The U.S. Department of Transportation announced a $28.5 million funding opportunity to make public transit more affordable and family-friendly.

Through the Federal Transit Administration’s Pilot Program for Transit-Oriented Development Planning, the agency is seeking proposals from communities focused on improving safety, advancing innovation, and easing commutes for families.

Improving America’s Communities

The Pilot Program for TOD Planning helps support FTA’s mission of improving America’s communities through public transportation by providing funding to local communities to integrate land use and transportation planning with a new fixed-guideway or core-capacity transit capital investment.

The NOFO focuses on several priority considerations for funding, including:

Safety: How a project advances safe journeys along corridors and at stations, and encourages a safe route to services along corridors, such as school, childcare, recreation, and social services.

Innovation: How a project fosters innovative approaches, partnerships with transit agencies and advocates, and promotes research, development, and demonstration of new technologies and policies that stimulate private-sector participation, private investment, and public-private partnerships to deliver infrastructure and TOD in the corridor. 

Benefits for Families and Communities: How a project increases transit access for families at the proposed transit station or along the corridor, and how it integrates childcare and recreation near public transportation hubs.​