USDOT awards nearly $1B in RAISE infrastructure grants

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U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced Friday that 90 projects in 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam have received more than $1 billion in infrastructure grants.

The grants, part of the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program, will focus on safety, environmental sustainability, quality of life issues, economic competitiveness, and state of good repair issues.

“We’re proud to support these great projects that will improve infrastructure, strengthen supply chains, make us safer, advance equity, and combat climate change,” Buttigieg said. “As in past years, we received far more applications than we could fund: this cycle saw about a ten-to-one ratio of requests to available dollars. But going forward, with the passage of President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we will be able to support far more infrastructure projects to support jobs and everyday life in communities across the country.”

The grants included $25 million to the City of Manchester, N.H., to reconnect the city’s South Millyard district to surrounding neighborhoods and downtown Manchester that will ease traffic congestion, increase safety, and provide improved and accessible transportation options for the community; $25 million for the New Mexico Department of Transportation for a project to reconstruct approximately 21 miles of US 64 in northwestern New Mexico, which will include widening bridges, installing enhanced lighting, and installing fiber optic cable to connect communications and monitoring equipment; and $18.2 million for St. Louis County, Mo., to reconstruct 1.5 miles of West Florissant Avenue, that will add transit stops, new traffic signals and medians, and improve sidewalks to be ADA-compliant.

According to the USDOT, 50 percent of the projects are located in rural areas. RAISE Transportation discretionary grants are for planning and capital investments in surface transportation infrastructure and are awarded based on the project’s local and regional impact, among other criteria.