Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it had awarded $1.5 billion in grants to 26 projects across the county to improve highways, multimodal freight, and rail operations.
The grants, part of the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA), are aimed at making the transportation systems safer and more resilient, the department said, while eliminating supply chain bottlenecks and improving critical freight rail movement. Funding for the grants comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which increased INFRA funding by more than 50 percent to meet demand. The BIL will provide more than $8 billion to INFRA over the next five years.
“Today, we are announcing transformative investments in our nation’s roads, bridges, ports, and rail to improve the way Americans get around and help lower the costs of shipping goods,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Using funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are able to support more excellent community-led projects this year than ever before.”
The grants will help fund 26 projects across the country, including the I-4 West Central Florida Truck Parking Facility in West Central Florida that will tackle the shortage of commercial truck parking between Tampa and Orlando; the Rockport Bridge Rehabilitation Freight Rail Project in the Green River Area Development District spanning Ohio and Muhlenburg counties in Kentucky that will rehabilitate the 100-year-old Rockport Railroad Bridge; and the I-371 Community Reconnection Project in Detroit, Mich., which will reconnect neighborhoods in that city that were divided by the current highway design.
Projects were prioritized based on their ability to deliver national or regional economic benefits, as well as how they supported freight movements and job creation, their impacts on quality of life and equity issues, their efforts to address climate change and resiliency, and their cost effectiveness, among other criteria.