The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) will be running a disparity study on small, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses to better understand whether or not firms applying for subcontracts have equitable access to them. 

“Assessing the current extent of DBE and WBE inclusion, and if any disparities exist, is necessary to accomplish this goal”, FRA’s Acting Administrator Amit Bose said in a statement. 

The FRA will conduct a survey to better analyze the number of small, minority-owned, and woman-owned businesses that were awarded part of the $1 billion in grants for freight and passenger projects, funded by Congress. 

The goal will be to determine whether there is a level playing field for M/WBE firms in railroad projects. The FRA will be distributing around 30,000 surveys.