took four decades to build, the passenger-rail process is going to be similar.

HSRupdates.com: What kind of oversight will there be for the states that did receive funds?

Szabo: Substantial oversight. Again, the customer service teams have made contact with all the successful applicants and will be sitting down and essentially having negotiations with them all. We’re not just going to write out a check for $2.25 billion to California or $1.1 billion to Illinois. Negotiations will take place. These are “up to” figures and we will lay out all of the oversight and all the boxes that have to be checked off and the order they have to be checked off in to make sure that when we spend the money, we’re spending it on something that’s going to be viable and successful.

— Angela Cotey