Natural Disaster Adjustments for Urbanized Area Apportionments

SUMMARY: This notice provides interested parties with the opportunity to comment on the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) National Transit Database (NTD) proposed new policy on natural disaster adjustments to NTD data. If a transit provider suffers a marked decrease in transit service due to a natural disaster, FTA proposes to allow that transit provider to be ``held harmless'' in the apportionment of formula grants for urbanized areas. In this case, FTA would use the transit provider's data from the NTD report year before the natural disaster in the apportionment, but use data from the current NTD report year for all other transit providers. Under this proposed policy, FTA would only make this adjustment upon the request of the affected transit provider or the designated recipient for the urbanized area, and FTA would grant this request at its discretion based on the disaster's demonstrated severity and impacts. FTA proposes for this policy to take effect for the 2007 NTD Report Year, which is the data to be used in the FY 2009 apportionment of formula grants for urbanized areas. DATES: Comments must be received on or before September 15, 2008. FTA will consider comments filed after this date to the extent practicable.