During the 1960s the government had spent an increasing amount of development funding on automated guideway transit (AGT) systems as a solution to providing mass transit in smaller cities and suburbs of larger ones. At the same time, aerospace companies in the U.S. were suffering from a lack of projects as the Vietnam War wound down and the Project Apollo buildout was completed. Groups within the government and industry saw the AGT efforts as a perfect opportunity to diversify. By the time Transpo was being planned, the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA), predecessor of the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), had invested $12 million in AGT research, and the companies added another $45 million.