In May 2006, the department announced its National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network (the “congestion initiative”), a comprehensive national initiative to reduce congestion on the nation’s roads, rails, runways, and waterways. A major component of this initiative is the UPA initiative, under which the department gives selected cities special consideration for funding from existing programs. To qualify for selection, a city had to develop and be ready to quickly implement a comprehensive, integrated, and innovative approach to reducing congestion through the use of the 4Ts. On December 8, 2006, the department issued a Federal Register notice soliciting proposals by cities to enter into UPAs with the department. According to the notice, the department planned to fund the agreements through several existing grant programs and lending and credit support programs. This cross-cutting approach was designed to enable the department to fund the greatest improvements in mobility in a coordinated manner across its modal operating administrations. The notice further indicated that the department would support its urban partners with regulatory flexibilities and dedicated expertise and personnel. Applicants wishing to become urban partners had to submit their applications by April 30, 2007. The notice stated that the department would consider applications filed after this date to the extent practicable. In addition, applicants had to apply to any underlying grant program from which they sought funding. They could do so by submitting a single application that covered each of the grant programs as long as the application was responsive to the requirements of each program. To achieve this, the department published several Federal Register notices between December 2006 and March 2007, requesting that UPA applicants apply to the underlying programs. The Federal Register notice also set forth requirements for the UPA application. Under the UPA initiative, the department and the urban partner would agree to pursue the 4Ts to reduce traffic congestion. The department sought projects with congestion pricing to help shift some rush-hour traffic to off-peak times, coupled with new or expanded transit services. In this way, buses could move more freely through previously congested roadways and could provide more reliable service. To further reduce congestion, the urban partner could use cutting-edge technologies—such as providing travelers with real-time transportation information—to improve transportation performance and secure agreements from area employers to expand telecommuting programs. (See fig. 1.) Finally, the department’s solicitation stated that neither the procedures nor the criteria identified in the notice would be binding on the department. Aside from publishing the UPA initiative notice in the Federal Register, the department took a number of steps intended to (1) generate interest in the initiative, (2) encourage cities to develop fresh ideas, and (3) provide information to potential applicants. First, before publishing the December 2006 Federal Register notice, department officials met separately with officials from three urban areas—Seattle; northern Virginia; and Portland, Oregon—and presented information on congestion pricing and UPAs. Then, after publishing the notice, at the request of New York City, department officials met with the New York state legislature; conducted national workshops in Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; and Washington, D.C. that were open to any interested UPA applicant; made presentations at transportation conferences; and held a Webinar for city officials who could not attend the national workshops. In the workshops and the Webinar, department officials discussed congestion pricing and supporting strategies, political and public outreach techniques that might be used to gain support for congestion-pricing initiatives, and potential funding opportunities under UPA. According to the department, it conducted a number of other outreach activities including (1) establishing a Web page with information for such applicants, (2) giving speeches on the UPA initiative, and (3) sending information on congestion pricing to e- mail listservs. In its Federal Register notice, the department stated that it reserved the right to solicit, and was actively soliciting, by means other than the notice certain cities the department had determined to be candidates for UPA award consideration. The department received 26 UPA applications and created a multistep review process to select PUPs (announced in June 2007) and then urban partners (announced in August 2007). First, a review team, composed of staff from several modal administrations, used several technical criteria—such as innovation, the comprehensiveness of the 4Ts, cost- effective use of federal dollars, and the feasibility and likelihood of implementation—to perform a technical review of the UPA applications and rank them for the department’s senior leaders. Second, the senior leaders reviewed the review team’s rankings in light of broader department goals and recommended nine PUPs to the Secretary, which according to department officials, the Secretary approved. The PUPs then each presented their proposals, first to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary and afterward to officials from the modal administrations involved in the UPA initiative. Following these presentations, the department, in some cases, asked for additional detail or clarification from the applicant. Third, using this information, the review team created funding scenarios—for example, one scenario provided funding for New York City and four other urban partners while another scenario did not provide funding for New York City, but did do so for seven other urban partners. Finally, using UPA applications and funding scenarios, the Secretary selected five urban partners—Miami, Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, and Seattle. The Federal Register notice stated the department would select up to 10 urban partners. The urban partner designation did not include funds for the urban partners, but did give them special consideration in obtaining department resources such as funding from grant programs and administrative flexibilities, including streamlined environmental reviews. Between December 2006 and April 2007, the department issued several Federal Register notices describing the amount of funding available to urban partners. Initially, the Federal Register notice stated that up to $100 million, over 3 years, was available from 1 grant program, but this amount was expanded to about $1 billion from 13 grant programs when the President signed the 2007 Revised Continuing Appropriations Resolution. Unlike previous years, the department’s appropriation was not subject to congressional directives that funds be dedicated for particular transportation projects. As a result, urban partners applied for and were eventually awarded funds from 10 grant programs for 94 projects totaling $848.1 million. (See table 1.) This report focuses on the 5 urban partners, 94 projects, and $848.1 million in awards announced in August 2007. As the department negotiated with the prospective urban partners, the numbers of urban partners, projects, and awards were reduced somewhat. The department awarded New York City $354.5 million (42 percent) of the $848.1 million. San Francisco was awarded $158.7 million (19 percent), Minneapolis $133.3 million (16 percent), Seattle $138.7 million (16 percent), and Miami $62.9 million (7 percent). In addition, although San Diego was not selected as an urban partner, the department awarded it $15 million under the Bus and Bus-Related Facilities Capital Investment Grants (Bus and Bus Facilities) program and $3 million under the Intelligent Transportation Systems-Operational Testing to Mitigate Congestion (ITS-OTMC) program for a project element of its UPA application. Departmental senior leaders and officials believed that San Diego’s project to demonstrate the safety and efficiency of cutting-edge separation and braking technologies on narrow lanes was meritorious. Each urban partner proposed to implement a tolling project with congestion pricing that would be supported by projects primarily from at least two of the other three Ts—transit and technology. (See table 2.) According to department officials, telecommuting projects received less emphasis from the urban partners and the department because it was generally beyond the control of the city to influence many employers and because they received telecommuting proposals in few applications. Each UPA was subject to several terms and conditions. One significant condition was that no urban partner could expend federal funds until it had obtained the legal authority necessary to implement congestion pricing for the applicable highway or parking area. To date, three urban partners have the necessary authority for congestion pricing—Miami, Minneapolis, and San Francisco—and Seattle needs to obtain it by September 2009. However, New York City failed to meet its April 2008 deadline for obtaining congestion pricing authority from the state legislature. As a result, in accordance with the terms of the department’s UPA with New York City, the department cancelled New York City’s agreement and awarded about $364 million to Chicago and Los Angeles through the department’s Congestion Reduction Demonstration Program. As its name indicates, the Congestion Reduction Demonstration Program, established in 2007, is a successor to the UPA initiative. This program’s goals and selection criteria are similar to the UPA initiative’s. For example, the Federal Register notice solicited applications that would support congestion-pricing, transit, and technology strategies to reduce congestion. Like the UPA initiative, the Congestion Reduction Demonstration Program allows the department to partner with applicants to support congestion reduction using the department’s discretionary funds. In addition, in July 2008, the Secretary announced a new administration plan to create a more sustainable way to pay for and build roads and transit systems. This plan includes a proposal for creating a Metropolitan Mobility Program. Among other things, this proposal envisions financial support for innovative approaches to reduce traffic congestion. The department clearly communicated 10 of the 11 criteria it used to select urban partners, but it could have better communicated to applicants the relative weights it would assign to the selection criteria and the amount of funding available under the UPA initiative. We also found that the department provided additional attention to two applicants after they were selected as PUPs, but in the absence of government-wide guidance it is unclear on how to assess the appropriateness of this attention. According to grants policies and guidance, funding announcements that clearly state the criteria that will be used to evaluate applications promote competition and fairness in the selection of grantees.