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Dept. of Transportation R&D in FY 2007 House Appropriations PDF
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R&D in the FY 2007 Budget Page
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Materials: "DOT R&D Falls
from Record High in 2007," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D in
the FY 2007 DOT Budget AAAS Analysis
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After a dramatic increase to an all-time high in 2006 resulting from last summer’s
highway bill, the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) R&D funding would level
off at $846 million in the FY 2007 House appropriation (see Table).
The House would moderate steep proposed cuts to aviation R&D and agree with
DOT’s proposal to keep increasing highway R&D. DOT R&D in FY 2007 House Appropriations On
June 9, the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the FY 2007
Transportation-Treasury appropriations bill (HR 5576), which funds the Department
of Transportation (DOT) and other agencies. The Department of Transportation (DOT)
funds a broad range of highway, aviation, traffic safety, rail, transit, and marine
transportation programs. Its total budget would exceed $60 billion in both the
President’s request and the House bill. R&D is a relatively small part
of the DOT budget and would total $846 million in the FY 2007 plan, a slight increase
of 0.9 percent instead of an 8.5 percent requested cut (see Table).
Funding for aviation R&D would decline slightly, though by less than requested,
along with R&D on most other transportation modes, but highway R&D would
continue to increase by $18 million to $397 million. (For details of the
request for DOT R&D, please see Chapter 13 of AAAS
Report XXXI: R&D FY 2007 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. After
nearly two years of stops and starts and temporary extensions, Congress approved
a new authorization bill in August 2005 that dramatically increases highway R&D
funding beginning in 2006 and extending through 2009. Nearly all the funds from
the transportation authorization bill, commonly called the highway 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 a mixture of formula funds for
state transportation R&D, earmarked R&D projects, and intramural research.
The highway bill helped FHWA R&D climb 25 percent in 2006 to a record $380
million. The FY 2007 budget, still based on the multi-year highway bill, would
sustain those increases with a $397 million R&D investment, an increase of
4.6 percent. The
House Transportation bill provides the funds necessary to meet these authorized
increases without any changes. The surface transportation research portfolio nearly
doubled last year to $147 million for R&D on highway safety, pavement technologies,
highway operations, environmental impacts, and other road topics, and would be
sustained at that level for FY 2007. The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
portfolio of innovative technologies to improve traffic flow and reduce traffic
congestion enjoyed a big boost last year from the highway bill and would be sustained
at $75 million in 2007. The FHWA budget also includes state highway R&D, distributed
to state and local governments to support their R&D efforts, with a
11.5 percent increase to $166 million in 2007. But the House would make big changes in Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) R&D, adding funds to steep proposed cuts. The House plan would provide
$305 million for FAA R&D in 2007, just $5 million or 1.5 percent below
this year’s funding level, in contrast to a sharp cut of 24 percent or $75 million
proposed by DOT. So far, this is a repeat of last year’s budget proves in which
FAA requested steep cuts in R&D, but Congress boosted 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 FY 2007 House appropriation sustains
requested funding for most programs in FAA’s main Research, Engineering, and Development,
which is mostly focused on aviation safety, but restores funding to proposed cuts
in the Facilities and Equipment portfolio of advanced technology development and
‘free flight’ technologies. 
Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF) Outlook and Impacts for the DOT Budget 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 nearly reaching the
2002 funding level in 2006. The 2006 budget actually exceeds previous highs,
however, because Coast Guard and aviation security R&D are now funded in the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The FY 2007 House appropriation, after
adjusting for inflation, would be a slight retreat from the 2006 peak. 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 7 percent of 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 environmental sciences.
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 the National
Science Foundation. 
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF)
Outlook
and Next Steps The
full House will debate and likely approve the Transportation-Treasury bill later
this month. The Senate version of the bill, however, may not be drafted until
July or later. (This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2007 congressional appropriations. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2007 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2007 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)-
June 13, 2006
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
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