Rethinking competition in TIGER: Lessons for federal funding and public administration

Increasing the use of merit-based competition has become a popular policy idea for federal transportation funding. Focusing on a competitive program—the 2009 Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program—this article asserts thatsuch competition does not guarantee transparency or that awards will actually maximize benefits. In addition, competitive award programs can widen gaps across places and among people. Rather than rush towards competition, careful program design is needed, and more debate on the federal role in transportation is warranted.