Federal Highway Administration June 25, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The FHWA is announcing a livability initiative to harmonize and coordinate the Federal-aid highway program with grant-in-aid programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Under this initiative, the FHWA will utilize Special Experimental Project No. 14 (SEP-14) to permit, on a case-by-case basis, the application of HUD requirements on Federal-aid highway projects that may otherwise conflict with Federal-aid highway program requirements. One such requirement is contained in HUD's Section 3 Program, the goal of which is to provide training, employment and contracting opportunities to low and very low income persons residing within the metropolitan area (or nonmetropolitan county) in which the project is located and businesses that substantially employ such persons. The purposes of this SEP-14 initiative is to evaluate the contracting efficiencies and impacts on competition in harmonizing conflicting FHWA and HUD contracting requirements, and to further the goals of the DOT, HUD, and EPA partnership on sustainable communities. This initiative will not result in the diversion of highway funds to housing projects. The statutory funding eligibility requirements must continue to be met in order to use Federal-aid highway funds.