Communities countrywide have access to $1 billion in federal grants to improve their roads and streets and their safety, the U.S. Department of Transportation has announced.
The funds part of President Joe Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) discretionary grant program Safe Streets and Roads for All (SSR4A), the DOT reports in the May 16 announcement. The program "provides dedicated funding to support regional, local, and Tribal plans, projects and strategies that will prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries," the DOT states in the report. Traffic fatalities nationwide are at their highest level in the past decade, according to the DOT.
"The SS4A program supports the Department’s comprehensive approach, laid out in the National Roadway Safety Strategy, to significantly reduce serious injuries and deaths on our Nation’s highways, roads, and streets," the DOT states in the report,"and is part of our work toward an ambitious long-term goal of reaching zero roadway fatalities."
SS4A grants are intended to finance local efforts to develop and implement projects designed to considerably decrease or even eliminate transportation-related injuries or death that include "pedestrians; bicyclists; public transportation, personal conveyance, and micromobility users, commercial vehicle operators; and motorists," the DOT reports.
“The rise in deaths and serious injuries on our public roads affects people of every age, race and income level, in rural communities and big cities alike,” Deputy Federal Highway Administrator Stephanie Pollack said in the statement. “This program will provide leaders in communities across the country with the resources they need to make roads safer for everyone.”
Congress developed the SS4A grant program as part of the BIL's directive for the DOT to subsidize local road-safety projects, according to the DOT. The department must consider additional factors, such as equitable investment in safety initiatives for low-income or disadvantaged communities and climate-change mitigation, when awarding grants.
SS4A grants are available to individual communities or groups of communities, which can include Metropolitan Planning Organizations, cities and towns, counties and "other special districts that are subdivisions of a state, certain transit agencies, federally recognized Tribal governments, and multi-jurisdictional groups," according to the report.
The DOT is presenting an informational webinar series June 13, 15 and 23 to assist with the grant-application process; applications are due by Sept. 15, the DOT reports.
“We face a national crisis of fatalities and serious injuries on our roadways, and these tragedies are preventable – so as a nation we must work urgently and collaboratively to save lives,” said DOT Sec. Pete Buttigieg in the statement. “The funds we are making available today from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help communities large and small take action to protect all Americans on our roads.”
