Transportation Research and Policy Grant

Note: Deadline to receive Letters of Interest (LOI) is indicated above as due date for Letter of Inquiry.
Arnold Ventures (AV) is a philanthropy dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through evidence-based solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.
The Infrastructure team has been investing in efforts to build better, faster, and lower-cost infrastructure with a focus on housing, energy, and transportation. For transportation, we are investing in policymaking and research that tackles the inefficiencies that make U.S. transportation infrastructure so difficult and expensive to build.
Purpose
Transportation policy represents an avenue for improving the systems moving people, goods, and services. The Infrastructure team is seeking proposals evaluating the effectiveness and/or benefits of existing transportation or transportation-adjacent policies on outcomes for communities in the United States.
Eligible Projects and Topic Areas of Interest
This Request for Proposals (RFP) aims to bolster the knowledge base of potentially effective policies, programs, and interventions by funding efforts that align with key AV Infrastructure policy areas.
AV is primarily focused on traditional surface transportation — road and public transit — but is open to proposals in aviation, maritime, passenger and freight rail, trucking, and more.
We seek proposals for: 1) research, expanded data sets, or analysis; 2) administrative or legislative policy reforms at the federal, state, or local level; or 3) models of effective implementation including proposals for implementing agencies to partner with researchers or program evaluators to conduct baseline and post-intervention research on implementation effectiveness that will advance the knowledge base and provide illustrative examples within, but not limited to, the following topic areas:
Transportation Capital Investment Reform. Evaluating how capital funding is prioritized and selected at the federal, state, or regional level, including discretionary grant programs and formula-based funding. What reforms could ensure projects deliver higher public returns?
Cost Estimation, Oversight, and Accountability. Why do major transportation projects frequently exceed budgets and timelines, and how can we identify strategies to improve transparency, cost realism, and performance oversight?
Access in Mobility Outcomes. Measuring how current transportation investments affect access to jobs, services, and economic opportunities for workers and families, and what policy changes could improve access.
Performance-Based Project Selection. How can public agencies shift from current, politically driven allocations to datadriven, performance-based decision-making on capital project selections?
Institutional Barriers to Reform. What organizational, legal, or procedural hurdles prevent DOTs and MPOs from adopting better practices (e.g., outcome-based planning, integrated land use/transportation policy)?
Permitting and Permit Reform. How do current local, state, and federal permitting practices affect project cost, quality, timeline, and other concerns?
Intergovernmental Dynamics. How do federal, state, and local funding structures and requirements enable or constrain effective transportation investment? What governance structures would improve outcomes when it comes to transportation planning and project delivery?
Data Sets and Root Causes of High Delivery Costs. Expanded data sets on unit costs and/or research illuminating the root causes of why transportation and transit projects cost so much and take so long to deliver. What policy and practice changes could manage project delivery risks and improve the likelihood that projects will be delivered on s chedule and on budget?
Domestic Content. How do Buy America and domestic content requirements affect the cost, speed, innovation, and effectiveness of transportation infrastructure projects?
Procurement Process. How do current procurement practices affect project cost, quality, innovation, and accountability — and what policy and regulatory reforms could improve outcomes?
Other. AV also welcomes innovative proposals on other transportation issues that align with our mission.
These research, policy development, and implementation proposals can be relevant to federal surface transportation reauthorization legislation or federal administrative changes; state reforms to Departments of Transportation; and/or local-level reforms relevant either to regional transportation agencies, transit agencies, or municipal governments.