Highlights
- Department of Transportation (DOT) R&D funding inches up 1.5 percent
to $718 million in FY 2005 (see Table).
- Congress rejected
a large increase in highway R&D proposed by the Bush Administration,
but boosted funding for aviation R&D.
DOT R&D in Final FY 2005 Appropriations
On November 20,
Congress came to an agreement on an FY 2005 omnibus appropriations bill
(HR 4818), which incorporates the final version of the FY 2005 Transportation-Treasury
appropriations bill. President Bush signed the bill into law on December
8. The omnibus bill keeps funding for domestic programs flat in FY 2005;
the Department of Transportation (DOT) R&D portfolio does slightly
better than the average for domestic programs, even after factoring
in a 0.80 percent across-the-board cut for most domestic programs. (All
figures in this analysis reflect the across-the-board cut.) The
omnibus bill gives all of DOT a total budget of $58.4 billion in FY
2005, off slightly from last year’s funding level (see Table).
R&D is a relatively small part of the DOT budget and totals
$718 million in FY 2005, a modest increase of 1.5 percent or $10 million
(see Table). (For details of the DOT request, see Chapter
13 of AAAS
Report XXIX: R&D FY 2005 or the February
25 AAAS R&D Funding Update).
More than half
of the DOT budget goes to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),
mostly for spending out of the highway trust funds for road projects
managed by state and local governments. Transportation funding increased
dramatically beginning in FY 1999 as a result of the six-year (FY 1998-2003)
reauthorization of transportation programs known as the Transportation
Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which governed
spending out of the highway trust funds. The law expired in September
2003, and a series of temporary funding authorizations, the current
one lasting through the end of May 2005, have kept transportation funding
going until Congress can agree on a new reauthorization law. The old
law specified that transportation tax revenues would be devoted exclusively
to transportation, and specified formulas for allocating these funds.
As a result of burgeoning revenues from transportation taxes, DOT’s
budget climbed from $44 billion in FY 1998 all the way to $67 billion
in FY 2001. However, these revenues have dropped off significantly in
recent years as a result of a stagnant economy, and thus total DOT funding
has leveled off. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) and the Coast Guard transferred to the new Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) in March 2003, bringing the DOT budget down to its current
level of $58.4 billion.
In FY 2005, President
Bush’s budget proposal would have reduced DOT spending by 0.3 percent
down to $58.4 billion, and Congress approved a similar amount in the
omnibus budget bill. Within a declining FHWA budget, however, the Bush
Administration budget requested an increase for FHWA R&D of 23.7
percent for a total of $394 million. The Administration proposed a reshuffling
of the FHWA accounts to allow for more spending on highway R&D at
the expense of funds to state and local governments. In the past, Congress
rejected similar proposals and maximized state and local funding, and
this year is no exception: the omnibus bill rejects the proposed shifts
to leave FHWA R&D nearly flat at $319 million. The FHWA total includes
$73 million for R&D in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) program, roughly the same
as last year. The largest portion of FHWA R&D funding goes to state
and local governments for their transportation-related research projects;
this funding increases slightly to $150 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) receives $262 million for its
R&D programs, a boost of 5.6 percent in contrast to a requested
cut. FAA’s R&D addresses a number of aviation-related topics, including
weather research, aircraft safety technology, human factors research,
and development of ‘free flight’ technologies to improve aviation system
capacity. The FAA’s R&D portfolio used to be much larger in the
$300 to $400 million range annually before the September 2001 terrorist
attacks, but most of its aviation security R&D portfolio transferred
to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), now housed within
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). FAA investments in aircraft
safety technology and aviation advanced technology development increase
in the omnibus bill.
Figure
1. (click on
the image for PDF)
Because of large increases for
DOT R&D in FY 2001 and FY 2002 responding to the September 11 terrorist
attacks on U.S.
aviation, DOT’s support for R&D reached a peak in FY 2002, after adjusting
for inflation. DOT’s R&D crested in FY 1995 and then suffered a steep
decline, particularly in the FAA, as a result of efforts to bring the federal
budget into surplus (see Figure 1). FAA and FHWA R&D then increased in the
late 1990s, and with the help of emergency R&D funds for aviation security
R&D in the aftermath of September 11 rose to the FY 2002 peak. But with the
transfer of aviation security R&D to the TSA, now in DHS, recent reductions
in transportation tax revenues, and the transfer of the Coast Guard and its
R&D program to DHS, DOT R&D declined sharply in FY 2003 and has held steady
since then.
Figure
2. (click on
the image for PDF)
The majority of DOT’s R&D
is performed by intramural laboratories and industrial performers, with
about a third each of the total portfolio (see Figure 2). Universities
and colleges perform just 4 percent DOT’s R&D. Unlike the other
large R&D funding agencies, a large proportion is performed by state
and local governments (in “Other” in Figure 2). Most of this money comes
from the FHWA under formula grants determined by the highway authorization
bill.
More than three-quarters
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. DOT is only the fifth-largest supporter of engineering
research despite its importance in the DOT portfolio, funding less than
4 percent of all federal support for engineering. The major sponsors
of engineering research are DOD and NASA, with about a third each of
total federal support, followed by the Department of Energy and National
Science Foundation.
Next Steps
President Bush
signed the omnibus bill into law on December 8, thus finalizing the
FY 2005 DOT budget. Congress is expected to try once again to pass a
comprehensive transportation authorization in 2005; the current temporary
extension expires on May 31. A new authorization could bring large changes
in DOT R&D priorities and funding levels.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations
process. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2005 appropriations,
is available on the AAAS R&D Web Site
(http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the “FY 2005
R&D” or the “What’s New” sections.)
- December 8, 2004
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
