Faced with uncertainty over future funding, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is trying to get smarter.

The department has embraced a concept called "smart transportation" that emphasizes repairing current infrastructure, investing in projects that reduce vehicle travel and sprawl, and linking transportation and land use planning.

It favors walkable mixed-use districts and projects that serve pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users.

It also demands better coordination between the state and the communities affected by its projects, said James Ritzman, deputy PennDOT secretary for planning, at a conference here last week.

In the past, transportation decisions "were made in a silo" without adequate local input. "When you make a transportation change it can dramatically impact the surrounding area," Mr. Ritzman told attendees of the ninth annual Southwestern Pennsylvania Smart Growth Conference.

Mr. Ritzman said PennDOT expects this week to announce recipients of $60 million in funding for smart transportation projects under the newly created Pennsylvania Community Transportation Initiative.

Awards of up to $5 million will be made to projects that support local economic or community development efforts; encourage walkable mixed-use developments or corridors with multiple modes of transportation; or aid brownfield redevelopment.

Favored projects also would use arterial and secondary roads to relieve congestion on state highways and have transit and bicycle amenities and streetscape improvements.

The department received more than 400 applications seeking $600 million, or 10 times the available funding, Mr. Ritzman said.

While one of the goals is to cause "incubation of better thoughts, better ideas," he said, PennDOT is hoping to incorporate the philosophy into all of its planning.

He said the state, despite receiving more than $1 billion in highway and bridge money from the federal economic stimulus program, faces a possible triple dose of funding difficulties ahead.

Ninety-five percent of the stimulus money is going toward preserving existing transportation assets, he said. It will be used to replace 105 bridges, rehabilitate 295 others and resurface 680 miles of road.

But the state has 5,985 structurally deficient bridges and 6,800 miles of roads classified as in "poor" condition.

"This is not a long-term fix. While a billion among friends is nice, while it is very beneficial for Pennsylvania ... it does not solve our transportation problems," he said.

A long-term solution is clouded by uncertainty over Act 44, the state legislation passed in 2007 to address chronic underfunding of highways, bridges and mass transit. It relied on revenue from higher Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls and the tolling of Interstate 80, but the Federal Highway Administration blocked the I-80 tolls last year.

If that decision stands and I-80 is not tolled, the state will have $300 million less per year starting in July 2010 for highways and bridges, he said.

Federal funding also is in doubt. Congress is due to enact a new surface transportation bill by Oct. 1 but there is considerable disagreement over how to pay for it.

The federal Highway Trust Fund is on the brink of insolvency because of dwindling gasoline tax revenues. It provided more than $1.7 billion to the state in fiscal 2007.

"We don't have a clue what happens after Oct. 1," said Mr. Ritzman, who noted that the last surface transportation bill was passed by Congress 22 months after the deadline.

To make matters worse, the state faces a projected budget deficit of up to $3 billion.

While the federal stimulus money helped PennDOT cut into its big backlog of needed work, "unless things change dramatically on the financial side, it's going to be the same song over and over," Mr. Ritzman warned. Any vision of costly new projects "is likely to be just that," he said. "A vision."