Official: Only 50-50 chance of getting federal money for ART

Albuquerque’s chief operating officer said the city has only a “50/50” chance of receiving a $75 million federal grant to help pay for the troubled Albuquerque Rapid Transit project.

Lawrence Rael gave the grim assessment to Albuquerque Journal editors and reports last month, and that getting the money for the new mass-transit project depends on Congress, the Federal Transit Administration and the Trump administration.

New Mayor Tim Keller sounded a somewhat more optimistic note on the grant — announced by the city more than a year ago — but he acknowledged no funds have been promised.

“I think that this notion that somehow we’re just waiting for guaranteed funds is factually inaccurate and it always was,” Keller said.

Albuquerque received a “letter of no prejudice” expressing support for the project, which will provide a rapid-ride electric bus system along Central Avenue, in 2016. Then-Mayor Richard Berry said at the time that every city that had received such a letter from the FTA ended up getting the funding.

But Keller pointed out that all such letters also contain the sentence: “The authority to incur costs provided in this letter does not constitute an FTA commitment that future federal dollars will be approved for this project.”

Because of a cash crunch exacerbated by the lack of federal aid for ART, the city council approved a tax increase this week.

It seemed foolhardy for Berry to insist on starting construction for a project as expensive as ART before the federal money was in hand. Now it seems those fears are realized.

The controversial $120 million ART project entailed dedicating two lanes of almost 10 miles of Central Avenue (aka Route 66) for buses. More than a year of construction proved terrible for almost all businesses on Central, with some reporting revenue drops of 60 percent. Some also fear the radically changed structure of Central will diminish its Route 66 history and allure in the long term.

Proponents said ART is a way to draw higher-density development to the city’s core and entice more millennial residents and high-tech companies. The younger generation drives less and is more apt to use mass transit such as ART.

ART also is dealing with poorly designed bus stations and a slew of woes with a contractor who’s supposed to supply electric buses to the city. The problems have become so legion, Keller was prompted to call ART “Project Lemonade.”

(Artist’s rendering of a bus station for Albuquerque Rapid Transit)

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