The Coalition for America's Gateways and Trade Corridors (CAGTC) heralded the recent endorsement by both the President and Congress for investment in multimodal infrastructure through merit-based, objective distribution criteria. Just a day after the President's remarks on the role infrastructure investment will play in job creation, members of both chambers of Congress filed a conference report which includes $600 million for a new competitive grants program for multimodal surface transportation infrastructure projects that will have a significant impact on the Nation, a metropolitan area, or a region.

Earlier, on Tuesday, as part of its proposal for a new jobs creation program, a statement issued by the White House specifically calls out the merit-based TIGER grant program, which was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and 'support for merit-based infrastructure investment that leverages federal dollars.'

'We're pleased with the growing recognition, by both Congress and the Administration, that the most effective way to invest in the nation's multimodal infrastructure is through objective, merit-based criteria,' stated Mort Downey, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation and Senior Advisor at Parsons Brinckerhoff. 'We look forward to working with both Congress and the Administration to make this approach the centerpiece of a multimodal freight infrastructure program in the upcoming surface transportation authorization.'

Earlier this year, CAGTC unveiled Freight 21: A National Strategic Freight Mobility Program and Trust Fund (FTF) and called upon Congress to make it a central part of the next federal-aid surface transportation legislation with dedicated funding and competitive, merit-based project selection criteria. The concept is supported by a General Accounting Office (GAO) report, released earlier this year, encouraging Congress to create a well-defined federal role in program priorities on a regional and national level and select projects competitively based on certain criteria ' both tenets of CAGTC's Freight 21 proposal.