(The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates,
including continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2000
appropriations, is available on the AAAS R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D)
in the "FY 2000 R&D" or the "What's
New" sections.)
On October 4, Congress sent President Clinton a final
FY 2000 Transportation appropriations bill (HR 2084) for the Department
of Transportation (DOT). In a year of looming budget cuts because of
tight spending caps, the Transportation bill stands out for its generous
increases. Most of its spending is exempt from the budget caps that
threaten to squeeze other domestic programs. The bill provides $645
million for DOT's R&D in FY 2000, an increase of $43 million or
7.1 percent (see Table). This increase
is well below the President's request for $836 million. DOT's R&D
grows faster than the DOT budget as a whole, which totals $50.1 billion,
an increase of $2.3 billion or 4.8 percent.
Although Congress faces the politically unpleasant
task of making deep cuts to total discretionary spending in order to
stay under budget caps, much of the spending in the Transportation bill
is exempt from the caps because of two new categories of discretionary
spending created in last year's Transportation Equity Act for the 21st
Century (TEA-21). TEA-21, a six-year reauthorization bill for
most highway and transit programs, dedicates all highway and transit
trust fund receipts for transportation and creates two new categories
of discretionary spending (highways and transit programs) for that purpose.
Spending in these two categories is determined by receipts from transportation
taxes and not by legislative limits. (Previously, Congress had diverted
a substantial portion of transportation receipts to other discretionary
programs, which had the effect of limiting transportation spending.)
Because transportation revenues have been rising and
all these revenues are required to be spent on transportation, the Transportation
bill is especially generous toward the two primary beneficiaries of
TEA-21 spending, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA; $28.9 billion,
up 5.7 percent) and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA; $5.8 billion,
up 7.5 percent). Most other DOT agencies, which are funded primarily
or partially from general discretionary funds and are thus subject to
the discretionary caps, see flat or shrinking budgets.
FHWA's R&D programs receive $288 million,
a gain of $30 million or 11.7 percent over FY 1999, mostly because of
the guaranteed funding in TEA-21. The Administration's request was for
$459 million, nearly double the FY 1999 level. In the budget request,
DOT had proposed to reallocate a portion of unexpected additional revenues
from the highway trust fund toward uses not specified in TEA-21, including
a significant diversion of funds to R&D. The House, Senate, and
final bills all rejected this proposal, and distributed all the additional
revenue to the states according to the TEA-21 distribution formula.
This keeps FHWA R&D closer to FY 1999 levels. The FHWA total includes
$47 million for R&D in the Intelligent Transportation Systems
(ITS) program, down from the $97 million request but up from last
year. There are increases for most other FHWA R&D programs, though
not as significant as those proposed by the Administration.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) receives
$246 million for R&D activities, an increase of 8.9 percent. The
House would have awarded an increase of 16.2 percent, but the conference
report comes closer to the Senate total of $241 million. The increase
for R&D is due to a new $16 million appropriation for the Safety
Flight 2000 project, a project to develop new traffic-control and aircraft
navigation technologies to improve the efficiency of commercial aviation.
There are also increases for many other FAA R&D projects, including
research on aircraft safety technologies and aging aircraft.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) receives $50 million for R&D in FY 2000, the same as
FY 1999. Most of NHTSA's R&D involves highway safety research and
the development of new safety-related technologies. R&D in the Federal
Transit Administration (FTA) declines to $13 million from $17 million
because Congress denies funds for a fuel cell bus R&D program.
The majority of DOT's R&D is performed by intramural
laboratories and industrial performers. Universities and colleges perform
about a tenth of DOT's R&D, and a similar proportion is performed
by state and local governments.
Nearly two-thirds of DOT's research (excluding development
and R&D facilities) is in the engineering sciences, particularly
in civil engineering, but DOT also is a key federal funding source for
research in psychology and physics (see Figure 1). DOT is only the fifth-largest
supporter of engineering research despite its importance in the DOT
portfolio, funding 5 percent of all federal support for engineering.
The major sponsors of engineering research are the Department of Defense
and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, with about a
third each of total federal support, followed by the Department of Energy
and National Science Foundation. FAA funds 5 percent of total federal
support for psychology, mostly into the role of human factors in aviation
safety.
