The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has awarded nearly $830 million in grants for 80 projects nationwide that will help states and local communities save taxpayers money while strengthening transportation infrastructure and making it more resilient to extreme weather events.
These grants are the first of their kind dedicated to transportation infrastructure resilience and were made possible by President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) Discretionary Grant Program, which complements PROTECT Formula funding that is already flowing to states for these types of projects.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change and are causing increasing damage to our transportation system, which was primarily designed and built before the realities of our current climate.
The PROTECT Grant Program is funding projects that will strengthen the country’s surface transportation system against extreme weather events, including roads, bridges, highways, public transportation, pedestrian facilities, ports, and intercity passenger rail. By increasing the resilience of these assets, these investments will reduce short- and long-term costs by minimizing future needs for maintenance and reconstruction.
“From wildfires shutting down freight rail lines in California to mudslides closing down a highway in Colorado, from a drought causing the halt of barge traffic on the Mississippi River to subways being flooded in New York, extreme weather, made worse by climate change, is damaging America’s transportation infrastructure, cutting people off from getting to where they need to go, and threatening to raise the cost of goods by disrupting supply chains,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a statement. “Today, through a first-of-its-kind program created by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are awarding nearly $830 million to make transportation infrastructure in 39 states and territories more resilient against climate change, so people and supply chains can continue to move safely.”
“Every community in America knows the impacts of climate change and extreme weather, including increasingly frequent heavy rain and flooding events across the country and sea-level rise that is inundating infrastructure in coastal states,” said Shailen Bhatt, FHWA administrator, in a statement. “This investment from the Biden-Harris Administration will ensure our infrastructure is built to withstand more frequent and unpredictable extreme weather, which is vitally important for people and businesses that rely on roads and bridges being open to keep our economy moving.”
As part the $830 million in funding, the Federal Highway Administration is awarding funding under four different grant types to 80 projects in 37 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands:
- Planning Grants: Twenty-six projects will receive approximately $45 million to help grant recipients develop resilience-improvement plans, resilience planning, predesign and design activities, capacity-building activities, and evacuation planning and preparation initiatives.
- Resilience Improvement Grants: Thirty-six projects will receive approximately $621 million to enhance the resilience of existing surface-transportation infrastructure by improving drainage, relocating roadways, elevating bridges, or incorporating upgrades to allow infrastructure to meet or exceed design standards.
- Community Resilience and Evacuation Routes: Ten projects will receive approximately $45 million for improvements to enhance the resilience of evacuation routes or to enhance their capacity and add redundant evacuation routes.
- At-risk Coastal Infrastructure: Eight projects will receive approximately $119 million to protect, strengthen, or relocate coastal highway and non-rail infrastructure.
The program also will improve equity and further environmental justice by addressing the needs of disadvantaged communities that are often the most vulnerable to hazards. The program encouraged applicants from all levels of government—from local governments and Tribes to state DOTs—to apply for PROTECT discretionary-grant funding, which complements the more than $4.3 billion in PROTECT formula funding that is already flowing to states.
The full list of grant recipients is available on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s website.
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Source: The U.S. Department of Transportation
