The way the U.S. Department of Transportation puts it, communities of all sizes are seeking federal grant money to expand large-scale infrastructure projects of regional significance.
In the latest cycle of its Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER, grants program, DOT announced June 6 that 585 applications were filed. The requests total $9.3 billion. Not everybody will be a grant recipient, however. DOT has $500 million at its disposal.
Demand for the grants denotes interest in federal assistance, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.
“Communities across the country know that if we want a strong, multimodal transportation system that will meet our needs in the future, we need to make meaningful investments today,” Foxx said. “As we have seen year after year, there are far more worthy projects than we can fund through TIGER.”
The House is expected to take up a fiscal 2017 funding bill this month that would provide $450 million for the TIGER program, a $50 million reduction from the fiscal 2016 enacted level and $800 million below the Obama administration’s request.
According to DOT, the TIGER program has distributed nearly $4.6 billion for 381 projects since 2009.
