The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is accepting applications for an $848 competitive grant program for projects that will make the nation's surface transportation infrastructure better able to withstand climate change.
DOT's Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced April 21 the opening of the first round of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s (BIL) Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) discretionary grant program. The program supports projects to make highways, public transportation, pedestrian facilities, ports and intercity passenger rail "more resilient to the worsening impacts of climate change, while reducing long-term costs by minimizing demands for more expensive future maintenance and rebuilding," the news release states.
"By funding projects that improve resilience to natural hazards and climate change impacts, the PROTECT Discretionary Grant Program aims to reduce damage and disruption to the transportation system and improve the safety of the traveling public," the DOT states in the news release. "The program prioritizes innovative and collaborative approaches to risk reduction – including approaches that harness the power of nature to protect against flood, erosion, wave damage, and heat impacts."
Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg
| Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons
PROTECT grants are also intended to improve equity and environmental justice in disadvantaged communities, which are often the areas most threatened by environmental hazards, according to the news release. The program also aims to reduce long-term costs by minimizing expensive maintenance and rebuilding, while also prioritizing risk reduction, including nature-based solutions to flooding, erosion, wave damage and heat impacts.
Grant applicants are being accepted from all levels of government, including local governments, state departments of transportation and Tribal nations, according to the release. The Notice of Funding Opportunity for Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023 will remain open through Aug. 18.
"Climate change threatens not just our lives and livelihoods, but the infrastructure we rely on every day," DOT Sec. Pete Buttigieg said in the news release. "With these grants, we will help ensure that our roads, bridges, and highways are resilient enough to withstand extreme weather, and will create good-paying jobs along the way."
