Highlights
- Department of Transportation (DOT) R&D funding climbs dramatically
in 2006 to $850 million, a 14.2 percent or $105 million increase (see
Table), thanks to an August transportation
reauthorization bill that guarantees large increases in highway funding
as well as numerous congressional earmarks.
- R&D in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
increases 6.0 percent to $279 million.
DOT R&D in FY 2006 Conference Appropriations
On November 17,
congressional appropriators released the conference report (final agreement)
for the FY 2006 Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill. The bill
funds all of the Department of Transportation (DOT), as well as the
Departments of Treasury, Housing and Urban Development, and miscellaneous
agencies. The House and Senate gave final approval a day later, setting
the stage for President Bush to sign it into law this week. The bill
provides $60.7 billion for the total DOT budget, an increase of $697
million or 1.2 percent over last year. R&D is a relatively small
part of the DOT budget and totals $850 million in FY 2006, a dramatic
increase of 14.2 percent or $105 million that adds on to an already-large
requested increase to bring DOT R&D to an all-time high (see Table).
The President’s budget request would have given DOT’s R&D portfolio
the largest percentage increase among the major R&D funding agencies
because of big boosts to highway R&D, and Congress goes even further
by reversing proposed cuts to aviation R&D as well. (For details
of the President’s request for DOT R&D, please see Chapter
13 of AAAS
Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or
the March 2 DOT R&D Funding Update).
Transportation
funding is unusual in that although funds are appropriated, as they
are for other discretionary programs, minimum funding levels each year
are guaranteed by transportation authorization bills. Transportation
appropriators must provide the funds necessary to meet these guarantees,
occasionally adding to them or modifying them, before appropriating
funds for programs outside the authorization bills. 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. The last highway and transit transportation
authorization bill covered fiscal years 1998-2003, and expired at the
end of September 2003. After nearly two years of stops and starts and
temporary extensions, Congress finally approved a new authorization
bill in August that was immediately and roundly criticized for its record-breaking
thousands of earmarked projects.
Nearly all the
funds from the transportation authorization bill go to the Federal Highway
Administration (FHWA) for state and local road projects, mostly in formula
distributions but also in congressionally designated earmarked projects.
FHWA’s R&D portfolio is also a mixture
of formula funds for state transportation R&D and earmarked R&D
projects, as well as intramural research. The Bush Administration proposed
a 32.0 percent increase for a total of $445 million. Similarly large
proposed increases in past years have been denied by Congress, but the
final DOT budget merely scales back the request and still leaves FHWA
with $407 million for R&D, a 20.8 percent increase over 2005. Included
in the total is $36 million in R&D earmarks specified in the August
highway bill. The big winner in FHWA is the surface transportation research
portfolio, nearly doubling to an estimated $163 million for R&D
on highway safety, pavement technologies, highway operations, environmental
impacts, and other road topics. Also included is level funding of $158
million for state highway R&D, distributed to state and local governments
to support their R&D efforts.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) R&D totals $279 million
in the final Transportation-Treasury bill, an increase of 6.0 percent
instead of a requested cut. The FAA increase stands in opposition to
other agencies’ cuts in aviation and aeronautics R&D. At the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), aeronautics research falls
2.5 percent down to $938 million in the final NASA budget, while the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reduces funding for aviation security
R&D from $178 million down to roughly $100 million in FY 2006. The
President’s budget proposed similar cuts in FAA, but Congress boosts
FAA’s R&D efforts in 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 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.
Earmarks are
responsible for the gains in other DOT agencies’ R&D investments.
Federal Transit Administration (FTA) R&D gains 61 percent to $12
million, mostly because of earmarked projects in the highway bill. Federal
Railroad Administration (FRA) R&D also increases substantially,
by 50 percent to $49 million, because of numerous earmarks in the final
Transportation-Treasury 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 (see Figure 1). But
with the transfer of aviation security R&D to the DHS, recent reductions
in key programs, and the transfer of the Coast Guard and its R&D
program to DHS, DOT R&D declined sharply in FY 2003 and 2004 before
rebounding last year and now reaching an all-time high in 2006.
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.
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.
President Bush
is expected to sign the Transportation / Treasury bill into law shortly.
But this conference report may not be the final word; Congress is working
on an across-the-board cut for all appropriations to add to the final
FY 2006 appropriations bill. The cut is expected to reach back even
to enacted appropriations bills and reduce funding for all programs
by up to 2 percent.
-
November 22, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
