Rural Areas Receive Record Percentage of DOT TIGER Grants
A record 43% of the projects being funded through the TIGER, or Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, program are in rural areas. Those include:
• A $25 million grant to implement a regional truck parking information management system along interstates in Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, providing drivers with more reliable, real-time information.
• A $20.8 million grant to construct transit facilities and buy replacement transit vehicles that will have improved safety and accessibility features for persons with disabilities.in growing rural areas of Texas.
• A $15 million grant to construct a grade-separated highway overpass at the intersection of state Route 347 and a double-track rail line in Maricopa, Arizona.
• A $16 million grant to help pay for the replacement of the century-old Portal Bridge that crosses New Jersey’s Hackensack River to facilitate faster, safer, and more reliable rail traffic on one of the most congested segments of the Northeast corridor.
“Transportation is always about the future,” Foxx said. “If we're just fixing today's problems, we'll fall further and further behind. We already know that a growing population and increasing freight traffic will require our system to do more. In this round of TIGER, we selected projects that focus on where the country’s transportation infrastructure needs to be in the future; ever safer, ever more innovative and ever more targeted to open the floodgates of opportunity across America.”
DOT received 627 eligible applications from 50 states and several U.S. territories, including tribal governments, requesting $10.1 billion in grants. This is the seventh round of TIGER grants since 2009, providing $4.6 billion for 381 projects.
