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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 36 / Thursday, February 25, 2021 / Notices For a small project to be selected, the Department must consider the cost effectiveness of the proposed project and the effect of the proposed project on mobility in the State and region in which the project is carried out. If an applicant seeks an award for a small project, it should use this section to provide information on the projects cost effectiveness and the projects effect on the mobility in its State and region, or refer to where else the information can be found in the application.
c. Guidance for Benefit-Cost Analysis This section describes the recommended approach for the completion and submission of a benefitcost analysis BCA as an appendix to the Project Narrative. The results of the analysis should be summarized in the Project Narrative directly, as described in Section D.2.b.v.
Applicants should delineate each of their projects expected outcomes in the form of a complete BCA to enable the Department to consider costeffectiveness small projects, determine whether the project will be cost effective large projects, estimate a benefit-cost ratio and calculate the magnitude of net benefits and costs for the project. In support of each project for which an applicant seeks funding, the applicant should submit a BCA that quantifies the expected benefits and costs of the project against a no-build baseline.
Applicants should use a real discount rate i.e., the discount rate net of the inflation rate of 7 percent per year to discount streams of benefits and costs to their present value in their BCA.
The primary economic benefits from projects eligible for INFRA grants are likely to include savings in travel time costs, vehicle operating costs, and safety costs for both existing users of the improved facility and new users who may be attracted to it as a result of the project. Reduced damages from vehicle emissions and savings in maintenance costs to public agencies may also be quantified. Applicants may describe other categories of benefits in the BCA
that are more difficult to quantify and value in economic terms, such as improving the reliability of travel times or improvements to the existing human and natural environments such as increased connectivity, improved public health, storm water runoff mitigation, and noise reduction, while also providing numerical estimates of the 10 Obligation occurs when a selected applicant enters a written, project-specific agreement with the Department and is generally after the applicant has satisfied applicable administrative requirements, including transportation planning and environmental review requirements.

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magnitude and timing of each of these additional impacts wherever possible.
Any benefits claimed for the project, both quantified and unquantified, should be clearly tied to the expected outcomes of the project.
The BCA should include the full costs of developing, constructing, operating, and maintaining the proposed project including both previously incurred and future costs, as well as the expected timing or schedule for costs in each of these categories. The BCA may also consider the present discounted value of any remaining service life of the asset at the end of the analysis period net of future maintenance and rehabilitation costs as a deduction from the estimated costs. The costs and benefits that are compared in the BCA should also cover the same project scope.
The BCA should carefully document the assumptions and methodology used to produce the analysis, including a description of the baseline, the sources of data used to project the outcomes of the project, and the values of key input parameters. Applicants should provide all relevant files used for their BCA, including any spreadsheet files and technical memos describing the analysis whether created in-house or by a contractor. The spreadsheets and technical memos should present the calculations in sufficient detail and transparency to allow the analysis to be reproduced by USDOT evaluators.
Detailed guidance for estimating some types of quantitative benefits and costs, together with recommended economic values for converting them to dollar terms and discounting to their present values, are available in the Departments guidance for conducting BCAs for projects seeking funding under the INFRA program see https
www.transportation.gov/office-policy/
transportation-policy/benefit-costanalysis-guidance.
Applicants for freight projects within the boundaries of a freight rail, water including ports, or intermodal facility should also quantify the benefits of their proposed projects for freight movements on the National Highway Freight Network, and should demonstrate that the Federal share of the project funds only elements of the project that provide public benefits.
3. Unique Entity Identifier and System for Award Management SAM
Each applicant must: 1 Be registered in SAM before submitting its application; 2 provide a valid unique entity identifier in its application; and 3 continue to maintain an active SAM
registration with current information at all times during which it has an active
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Federal award or an application or plan under consideration by a Federal awarding agency. The Department may not make an INFRA grant to an applicant until the applicant has complied with all applicable unique entity identifier and SAM requirements and, if an applicant has not fully complied with the requirements by the time the Department is ready to make an INFRA grant, the Department may determine that the applicant is not qualified to receive an INFRA grant and use that determination as a basis for making an INFRA grant to another applicant.
4. Submission Dates and Timelines a. Deadline Applications must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. EST March 19, 2021. The Grants.gov Apply function will open by February 17, 2021.
To submit an application through Grants.gov, applicants must:
1 Obtain a Data Universal Numbering System DUNS number:
2 Register with the System Award for Management SAM at www.sam.gov;
and 3 Create a Grants.gov username and password;
4 The E-business Point of Contact POC at the applicants organization must also respond to the registration email from Grants.gov and login at Grants.gov to authorize the POC as an Authorized Organization Representative AOR. Please note that there can only be one AOR per organization.
Please note that the Grants.gov registration process usually takes 24
weeks to complete and that the Department will not consider late applications that are the result of failure to register or comply with Grants.gov applicant requirements in a timely manner. For information and instruction on each of these processes, please see instructions at http www.grants.gov/
web/grants/applicants/applicantfaqs.html. If interested parties experience difficulties at any point during the registration or application process, please call the Grants.gov Customer Service Support Hotline at 1800 5184726, MondayFriday from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. EST.
b. Consideration of Application Only applicants who comply with all submission deadlines described in this notice and submit applications through Grants.gov will be eligible for award.
Applicants are strongly encouraged to make submissions in advance of the deadline.

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