Enhancing Mobility Innovation

What's New

• On January 17, 2025, FTA selected two projects to receive a share of $1.25 million available under the Enhancing Mobility Innovation program. Selected projects will develop and demonstrate new approaches to improve the experience for transit riders.

Overview

FTA’s Enhancing Mobility Innovation program advances a vision of mobility for all – safe, reliable, equitable, and accessible services that support complete trips. The program promotes technology projects that focus on the traveler experience and encourage people to get on board, such as integrated fare payment systems and user-friendly software for demand-response public transportation.

Enhancing Mobility Innovation projects fall under two categories:

• Accelerate innovative mobility: Concept development and/or demonstration projects that improve mobility and enhance the rider experience with a focus on innovative service delivery models, creative financing, novel partnerships, and integrated payment solutions.
• Software solutions: Projects that develop software solutions that facilitate integrated demand-response public transportation that dispatches transit vehicles through riders’ mobile devices or other technology.

This program builds on FTA’s investments to improve the transit experience, such as previously awarded Enhancing Mobility Innovation projects, Mobility on Demand Sandbox, the Accelerating Innovative Mobility Initiative and the Integrated Mobility Innovation Program. FTA seeks targeted projects of national significance that:

• Support innovation in mobility that meets evolving needs of transit riders
• Advance equitable and climate-smart transportation
• Improve public transportation service
• Advance the vision of carefree mobility for all

Selected Projects

2025

• On January 17, 2025, FTA awarded the Monterey-Salinas Transit and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey a share of $1.25 million EMI grants:
  • Monterey-Salinas Transit will receive $449,860 to demonstrate an innovative method to test and verify the eligibility for rider discounts in contactless payment systems.
  • The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will receive $804,586 to retrofit electric buses with automated driving features that enable more buses to travel more frequently in exclusive bus lanes to improve safety, efficiency, and capacity.

2022

• On August 10, 2022, FTA selected nine projects in six states and the District of Columbia to receive a share of approximately $4 million for EMI grants. 
   

Eligible Activities

Eligible activities include all activities leading to the development and/or testing of new approaches and tools for improving mobility. This notice solicits applications in two topical areas:

• Projects that develop novel operational concepts and/or demonstrate innovations that improve mobility and enhance the rider experience, focused on innovative service delivery models, creative financing, novel partnerships, and integrated payment solutions, or other innovative solutions.
  • Eligible activities may include all activities leading to uncovering the next iteration of promising technologies, practices and strategies that accelerate innovations in mobility for transit, including, but not limited to, technology scanning and feasibility analysis, engagement and outreach, planning, acquiring essential equipment or services, project implementation, modeling forecast of climate and community impacts of proposed novel concepts, and evaluating project results.
• Projects that develop software to facilitate demand-response public transportation that dispatches transit vehicles through riders’ mobile devices or other advanced means.
  • Eligible activities may include establishing user needs; defining system requirements; development, validation and verification of the software; modeling and simulation; and/or pilot implementation, with a software solution.

Eligible Recipients

Eligible applicants include:

• Providers of public transportation, including public transportation agencies, state or local government DOTs, and federally recognized Indian tribes
• Private for-profit and not-for-profit organizations incorporated in a jurisdiction of the United States, including shared-use mobility providers, private operators of transportation services, technology system suppliers and integrators, bus or vehicle manufacturers or suppliers, software and technology developers, financial institutions, consultants, research consortia, and industry organizations
• State, city, or local government entities, including multi-jurisdictional partnerships, and organizations such as Metropolitan Planning Organizations
• Institutions of higher education including large research universities, technical and community colleges, particularly those with Minority Serving Institution status

Eligible applicants are encouraged to identify one or more project partners with a substantial interest and involvement in the project to participate in the implementation of the project.

Statutory Reference

The Enhancing Mobility Innovation Competitive Funding Opportunity implements two provisions of the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 117-328), that directs FTA to competitively fund $968,000 in cooperative agreements to accelerate mobility innovations that improve mobility and enhance the rider experience, and $968,000 in cooperative agreements for the development of software solutions to facilitate demand-response public transportation, and is authorized under the Public Transportation Innovation Program (49 U.S.C. § 5312).

Allocation of Funding

The Enhancing Mobility Innovation projects are funded under FTA’s Research, Development, Demonstration and Deployment program authority.

Match

The federal share of project costs under this program is limited to 80 percent. Proposers may seek a lower Federal contribution. The applicant must provide the local share of the net project cost in cash, or in-kind, and must document in its application the source of the local match.