Capital Investment Grant Analyzer Tool

FTA’s Capital Investment Grant (CIG) program is a discretionary grant program that funds transit capital investments, including heavy rail, commuter rail, light rail, streetcars, and bus rapid transit. The program requires transit agencies seeking CIG funding to complete a series of steps over several years, including getting the projects rated by FTA at various points in the process according to statutory criteria evaluating project justification and local financial commitment.

The CIG Analyzer tool provides a snapshot of the CIG rating, through a visualizer dashboard, that can be used at various stages of the planning process to assess if the project will qualify for CIG funding. The tool allows our clients to understand which aspects of their project (alignment, station locations, operational changes, costs, etc.) will positively impact the CIG rating, thereby allowing them to focus resources on fine-tuning those aspects of the project. The tool can also be used in early phases of transit planning studies to analyze how close the project is to the rating breakpoints.

In practice:

For the Metro Gold Line Bus Rapid Transit Project in Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN, our CIG Analysis Tool was used during the Project Development phase. This kept the project team aware of the project’s CIG rating and how proposed station, alignment, or operational changes might impact the rating, allowing them to recommend changes that better complied with FTA’s CIG ratings.