U.S. Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) recently sent a letter, along with 40 Senate colleagues, to urge the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development to include funding for the national infrastructure investments program, also known as TIGER, in fiscal year 2018.
Created in 2009 by Murray, the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program provides flexibility for state and local agencies to tackle multifaceted transportation and economic development challenges in their communities. Since its creation, the program has awarded $5.1 billion to aid in the facilitation of 421 multimodal projects in all 50 states, including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.
“TIGER is a unique, cost-effective, and competitive program that uses outcome oriented selection criteria and leverages private, state, and local investment to solve complex multimodal transportation and economic development challenges … We have all seen firsthand the difference TIGER can make in our states,” the members wrote in a letter to Subcommittee Chairman Susan Collins (R-ME) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI).
In addition to the TIGER program, Murray and Cantwell also urged the subcommittee to continue funding the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant (CIG) Program. CIG supports public transit projects in communities across the country. As transit ridership is at its highest level in 50 years, elimination of the CIG program would result in greater traffic congestion, fewer jobs and wasted economic potential, additionally putting nearly 60 projects in the current pipeline in 19 states at risk, the senators wrote.