They’re not; the one big, unchanging assumption here is that the federal government would foot 50% the bill (the largest share local agencies are allowed to ask for) through the New Starts grant program.
Remember, though,.. (click me!)
…that we’re not guaranteed or entitled to that money at this time. Local agencies need to:
- show that their ideas make sense (that’s the step we’re at now);
- let the FTA know that they want to enter the pipeline of competitive projects;
- do an environmental analysis;
- design what they want to build, and;
- gather up all the non-federal money that will be spent.
Only then, IF the feds decide they like your program and a handful of others over your competition from across America, will you get that money.
As a reminder, “non-federal money” should include state funding support, but the sad truth is that the safe and reasonable thing for GoTriangle to do is to assume this won’t happen. One reason why the Durham-Orange light rail failed is because they wanted to ask the state to pay for 10% of the project costs but the Tea Party-dominated General Assembly went out of their way to add a “fuck you” amendment to the state budget that targeted it with… what’s the word they used that one time… surgical precision.
Remember that GoTriangle knows the one thing they cannot do is to repeat any of the mistakes from the light rail failure (including how external pushback like those from Duke could’ve been pre-emptively addressed with better stakeholder management), so it’s helpful to look at the commuter rail project’s designs and decisions through that lens. This means they have to assume that the state will be hostile to the project (which may happen again if state Republicans get a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers this November) and that they have to self-fund as much as they can.