The enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 dramatically altered the nati’on’s system to provide assistance to the poor. The 1996 act replaced the existing entitlement program for poor families with block grants to the states to provide temporary assistance for needy families under the TANF Program. Also, under the TANF Program, states provide cash assistance to needy families with children and provide parents with job preparation; work; and support services, including transportation benefits. The 1996 act gave states flexibility in designing their programs to best provide those benefits and services. HHS’s Administration for Children and Families manages the TANF Program and has provided about $16.5 billion annually for states to use to assist needy families to become self-sufficient, including about $800 million annually for transportation benefits. In addition, Labor’s Employment and Training Administration administers programs authorized under WIA, with about $4 billion in fiscal year 2002 appropriations to provide individuals with job training and placement services. The WIA- sponsored programs also provide transportation services to take their clients to program-supported services, such as job training and placement. The TANF- and WIA-sponsored transportation efforts focus on their program clients, while the Job Access Program attempts to improve transportation for low-income people in general. With the enactment of TEA-21, DOT became a sponsor of welfare-to-work initiatives. The Job Access Program is focused on assisting address the transportation aspect of welfare reform by assisting low-income people travel to work and/or employment-related activities. Many low-income people and welfare recipients do not have access to cars and existing public transportation systems cannot always bridge the gap between where low-income people live and where jobs are located. In addition, many entry-level jobs require shift work in evenings or on weekends, when public transportation services are either limited or unavailable. When the Job Access Program was established, $750 million was authorized from fiscal years 1999 through 2003 for the Program. Appropriations have totaled $375 million through fiscal year 2002, with $75 million appropriated in each of the fiscal years 1999 and 2000, and $100 million and $125 million appropriated for fiscal years 2001 and 2002, respectively. The Job Access Program was established to close gaps in transportation services for low-income people in places where and at times when such transportation was not available. The program addressed these gaps by funding, through grants, new transportation and related services and expanding existing services to help low-income people access employment opportunities and related support services. TEA-21 identified a variety of factors for DOT to consider in funding Job Access projects, such as the need for Job Access services as evidenced by the percentage of the population in the area receiving welfare benefits; the demonstrated collaboration between the grantee and other stakeholders, such as other transportation and human service agencies; and the extent to which an applicant identified long-term financing strategies that would support the Job Access services after the end of the grant. Job Access grantees are required to provide at least 50 percent matching funds from other sources, which may include federal sources of funds available for transportation services, such as the TANF or WIA programs. DOT has consistently used two goals that it synthesized from TEA-21 as the primary criteria for evaluating, selecting, and funding Job Access projects to be funded through program grants. Those goals are that Job Access projects and services funded should provide transportation and related services to urban, suburban, and rural areas to assist low-income individuals, including welfare recipients, with access to employment and related services, such as child care and training, and increase collaboration among such parties as transportation providers, human service agencies, employers, and others in designing, funding, and delivering those transportation services. In selecting Job Access projects, DOT also considered the extent to which the projects would be financially sustainable after the end of Job Access Program funding. DOT has not reported to the Congress on the results of an evaluation of the Job Access Program, as TEA-21 required. DOT therefore is missing an important opportunity to provide information that could be useful as the Congress considers whether to reauthorize the program in 2003. FTA Program officials are not certain about when the report will be submitted to the Congress and have not established a date for doing so. DOT has delayed completion of its evaluation of the Job Access Program, and the date that it will be submitted to the Congress is uncertain. TEA-21 required that DOT evaluate the Job Access Program and submit a report to the Congress by June 2000. FTA officials stated their intentions to us several times and to the Congress to complete and submit the required evaluation report. DOT’s delays in issuing the report have cost it an important opportunity to provide information to the Congress on the effectiveness of the Job Access Program as the Congress begins its debate on the reauthorization of the program. In addition, as shown below, we have repeatedly reported on and emphasized the need for DOT to evaluate the effectiveness of the Job Access Program. In May 1998, before the program was enacted into law, we reported that DOT lacked specific information for assessing how a Job Access Program would improve mobility for low-income workers, and we recommended that DOT establish specific objectives. In December 1998, we reported that DOT was in the process of establishing an evaluation plan for the program. In November 1999, we noted that DOT had not yet completed a plan for evaluating the program, although we had recommended that it do so. In December 2000, we reported that the evaluation plan had been completed and that for the purposes of reporting under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993, DOT had established a goal of serving 4,050 new employment sites in fiscal year 2000, and 8,050 in fiscal year 2001. On April 17, 2002, before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, we testified that DOT had not yet prepared the required evaluation report and had no definite date for submitting the study. At that hearing, DOT officials stated that the report would be completed and sent to the Congress by June 2002. Throughout our study, FTA program officials discussed the reasons for the delays in issuing the report to the Congress. FTA program officials explained that to meet the requirement that they submit an evaluative report to the Congress by June 2000, they asked the grantees to submit data regarding the employment sites served by Job Access projects as well as the numbers of employers and entry-level jobs at those sites. They explained that they found that only about two-fifths of the data they obtained from grantees proved to be useful, because the rest of the data were inconsistently or inaccurately reported. By the summer of 2001, DOT officials decided that the data were out-of-date. They decided to wait for new data to be reported to them and to redraft the report to the Congress using the new data. As of the end of our review, FTA program officials continued to be unsure of the date the evaluative report will be submitted to the Congress. In November 2002, they said that they had completed their draft report and that the draft was being reviewed by the Office of the Secretary of Transportation for approval before the report could be sent to the Office of Management and Budget for its approval. FTA Program officials did not provide us with an estimated date for submitting the draft report to the Office of Management and Budget and the final report to the Congress. When we testified on April 17, 2002, DOT had planned to use only employment sites as a measure of program effectiveness. We testified that this measure presents only a partial picture of program effectiveness in meeting program goals for the following reasons: First, employment sites attempt to measure whether the Job Access Program establishes effective transportation services that help low- income people reach jobs—only one of the program goals. However, employment sites do not address the other program goal of whether projects were designed and implemented in a collaborative fashion involving the grantee and stakeholders. In addition, employment sites do not address the selection criterion of whether Job Access projects can be financially sustained after the end of program funding. Second, the use of employment sites does not fully capture whether the Job Access Program effectively addresses the program goal of providing transportation-related services to low-income people. Employment sites do not capture such information as the number of jobs available at a site or the number of Job Access beneficiaries using a Job Access service over a period of time. Grantees that responded to our survey reported that they are using additional indicators of and data on the performance of Job Access services. These grantees reported that, for internal reporting purposes, they collect a variety of data that can indicate the effectiveness of Job Access services. These survey results are shown in table 1. In addition to the measures listed in the table, experts we contacted suggested that DOT consider such measures as (1) the number of new and expanded transportation services (including data on service frequency, hours, and miles); (2) the level of collaboration achieved; and (3) the beneficiaries’ views of the effectiveness of Job Access services. In 1998, DOT funded a study that also identified many of these same measures for evaluating prospective Job Access projects. After we discussed with FTA program officials their plans to use only employment sites as performance measures, they stated that they planned to issue an evaluative report to the Congress that would contain information in addition to employment sites. In September 2002, we requested that FTA program officials provide a draft of the report for our review or a description of the evaluative methodology. In response, on October 4, 2002, they provided us with a memorandum that listed the contents of the report they proposed for the evaluative report to the Congress, including a list of the performance measures they proposed to use. According to FTA program officials and this document, the evaluative report would contain the results of a study by the University of Illinois, including surveys of passengers who were riding Job Access vehicles and studies of Job Access grantees.