Rural Areas Formula Grant Programs Guidance Proposed Circular

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Federal Transit Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FTA-2024-0004]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Rural Areas Formula Grant Programs Guidance Proposed Circular</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Transit Administration (FTA), Department of Transportation (DOT). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability of proposed circular updates and request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has placed in the docket and on its website, proposed guidance in the form of an updated circular, to assist recipients in their implementation of the Rural Areas Formula Program and the rural component of the Buses and Bus Facilities Program. The purpose of these proposed updates is to provide recipients of FTA financial assistance with updated guidance on program administration. The proposed revisions to these circulars are a result of changes in the law since the last updates to both the Rural Areas and Buses and Bus Facilities circulars. By this notice, FTA invites public comment on the proposed circular. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be submitted by June 3, 2024. Late-filed comments will be considered to the extent practicable. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Please submit your comments by only one of the following methods, identifying your submission by docket number FTA-2024-0004. All electronic submissions must be made to the U.S. Government electronic site at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/.</E> (1) <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> and follow the online instructions for submitting comments. (2) <E T="03">Mail:</E> Docket Management Facility: U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590-0001. (3) <E T="03">Hand Delivery or Courier:</E> West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. (4) <E T="03">Fax:</E> 202-493-2251. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> You must include the agency name (Federal Transit Administration) and Docket number (FTA-2024-0004) for this notice at the beginning of your comments. Submit two copies of your comments if you submit them by mail. For confirmation that FTA received your comments, include a self-addressed stamped postcard. Note that all comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> including any personal information provided and will be available to internet users. For information on DOT's compliance with the Privacy Act, please visit <E T="03">https://www.transportation.gov/privacy.</E> <E T="03">Docket:</E> For access to the docket to read background documents and comments received, go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov/</E> at any time or to the U.S. Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except Federal holidays. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For program questions, Jay Lindsey, Office of Program Management, phone, (202) 366-6299 or email, <E T="03">Jay.Lindsey@dot.gov.</E> For legal questions, Bonnie Graves, Office of Chief Counsel, phone, (202) 366-0944, or email, <E T="03">Bonnie.Graves@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Overview</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Chapter-by-Chapter Analysis</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Chapter I—Introduction and Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Chapter II—Program Overview</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Chapter III—General Program Information</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Chapter IV—Eligible Projects and Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Chapter V—Planning and Program Development</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Chapter VI—Program Management and Administrative Requirements</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Chapter VII—State Management Plan</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Chapter VIII—Appalachian Development Public Transportation Assistance Program (ADTAP)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">I. Chapter IX—Intercity Bus</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">J. Chapter X—Rural Transportation Assistance Program (RTAP)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">K. Chapter XI—Public Transportation on Indian Reservations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">L. Appendices</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Overview</HD> The Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) proposed circular, “Rural Areas Formula Grant Programs Guidance,” C 9040.1H, is a consolidation of guidance for the administration and preparation of grant applications for the Rural Areas Formula Grants Program under 49 U.S.C. 5311 (FTA circular 9040.1) and the rural area component of the Grants for Buses and Bus Facilities Program under 49 U.S.C. 5339(a) (FTA circular 5100.1). Additionally, this updated circular incorporates provisions of the FAST Act (Pub. L. 114-94), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) (Pub. L. 117-58), and other changes in law, and includes program-specific guidance for these formula programs. Additional requirements for all grant programs are identified in FTA's Award Management Requirements circular 5010.1. The availability of the proposed 5010 circular and request for public comment was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 11334, Feb. 14, 2024) and is posted on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> in Docket FTA-2024-0003. The proposed update to circular 9040.1 consolidates and summarizes programmatic information, streamlines pre-existing guidance from the two program circulars, and reduces duplication of information provided between the Rural Areas Formula Program circular and FTA's other topic-specific circulars, including by moving certain text applicable to most or all of FTA's grant programs to FTA's Award Management Requirements circular 5010.1. Furthermore, the proposed circular incorporates statutory changes and clarifies a number of policy issues as interpreted and applied by FTA. Statutory changes for section 5311 include additional sources of local share; in-kind match for intercity bus service; and fund allocations for tribes. Statutory changes for section 5339(a) include the application of section 5311 requirements to section 5339 grants in rural areas; additional source for local share; additional eligible entities; and use of procurement tools authorized under section 3019 of the FAST Act. Policy clarifications address topics in the existing program circulars, including consolidation of grants to insular areas; eligible projects and activities for each formula program; operating assistance limitations and exceptions; capital cost of contracting; the role of transportation network companies in providing public transportation services; and period of availability to obligate funds flexed to FTA formula programs from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). In addition to statutory and policy updates, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued 2 CFR part 200, Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards, also known as the Uniform Guidance, in December 2013, which superseded the Common Grant Rule, formerly codified at 49 CFR parts 18 and 19. Due to the timing of the last circular update and the effective date of the Uniform Guidance, FTA circular 9040.1G continued to reference 49 CFR parts 18 and 19. FTA has updated these references, including definitions, in proposed circular 9040.1H. This notice provides a summary of proposed changes to the current circular 9040.1G, “Formula Grants for Rural Areas: Program Guidance and Grant Application Instructions.” FTA invites public comment on the substance and format of the proposed circular. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Chapter I—Introduction and Background</HD> Due to the consolidation of the two program circulars, definitions and program descriptions were compared and revised for consistency with proposed updates to circular 5010.1E “Award Management Requirements,” circular 9030.1E “Formula Grants for Urbanized Areas,” and circular 9070.1G “Enhanced Mobility of Seniors and Individuals with Disabilities.” FTA proposes to amend the definitions section for consistency, clarification, and to reflect changes in statutes and other authorities. For example, FTA has updated the following terms: “Capital Asset” is modified for consistency with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and FTA's Uniform System of Accounts. “Clean Fuel Bus” recognizes low or no emissions technologies other than full electric and hybrid electric buses. “Rehabilitate” is expanded to include applicability to bus facilities and amended to clarify that not all rehabilitative activities must be a restoration to original condition, to more accurately reflect the term's broad usage in 49 U.S.C. 5339. “Urbanized Area” is updated to reflect changes in designation by the U.S. Census Bureau, which no longer utilizes “Urbanized Area” (UZA) but instead uses “Urban Area,” as defined by the Secretary of Commerce. “Useful Life” now applies to real property and other capital assets. Because useful life depends on depreciation and estimated time in use, consideration of useful life varies according to the type of asset in question. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Chapter II—Program Overview</HD> Chapter II of the proposed circular contains information related to program goals, State and FTA roles in program administration, and relationship of the section 5311 progra ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━