Pilot Program for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Planning

Eligible Applicants

Applicants and eventual grant recipients under this program must be existing FTA grantees as of the publication date of the NOFO. A proposer must either be the project sponsor of an eligible transit capital project as defined above or an entity with land use planning authority in an eligible transit capital project corridor. Evidence of a partnership between these two types of entity will be required unless the applicant has both responsibilities. Please refer to the NOFO for further information. 

Only one application per transit capital project corridor may be submitted to FTA. Multiple applications submitted for a single transit capital project corridor indicate to FTA that partnerships are not in place, and FTA will reject all of the applications. 

Eligible Uses

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

Any comprehensive or site-specific planning work proposed for funding under this program must be associated with an eligible transit capital project, namely a new fixed guideway project or a core capacity improvement project as defined in Section 5309(a) of title 49, United States Code. These statutory definitions are also provided in section (C)(3)(i) of the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO). Projects are not required to be within the Capital Investment Grants Program.  

Per statute, any comprehensive or site-specific planning funded through the program must:

• Examine ways to improve economic development and ridership,
• Foster multimodal connectivity and accessibility,
• Improve transit access for pedestrian and bicycle traffic,
• Engage the private sector,
• Identify infrastructure needs, and 
• Enable mixed-use development near transit stations.