Federal Transit Capital Investment Grants — CFDA 20.500

What $13.18 billion on 187 awards means

Assistance listing 20.500 is titled FEDERAL TRANSIT CAPITAL INVESTMENT GRANTS in the USAspending.gov files this site indexes. The obligation total on that code is $13,182,398,235.75. An obligation is a recorded federal commitment on an award. It is not an outlay against a construction invoice.

187 awards sit under that dollar book. Dividing $13,182,398,235.75 by 187 produces a mean near $70.5 million per award record. That quotient is derived from the two packet totals. It is not a typical bus purchase and not a per-rider capital cost. Capital investment grants often sit on a modest number of large project actions, which is why 187 records can carry $13,182,398,235.75.

95 organizational recipients appear on those rows. 35 states are coded for place of performance. Neither count converts the obligation total into miles of track or stations opened.

95 recipients in 35 states

CFDA 20.500 lists 95 recipients and 35 states against 187 awards. Recipient count is not unique transit riders. It is how many organizational recipients the assistance extract stores. A transit agency can appear on multiple awards; 95 is not a headcount of metropolitan areas.

Thirty-five states is a coded-jurisdiction span, narrower than a 50-state formula program. Because 187 awards are few relative to the dollar total, a handful of large capital actions can move $13,182,398,235.75 without a matching jump in the 95-recipient count. The transit hub keeps dollars, awards, recipients, and states visible so one statistic is not inferred from another.

Obligations versus capital outlays

USAspending.gov publishes obligations on assistance awards. The $13,182,398,235.75 figure for CFDA 20.500 can include commitments that will disburse as projects advance. A separate transit ridership table or a single-year capital appropriation is a different publication. This page does not translate the obligation total into those series.

If a number you expected is missing, the usual cause is a different reporting concept. Start from the obligation definition, then open the 20.500 program page. Do not stretch 187 awards or 95 recipients to cover every transit dollar in federal files.

What the 20.500 tables omit

The Federal Transit Capital Investment Grants hub lists award-backed obligations from USAspending.gov. It is not a project schedule, not a vehicle inventory, and not a farebox report. Series that never appear as assistance awards will not show up in the $13,182,398,235.75.

Place-of-performance on 35 states is a coding field. A regional grantee coded to one cell can dominate geography while service crosses state lines. Read the program page before any state split.

How to cite CFDA 20.500

A complete citation is $13,182,398,235.75 in obligations for CFDA 20.500, covering 187 awards, 95 recipients, and 35 states, drawn from USAspending.gov assistance awards on SpendingVault. Name the series as obligations. If the question is geographic reach rather than dollars, lead with 35 states, then the dollar total.

Start with the Federal Transit Capital Investment Grants program page, then the all-programs index. Agency pages show awarding organizations; they do not replace this listing’s obligation total.

A worked reading of the 20.500 extract

Start from the four packet facts on CFDA 20.500: $13,182,398,235.75 in obligations, 187 awards, 95 recipients, and 35 states. The mean near $70.49 million per award is a quotient from those two packet totals, not a typical unit cost and not a household or client rate. If a later USAspending.gov file adds a few large actions, dollars can jump while 95 recipients barely move. If modifications proliferate, 187 can rise while the dollar book stays close to $13,182,398,235.75.

Nothing in the extract splits FEDERAL TRANSIT CAPITAL INVESTMENT GRANTS into subaccounts, fiscal years, or outlay versus obligation series beyond the stored totals. Those cuts live in other publications. Treat CFDA 20.500 as an assistance-listing tag on USAspending.gov award files. Open the program page, then the all-programs index, for a same-series ranking. Cite 187 awards and 95 recipients next to the dollars so the record count is visible beside $13,182,398,235.75. Name the series as obligations, not outlays, every time the figure is reused. Agency pages show awarding organizations; they do not replace this listing’s obligation total.

A complete working citation for this listing is $13,182,398,235.75 in USAspending.gov obligations for CFDA 20.500, covering 187 awards, 95 recipients, and 35 states, indexed on SpendingVault. Do not convert 187 awards into stations opened, or 35 states into a ridership map. The 35-state field is place-of-performance coding in the assistance extract. Read the FEDERAL TRANSIT CAPITAL INVESTMENT GRANTS hub before inferring a geographic story from the dollar total alone. If a number you expected is missing from $13,182,398,235.75, the usual cause is a different reporting concept rather than a gap in the 187 award rows.

Questions

How much is obligated under transit capital investment grants?

USAspending.gov assistance awards indexed on SpendingVault show $13,182,398,235.75 in obligations for CFDA 20.500. That sum is an obligation total, not a Treasury outlay total and not a count of vehicles. The same extract lists 187 awards, 95 recipients, and 35 states.

Why does CFDA 20.500 have only 187 awards?

The indexed award count is 187. Capital investment dollars often sit on a relatively small number of large project actions, which is why $13,182,398,235.75 can coexist with a modest record count. The 187 figure is a file statistic, not a count of stations. 95 organizational recipients are stored on those rows.

Does the transit total include money already spent on construction?

Not as a cash-paid sum. USAspending reports obligations—commitments to pay—rather than outlays. The $13,182,398,235.75 figure can include amounts that will disburse later. Cite CFDA 20.500 with the obligation total from USAspending.gov assistance awards, not an outlay series. The program hub on SpendingVault holds the award rows behind those totals. Keep the series labeled as obligations from USAspending.gov assistance awards; do not swap in an outlay figure from another report.

How many states appear on CFDA 20.500?

The extract codes 35 states for Federal Transit Capital Investment Grants. That count is place-of-performance geography in USAspending.gov assistance files, not a map of every transit stop. Those rows still sit under the $13,182,398,235.75 obligation total and the 95-recipient count.