United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to Congressional Committees

December 1998 WELFARE REFORM

Implementing DOT’s

Access to Jobs

Program

GAO/RCED-99-36

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

Resources, Community, and

Economic Development Division

B-280927 

December 8, 1998

The Honorable Alfonse M. D’Amato

Chairman

The Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes

Ranking Minority Member

Committee on Banking, Housing,

 and Urban Affairs

United States Senate

The Honorable Bud Shuster

Chairman

The Honorable James L. Oberstar

Ranking Democratic Member

Committee on Transportation

 and Infrastructure

House of Representatives

Welfare reform specialists assert that transportation is an important

element in moving people from welfare to work. Three-fourths of welfare

recipients live in either central cities or rural areas, while two-thirds of the

new jobs are located in the suburbs.1

 The effects of this geographic

mismatch are compounded by the low rate of car ownership among

welfare recipients. The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century

(TEA-21) brought attention and funding to the transportation element of

welfare reform. The act authorized a welfare-to-work program, known as

the Access to Jobs and Reverse Commute (Access to Jobs) program, and

authorized up to $750 million over 5 years to implement it. The program

will provide grants to local agencies and authorities, nonprofit

organizations, and transit authorities, among others, to improve mobility

for employment. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has begun to

implement the program by addressing issues associated with the

distribution of grant funds, selection of grantees, coordination of federal

agencies’ efforts, and evaluation of the program. These actions are

intended to ensure that the transportation funds provided by the Access to

Jobs program will be used efficiently and effectively in support of national

welfare reform goals.

As part of the program’s authorization, TEA-21 directed DOT to evaluate the

Access to Jobs program within 2 years of the act’s enactment. TEA-21 also

1

The need for transportation services to move people from welfare to work is discussed in our report

Welfare Reform: Transportation’s Role in Moving From Welfare to Work (GAO/RCED-98-161, May 29,

1998).

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required us to review the program every 6 months. This is the first report

in response to this requirement. This report describes DOT’s (1) overall

plan to distribute Access to Jobs funds among grantees in urban and rural

areas; (2) criteria to award specific Access to Jobs grants to states,

localities, and other organizations; (3) efforts to coordinate the Access to

Jobs program with other welfare-to-work programs; and (4) proposals to

evaluate the program’s success.

Results in Brief Since the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century authorized the

Access to Jobs program in June 1998, the Department of Transportation

has made several important decisions about the program’s basic structure

and operating procedures, including a decision about how it will distribute

the $75 million available for the program in fiscal year 1999. The

Department has decided that it will distribute the funds to as many areas

as possible by setting suggested limits on the amounts areas can receive

on the basis of their population levels. Under this approach, the

Department intends to provide first-year grants that average $1 million for

large urban areas and $150,000 for rural areas.

The Department of Transportation will use four key criteria for evaluating

grant applications on the basis of their merits. These four weighted criteria

are a project’s effectiveness, an area’s need for services, the degree of

local coordination, and the project’s financial sustainability. The

Department will assess each grant application and assign points on the

basis of these criteria, as well as bonus points for program components

such as particularly innovative transportation approaches. Whether these

criteria will enable the Department to make sufficient distinctions among

the many applications it expects to receive is unclear. Accordingly, the

Department may use other factors, such as geographic distribution, to

make the final grant selections. While using these factors may provide the

Department with the means to break ties among projects of comparable

merit, it may unintentionally suggest that the merit-based criteria used to

develop and score the applications are less important than other factors

that are not based on merit.

The Department of Transportation has made important efforts to

coordinate its Access to Jobs program with other welfare-to-work

programs. It established a policy council with representatives from four

other federal agencies and the White House to develop its program. In

May 1998, the Secretaries of Transportation, Health and Human Services,

and Labor issued joint guidance explaining how human service

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organizations can use federal funds to provide transportation services for

people moving from welfare to work. The Department plans to continue

working with other federal agencies to help review applications for Access

to Jobs grants. In addition, the Department has met with local human

service organizations both to obtain their input on the program’s design

and to educate them about the importance of working with local

transportation agencies to develop an integrated planning process for

developing Access to Jobs projects. Because grantees can use other

federal funds to match the Department’s grants, sustained coordination

between the Department and other federal agencies, as well as sustained

collaboration among local agencies, is critical for ensuring the effective

use of federal welfare-to-work funds.

Department officials acknowledge that welfare-to-work programs must

establish performance measures to evaluate success. As part of its

evaluation effort, the Department will require Access to Jobs grantees to

collect data on four important program outputs: (1) the number of new

and expanded transportation services (service frequency, hours, and

miles), (2) the number of jobs made accessible by public transportation to

the targeted riders, (3) the number of people using the new transportation

services, and (4) the level of collaboration achieved. These data will

provide the Department with good information for monitoring Access to

Jobs projects, and collecting the data will serve as a step in developing an

evaluation plan. However, the data alone will not be sufficient to measure

the program’s overall performance or success because the Department has

yet to establish goals or benchmarks against which the cumulative data on

new routes, new system users, and newly accessible jobs can be

compared.

Background The enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity

Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) dramatically altered the nation’s

system to provide assistance to the poor. Among many changes, title I of

the act replaced the existing entitlement program for poor families (Aid to

Families With Dependent Children) with fixed block grants to the states to

provide Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). TANF provides

about $16.5 billion annually for the states to use in helping families

become self-sufficient. TANF imposes work requirements for adults and

establishes time limits on the receipt of federal assistance. In addition,

other federal programs are designed to help individuals move from welfare

to work. For example, the Department of Labor (DOL) has a 2-year,

$3 billion grant program, the Welfare-to-Work program, to help people

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with poor work histories, little or no education, or substance abuse

problems obtain jobs.

Transportation and welfare studies show that without adequate

transportation, welfare recipients face significant barriers in trying to

move from welfare to work. Existing public transportation systems cannot

always bridge the gap between where the poor live and where jobs are

located. These existing systems were originally established to transport

inner-city residents to city locations and bring suburban residents to

central-city work locations. However, many of the entry-level jobs that

welfare recipients and low-income individuals would likely fill are located

in suburbs that have limited or no access to existing public transportation

systems. Furthermore, many entry-level jobs require shift work in the

evenings or on weekends, when public transit services are either

unavailable or limited.2

With the enactment of TEA-21, which established the Access to Jobs and

Reverse Commute program, DOT became an important sponsor of

welfare-to-work initiatives.3

 In general, this program will provide grants to

local agencies and authorities, nonprofit organizations, and transit

authorities, among others, to improve mobility for low-income individuals

seeking employment. TEA-21 authorized up to $750 million from fiscal year

1999 through fiscal year 2003 for the Access to Jobs program. Some of the

funds are “guaranteed,” that is, subject to a procedural mechanism

designed to ensure that minimum amounts of funding are provided each

year. The amount of funds subject to the “guarantee” increases each year

so that by fiscal year 2003, the authorized funds are all “guaranteed.” The

Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act

for fiscal year 1999 provided $75 million for the program rather than the

$50 million subject to the “guarantee” and the maximum $150 million

authorized. TEA-21 limits funding to 50 percent of each grantee’s project.

The remaining 50 percent can be obtained from a variety of sources,

including some welfare programs administered by other federal agencies.

Since TEA-21 established the Access to Jobs program in June 1998, DOT has

begun establishing the program’s basic structure and operating

2

According to DOT and DOL officials, DOT’s Access to Jobs and DOL’s Welfare-to-Work funds cannot

be used to help individuals purchase cars.

3

TEA-21 provides that DOT shall use not more than $10 million of the funds available each year for

reverse commute projects. TEA-21 defines reverse commute projects as those related to the

development of transportation services designed to transport residents of urban areas, urbanized

areas, and areas other than urbanized areas to suburban employment opportunities.

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procedures.4 In May 1998, DOT established a task force of DOT officials to

address several issues needing resolution before the program’s

implementation. The task force was divided into four working groups

focusing on the (1) distribution of funds, (2) criteria for selecting grantees

and administrative requirements, (3) coordination among federal agencies

and public outreach, and (4) program’s evaluation. Each working group

was assigned several subsidiary issues. For example, the group working

on the distribution of funds was tasked with determining the size of the

program’s grants. On October 22, 1998, DOT officially released guidance

detailing how potential grant applicants can request Access to Jobs funds.

According to the guidance, grant applications are to be submitted by

December 31, 1998. DOT plans to evaluate the applications and notify the

successful applicants in February 1999.

DOT Plans to

Maximize the Number

of Grants Awarded

Although TEA-21 established a framework for allocating Access to Jobs

funds to applicants, it gave DOT the discretion to decide how best to

distribute the funds each year. Since the program began in June 1998, the

Department has made preliminary decisions to maximize the number of

first-year grants by setting suggested limits on the amount of grants

available to areas with different population levels, such as areas with over

1 million people.

TEA-21 requires DOT to allocate the available funding between urban and

rural areas. Specifically, the act requires DOT to allocate 60 percent of the

program’s funds each year to projects in urban areas with populations of

at least 200,000; 20 percent of the program’s funds to projects in urban

areas with populations of less than 200,000; and 20 percent of the

program’s funds to projects in areas other than urban. In addition, the

conference report on the Department of Transportation and Related

Agencies Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1999 directed DOT to give high

priority to rural counties that are not served or are underserved by public

transportation.

The Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations

Act for fiscal year 1999 provided DOT with $75 million for its Access to Jobs

program. To maximize the number of grants awarded, DOT is asking areas

with specified populations to apply for grants limited to specified funding

targets. DOT suggests that urban areas with populations of over 1 million

should generally limit their requests to about $1 million, while rural areas

with populations of less than 50,000 should request about $150,000. DOT

4

The Federal Transit Administration is responsible for managing the program.

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also suggests average grant sizes for areas with populations ranging from

1 million to 200,000 and from 200,000 to 50,000. According to information

from DOT, these recommended grant amounts would permit the Access to

Jobs program to award grants to about 74 percent of the largest

metropolitan areas in the country (about 25 locations), about 38 percent of

the areas with populations from 200,000 to 1 million (about 35 locations),

about 21 percent of the areas with populations from 50,000 to 200,000

(about 60 locations), and about 3 percent of small rural areas (about 99

locations).

According to DOT officials, this approach for distributing the program’s

funding may discourage the legislative designation, or earmarking, of

funds for specific projects, as is done for some other DOT programs, such

as the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) New Starts program for fixed

guideway systems.5

 In addition, DOT officials noted that an average of

$150,000 for each rural applicant is in line with the potential need of these

areas. For example, the Community Transportation Association of

America, a nonprofit organization, told DOT that Access to Jobs grants of

$150,000 would be adequate for many smaller rural areas. Finally, a group

of rural counties in southern Illinois told DOT that $127,000 would be

adequate to extend bus service on all their existing lines on evenings and

weekends, thereby greatly benefiting welfare-to-work programs in the

area.

Grants of $1 million for large urban areas are smaller than those awarded

by other federal agencies, such as DOL.

6

 For example, three Chicago-area

grantees received DOL grants totaling almost $11 million, including a

$3 million grant focusing on welfare-to-work transit services. Under DOT’s

suggested funding levels, the Chicago area may receive only $1 million in

Access to Jobs funds. But if an Access to Jobs grant is combined with

other welfare reform funding for projects supporting transportation, the

combined funding may help to address welfare-to-work transportation

needs in urban areas. For example, the Chicago area has received federal

grants that support transportation for welfare recipients and low-income

individuals from both DOL’s $3 million competitive Welfare-to-Work grant

5

This program provides funding for capital projects for new fixed guideway systems and extensions to

existing fixed guideway systems.

6

The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 established a 2-year, $3 billion grant program, the Welfare-to-Work

program, administered by DOL. Among other things, the program provides funding for job placement,

on-the-job training, and support services (including transportation) for those who face significant

barriers, such as substance abuse, in moving from welfare to work. About 25 percent of the funds are

available for competitive grants.

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program and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD)

Bridges to Work program.7

Finally, DOT’s guidance acknowledges that some potential grantees may

have developed plans for job access activities whose implementation costs

exceed the grant sizes suggested for fiscal year 1999. Such grantees may

choose to fund their high-priority activities in the first year and use

subsequent grants to fund additional elements of their plans. Applicants

may also elect to use their grants for fiscal year 1999 to cover the initial

costs of job access activities and use subsequent grants for carry-on

activities. According to DOT’s guidance, a multiyear approach will be

subject to an annual review of the grantee’s progress as well as the annual

budget and appropriations process, among other things. According to DOT

officials, potential grantees have expressed an interest in a multiyear

approach because they need several years to fully develop, implement, and

see results from their welfare-to-work projects. For example, several years

may be needed to incorporate new transit service into communities’

existing transportation systems.

DOT Proposes Four

Key Criteria for

Awarding Grants

TEA-21 specifies several factors that the Secretary must consider when

evaluating applications for Access to Jobs grants and making final

selections. In implementing TEA-21, DOT has synthesized these factors into

four essential elements that an application must address: a project’s

effectiveness, an area’s need for services, the degree of local coordination,

and the project’s financial sustainability. In addition, DOT will give bonus

points for other program elements, such as innovation. While the

Department announced final guidance on the selection process in

October 1998, it is not clear whether these criteria will allow DOT to

differentiate sufficiently among the many applications it may receive. DOT’s

guidance indicates that in addition to the specified weighted criteria, the

Department may consider other factors, such as the geographic

distribution of grantees, in awarding the grants. The weighted, merit-based

factors may be sufficient to rank projects according to their relative

merits; however, if the additional factors are needed, their use may imply

that the merit-based criteria are less important than other factors, such as

a project’s location, that are not based on merit.

7

HUD’s Bridges to Work program provided about $1.6 million for Chicago’s Bridges to Work project.

This $17 million program, which provides job placement and other support services in addition to

transportation, is designed to place about 3,000 participants in jobs in five cities—Baltimore, Chicago,

Denver, Milwaukee, and St. Louis.

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TEA-21 requires the Secretary to conduct a national solicitation for grant

applications and competitively select grant recipients. For areas with

populations of at least 200,000, each area’s metropolitan planning

organization will screen the applications. States will perform the same

function for areas with populations of less than 200,000. TEA-21 specified

eight factors for the Secretary of Transportation to consider when

awarding Access to Jobs grants. These factors are the percentage of

welfare recipients in the population of the area to be served; the need for

transportation services; the extent of coordination with, and the financial

commitment of, existing transportation service providers and the state

welfare agency; the extent of coordination with the community to be

served; the use of existing transportation services; the use of innovative

approaches; the existence of regional transportation plans; and the

existence of long-term financing strategies.

After internal and external discussions, DOT arrived at four “essential”

criteria for evaluating and scoring applications: (1) a project’s

effectiveness, (2) an area’s need for services, (3) the degree of local

coordination, and (4) the project’s financial sustainability. Table 1 shows

the weight DOT has assigned to each criterion. In applying the criterion for

the project’s effectiveness, DOT officials will attempt to ensure that the

approach described in the grant application addresses the transportation

problem the grant is trying to alleviate. Similarly, the criterion for need,

measured by things such as the number of low-income individuals to be

helped and the types of transportation services to be added, is intended to

ensure that the application identifies the need for a DOT grant.

DOT also believes that its criterion on local coordination will help providers

of transportation and human services understand the importance of local

coordination to a project’s success. DOT officials noted that it may still be

difficult to determine if there is “real,” or merely perfunctory, coordination

among these groups. DOT also included a criterion to evaluate an

applicant’s ability to obtain sustained funding for a project after the grant

funds have been expended. Finally, DOT will give bonus points for

applications that use, among other things, innovative approaches, links to

employment support services, and employer-based strategies (such as

employer-run shuttles). According to DOT officials, because DOT will give

bonus points to projects that address how their proposed transportation

services will be supported by employment and human services, these

points will encourage local coordination.

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Table 1: DOT’s Grant Evaluation

Criteria Criterion Weight

Project’s effectiveness 35

Need for services 30

Local coordination 25

Sustainability 10

Subtotal 100

Bonus points 10

Total 110

Source: DOT.

DOT officials developed these criteria by combining legislative criteria and

adding other specific components. For example, DOT combined the two

legislative criteria for coordination with the one criterion for regional

plans to develop one criterion for a coordinated human

services/transportation planning process and plan. DOT also added a

criterion for employers’ involvement. Finally, DOT added weights to the

revised list of criteria and discussed this list with leaders of other federal

agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

and DOL. After their discussions, DOT reduced the criteria to the four listed

in table 1.

DOT staff believe that their weighted evaluation criteria will provide clear

breaks among application scores if, because of limited funds, the

Department is required to choose among eligible projects. However, DOT’s

guidance also indicates that, in addition to the weighted criteria, the

Department will consider other factors in selecting grantees—(1) the

schedule for implementing the project, (2) the availability of funds, and

(3) the geographic distribution of grants throughout the country. When DOL

evaluated applications for grants during the first year of its

Welfare-to-Work program, it had more applications that were deemed

“competitive” (scoring over 80 points) than available funds. Even after

using bonus points, DOL had more applications than available money.

Accordingly, DOL used additional factors, such as geographic location and

rural/urban representation, to help make the final selection. Until DOT

receives and begins scoring Access to Jobs grant applications, it will not

know if its weighted criteria will be sufficient to distinguish among

applications or if it will need to rely on the additional factors it identified,

such as geographic dispersion.

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Coordination Is Key to

the Program’s Success

The Congress recognized the importance of coordinating welfare-to-work

activities to help ensure the success of welfare reform. DOT has taken a

number of steps to coordinate its Access to Jobs program with the welfare

activities of HHS, DOL, and HUD. DOT invited executive-level representatives

from these departments to join a policy council to provide a forum for

discussing Access to Jobs implementation issues. In addition, before the

Access to Jobs program was authorized, the Secretaries of Transportation,

HHS, and Labor issued joint guidance to states and localities describing

how each department’s programs could be used together to implement

transportation services under welfare reform. DOT plans to sustain its

working relationship with federal social service agencies by using their

expertise to help select grants that will support welfare reform’s goals.

Finally, DOT addressed the need for local coordination by requiring grant

applicants to submit projects that are the result of a regional planning

process that includes representatives from both transit and social service

providers.

TEA-21 requires DOT to coordinate its Access to Jobs activities with other

federal agencies’ welfare-to-work programs. In May 1998, we reported on

the role of transportation in welfare reform and recommended that DOT

work with other federal agencies, such as HHS, DOL, and HUD, to coordinate

all of their welfare-to-work activities. DOT agreed with our

recommendation, noting that coordination is important to ensure the

success of welfare-to-work programs. First, federal agencies can

encourage state and local transportation and human service agencies and

other local organizations to combine their expertise to develop

comprehensive welfare-to-work projects that include a transportation

component. Second, federal agencies need to work together to ensure that

their funds for welfare-to-work programs are used to complement, rather

than duplicate, one another. Such coordination is particularly important

for the recipients of Access to Jobs grants because these grants fund only

50 percent of a project’s total costs. Grantees can use federal funds such

as HHS’ TANF funds or DOL’s Welfare-to-Work grants to fund the remaining

50 percent.

To facilitate coordination among federal welfare-to-work programs, FTA

initiated a policy council in July 1998 and invited representatives from DOL,

HHS, HUD, the Office of Management and Budget, and the White House to

join. (App. I lists the council’s membership). According to DOT, the council

was established to advise the Department on implementing the Access to

Jobs program, as well as to keep other agencies apprised of DOT’s actions.

Members of the council have worked on a number of issues associated

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with implementing the Access to Jobs program and have reviewed the

program’s draft guidance prior to issuance. In addition, DOT and DOL,

according to DOT officials, are working together to ensure that Access to

Jobs grantees adhere to statutory labor protection requirements.8

The Secretaries of Transportation, HHS, and Labor have also worked to

coordinate their welfare-to-work programs. In May 1998, the Secretaries

issued joint guidance explaining how human service organizations can use

HHS’ TANF funds and DOL’s Welfare-to-Work grants to provide transportation

services for people moving from welfare to work. For example, the

guidance notes that state human service organizations can use TANF funds

to provide transit passes for welfare recipients or reimburse TANF

recipients for work-related transportation expenses. The guidance also

encourages local transportation, workforce development, and social

service providers to coordinate their activities to ensure the most efficient

use of federal funds. Now that Access to Jobs funds are available, DOT

officials said, HHS, DOL, and DOT will issue updated guidance explaining how

their welfare-to-work programs can be coordinated.

In addition, DOT’s guidance states that the Department will establish an

interagency work group to help it review applications for Access to Jobs

grants. These applications should include information on how

transportation services will be coordinated with social services, such as

the job placement activities that DOL provides for TANF recipients. DOT

officials expect that staff from other federal agencies like DOL and HHS will

be able to help DOT assess the viability of the proposed coordination

efforts. In this way, DOT will be able to take advantage of the other

agencies’ experience with welfare reform projects to help determine

which transportation projects will benefit welfare recipients seeking jobs.

Finally, the Congress and DOT believe local coordination among social

service and transportation organizations is important for a project’s

success. Both the metropolitan planning provisions and the Access to Jobs

provisions of TEA-21 emphasize the importance of involving a wide variety

of local groups in the coordination of transportation services. For

example, TEA-21 states that each Access to Jobs grant project shall be part

of a coordinated transportation planning process, involving both public

transit and human service agencies. DOT’s Access to Jobs guidance also

states that grantees must include transportation and human service groups

in their planning process. DOT’s published grant award criteria encourage

8

Federal transit grants are generally required to include provisions for fair and equitable arrangements

to protect the interests of affected transit employees.

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local coordination by providing 25 points for a coordinated human

services/transportation planning process and regional job access

transportation plan, as well as bonus points for grant projects linked to

employment-related support services. Finally, DOT officials said that they

have sought to encourage local coordination through their outreach

efforts, including presentations and meetings on TEA-21 and the Access to

Jobs program held throughout the country.

DOT Has Not Put an

Evaluation Plan in

Place

Evaluation is important because the Congress, program officials, the

business community, advocacy groups, and taxpayers need to know if

newly designed welfare reform programs, such as the Access to Jobs

program, are working. When it announced the program’s guidance in

October 1998, DOT provided information on how it would monitor projects

funded through the program. Specifically, DOT said that it expects grantees

to monitor the performance of their projects and provide DOT with data on

four project outputs. However, the data collected by the grantees may not

measure the program’s overall performance until DOT establishes goals or

benchmarks to evaluate the information it receives from the grantees.

Experts Cite Evaluation as

a Critical Component of

Welfare-to-Work Initiatives

Experts say that evaluation is critical in determining the effect of welfare

reform. However, an early look at welfare reform initiatives suggests that

such evaluations are not routinely done. Transportation experts at the

University of California are assessing how public agencies in California

charged with developing and/or implementing transportation policies and

programs are evaluating transportation efforts in welfare reform.9

 In their

project proposal, the experts stated that evaluation was a critical

component of welfare-to-work programs; however, few welfare-to-work

programs contained an evaluation component. Consequently, the experts

concluded that administrators have implemented some welfare-to-work

transportation policies and programs without plans to evaluate their

effectiveness.

Other experts expressed concern about evaluating welfare reform

programs before the Subcommittee on Human Resources, House

Committee on Ways and Means, in a March 1998 hearing. The hearing

focused on how policymakers could be informed of the effects of welfare

reform, given the wide variation in program design and the growing

number of agencies involved. The Director of the Research Forum on

9

Faculty at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and Institute of Transportation Studies,

University of California, Los Angeles, will conduct the research. The grant for this research is from the

University of California Transportation Center.

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Children, Families, and the New Federalism—an initiative of the National

Center for Children in Poverty—was a witness at this hearing. According

to the Forum, as new welfare programs are implemented across the

country, the conceptual framework and methods must change and adapt;

research must be flexible to study diverse combinations of programs,

policies, and funding. Since policy and program changes occur frequently,

the Forum concluded that research must provide information quickly to be

most useful, particularly so that practitioners can identify and address

problems early in the process.

DOT Has Made Limited

Progress in Establishing an

Evaluation Framework

TEA-21 requires DOT to evaluate the program 2 years after the act’s

enactment. In May 1998, we recommended that DOT establish specific

objectives, performance criteria, and measurable goals for the Access to

Jobs program. DOT concurred with our recommendation. In addition, the

Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (Results Act), enacted

to improve the effectiveness of and accountability for federal programs,

requires agencies to identify annual performance goals and measures for

their program activities.

In announcing the Access to Jobs program in October 1998, DOT

established two major goals for it—(1) to provide transportation services

to assist welfare recipients and low-income persons in gaining access to

employment opportunities and (2) to increase collaboration among

transportation providers, human service agencies, employers,

metropolitan planning organizations, states, and affected communities and

individuals. DOT expects grantees to monitor the performance of their

Access to Jobs project and to provide the Department with data on

(1) how many transportation services the project added (service

frequency, hours, and miles); (2) how the target area’s accessibility to jobs

and support services improved (i.e., how the percentage of available jobs

accessible to the target population by public transportation increased with

the program); (3) how many people are using these expanded services;

and (4) how the project’s sponsors collaborated. These measures relate

specifically to transportation services—not to other related services, such

as those matching people to available jobs—and reflect DOT’s philosophy

that transportation alone will not ensure successful employment for the

target population.

However, these steps set up a data collection plan without establishing

how the program’s success will be evaluated. DOT’s guidance does not

specify key measurable goals for the program, such as increasing by an

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appropriate percentage the number of jobs accessible by public

transportation. As a result, once the data are collected, DOT has no

standard for measuring success and no method for determining whether

the data are indicative of the program’s success. In responding to our

May 1998 report, DOT agreed to revisit and refine its strategic plan as it

applies to the Access to Jobs program and to develop performance goals

and performance measures for incorporation into the Department’s fiscal

year 2000 Performance Plan.10 While DOT’s activities mark progress

towards an evaluation process, DOT has begun to implement the Access to

Jobs program without plans for evaluating its effectiveness.

According to DOT’s Access to Jobs coordinator, DOT recognizes that

evaluation is important to the Access to Jobs program. DOT had included a

specific provision on evaluation in its program proposal.11 But because DOT

wanted to distribute the money to start projects as quickly as possible, it

chose to save evaluation issues until later. However, DOT is not currently

certain how it will analyze the collected data to evaluate the nationwide

success of the Access to Jobs program or what additional information it

may request from grantees for this purpose. While the program’s guidance

is essentially complete for fiscal year 1999, the Department may add

further details on performance measurement when it awards funds to the

fiscal year 1999 grantees. Department officials said they plan to provide

additional guidance on performance indicators for future applicants.

Conclusions Since TEA-21 established the Access to Jobs program in June 1998, DOT has

made important strides in developing an overall framework for

implementing this new program. The Department has resolved many of the

program implementation challenges we cited in our May 1998 report.

Specifically, it has made some important decisions about how it will

distribute the program’s funds, what criteria it will use to review grant

applications, and how it will coordinate the program with other federal

agencies’ efforts. However, the Department has not yet fully set forth the

methods it will use to evaluate the program’s success, as we recommended

in our earlier report. Establishing performance measures for the Access to

Jobs program is important because doing so will enable the Department to

have benchmarks for evaluating the data it will receive from Access to

Jobs grantees. Establishing performance measures will also enable the

10DOT’s fiscal year 2000 Performance Plan should be submitted to the Congress by the spring of 1999.

11DOT’s 1997 proposed surface transportation reauthorization legislation included a 6-year,

$600 million Access to Jobs program to support new transportation services for low-income people

seeking jobs. This proposal would have specifically authorized grants for project evaluations and

technical assistance for recipients.

Page 14 GAO/RCED-99-36 Welfare Reform
B-280927 

Department to begin its own legislatively required evaluation of the

program’s success. If the Department implements our recommendation, it

will establish specific objectives, performance criteria, and measurable

goals for this new program and include them in its fiscal year 2000

Performance Plan. Since this plan will be submitted to the Congress in

connection with the fiscal year 2000 budget in the spring of 1999, Access to

Jobs grantees would be aware of these objectives, criteria, and goals as

they began to implement their projects.

Agency Comments We provided a draft of this report to DOT for review and comment. We met

with DOT officials—including the Acting Director of the Office of Policy,

Office of the Secretary, and the coordinator for the Access to Jobs

program, Federal Transit Administration—to discuss the Department’s

comments on the draft report. Overall, DOT agreed with our findings.

However, the officials stated that while the report accurately describes the

decisions the Department has made since the program’s inception, it does

not sufficiently describe the program’s rapid development. They noted that

the program was recently authorized, in June 1998, and they have rapidly

made important decisions to ensure that fiscal year 1999 grants are

awarded quickly. They also provided the following points to clarify certain

aspects of the new program. First, they said that they had conducted

extensive outreach efforts intended to provide the public with information

on the program’s implementation and to involve nontraditional groups,

such as human service organizations and community-based organizations,

in the process. Second, DOT officials noted that in addition to coordinating

the program at the federal level, they have stressed local coordination as

an equally important component of the Access to Jobs program. Officials

noted that the program’s guidance should encourage localities to build

upon local transportation planning processes as well as increase

opportunities to incorporate new players in the planning process. Finally,

the officials acknowledged the importance of further developing DOT’s

plans to evaluate the program and affirmed that the Department will

include performance measures for the program in its fiscal year 2000

Performance Plan. On the basis of DOT’s comments, we included additional

information in the report on the Department’s efforts to encourage local

coordination and to obtain guidance from transportation and

nontraditional partners. DOT had additional technical comments that we

incorporated throughout the report, where appropriate.

For its review and comment, we also provided DOL with sections of the

draft report that specifically dealt with issues pertaining to it. Overall,

Page 15 GAO/RCED-99-36 Welfare Reform
B-280927 

officials agreed with the information. We incorporated DOL’s technical

comments throughout the report, where appropriate.

Scope and

Methodology

To obtain information on the steps DOT has taken to implement the Access

to Jobs program—specifically, to distribute funds and select criteria for

awarding grants—we interviewed DOT officials; examined program

documentation, preliminary reports, and other descriptive materials; and

attended the October 22, 1998, conference in which DOT announced the

Access to Jobs program, as well as a September 23, 1998, listening session

on TEA-21, sponsored by FTA. To identify the efforts DOT has made to

coordinate its work with that of other federal agencies, we interviewed

key officials in FTA and DOL and kept abreast of efforts by members of our

staff working on related projects. To address the evaluation issue, we

interviewed DOT, FTA, and DOL officials; reviewed relevant program

documentation; and gathered opinions from selected outside organizations

and universities. In addition, we visited the Metropolitan Area Planning

Council in Boston, a DOL Welfare-to-Work program grantee, to obtain its

views on implementing the Welfare-to-Work program and evaluating its

results.

We performed our review from June 1998 through November 1998 in

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

We are sending copies of this report to interested congressional

committees, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Labor, and

the Administrator of FTA. We will also make copies available to others on

request.

If you have any questions about this report, please call me at

(202) 512-2834. Major contributors to this report were Ruthann Balciunas,

Joseph Christoff, Catherine Colwell, and Phyllis Scheinberg.

John H. Anderson, Jr.

Director, Transportation Issues

Page 16 GAO/RCED-99-36 Welfare Reform
Page 17 GAO/RCED-99-36 Welfare Reform
Appendix I 

Members of the Department of

Transportation’s Executive-Level Policy

Council

Department of

Transportation

Gordon Linton, Administrator, Federal Transit Administration

Nuria Fernandez, Deputy Administrator, Federal Transit Administration

Joseph Canny, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy

Ken Wykle, Administrator, Federal Highway Administration

Steve Palmer, Assistant Secretary for Governmental Affairs

John Horsley, Associate Deputy Secretary and Director, Office of

Intermodalism

Other Agencies Cynthia Rice, Domestic Policy Council, White House

Andrea Kane, Domestic Policy Council, White House

Emil Parker, National Economic Council, White House

Barbara Chow, Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget

Michael Deich, Associate Director, Office of Management and Budget

John Monahan, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Children and

Families, Department of Health and Human Services

Jill Khadduri, Acting Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and

Research, Department of Housing and Urban Development

Ray Uhalde, Acting Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training,

Department of Labor

(348116) Page 18 GAO/RCED-99-36 Welfare Reform
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