The SS4A Funding Window

By Kate Fillin Yeh & Jesse Mintz Roth

After years of sharp increases in traffic fatalities, the U.S. saw encouraging progress in 2025. Nationwide, road deaths declined by an estimated 12%, the largest decrease since before the pandemic, with several cities reporting their safest years on record. 

While this trend signals momentum toward the numbers the U.S. saw before pandemic spikes, it does not represent a finish line — far from it. 

The U.S. continues to experience approximately 35,000 to 40,000 traffic related fatalities annually, with pedestrians disproportionately at risk. Compared to other developed nations, the U.S. still faces a significant road safety gap. Residents all around the U.S. likely know someone injured or killed in traffic crashes and consider improving street safety in their communities to be a top priority. 

At the same time, communities face a narrowing funding opportunity to translate safety commitments into real, on the ground changes. Through the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program, nearly $1 billion was awarded to 2025 applicants, with an additional $993 million available in 2026. 

With no additional funding announced beyond 2026, agencies that have been waiting to “get their ducks in a row” no longer have the luxury of time. The deadline for the upcoming funding round is this Tuesday, and the communities best positioned to benefit will be those that can demonstrate readiness, not just intent. 

Below are practical considerations, rooted in what the SS4A program is asking applicants to show, to help move safety action plans from aspirations to implementation.

What Makes an SS4A Grant Application Competitive

SS4A offers multiple funding options via two primary grants: Planning and Demonstration Grants and Implementation Grants. For communities that already have or are covered by an approved safety action plan and a high injury network (HIN), Implementation Grants are often the most appropriate path. 

The bulk of the 2026 funding is expected to be allocated towards Implementation Grants. These applications require detailed crash data, clearly identified priority locations and defined street safety interventions tied directly to fatal and serious injury crash reduction. 

For communities that are just beginning and do not yet have a safety action plan, Planning and Demonstration Grants provide the opportunity to develop a framework that identifies risk areas, establish policy solutions and set the stage for future investment. 

Even if the SS4A program is not extended, the value of this work endures. Understanding where injury crashes cluster, what is causing the most serious injuries and how policy and design can work together to address them, is crucial to reducing traffic fatalities in the long term. Knowing these data-backed insights prepares communities to be competitive applicants for many other kinds of grant funding.

Strong applications are not simply well written; they are well substantiated. Successful proposals comply with SS4A’s checklist requirements, but they also go further by citing current crash and incident data, clearly connecting proposed safety projects to documented safety problems and outlining realistic, cost-constrained implementation processes that can produce immediate impacts. Including evidence of community engagement and public sentiment strengthens the case by showing that proposed solutions have community buy-in. 

Applications that demonstrate readiness to act, rather than intent alone, stand out. 

Aligning Federal Dollars with Local Safety Priorities

One of SS4A’s defining features is flexibility. The program is open to cities, municipalities, counties, metropolitan planning organizations, eligible transit agencies, public universities, school districts and public health entities. SS4A supports planning, demonstration and capital implementation, and it emphasizes location specific analysis to identify where crash rates are highest and where safety interventions can deliver the greatest benefit. 

That flexibility allows applicants to tailor strategies to the unique road and safety risks their communities face. Urban, suburban and rural communities all face different road safety challenges, and one size fits all safety strategies rarely perform equally. 

Communities that understand how SS4A fits into their broader infrastructure programs use funds more efficiently and sustain safety outcomes over time. Recent funding also suggests growing interest in innovative technology driven solutions, including post crash care and emergency response, particularly in smaller communities. 

Which Data Matters Most for Road Safety Analysis

Crash history data remains foundational, particularly when focused on incidents involving serious or fatal injuries. However, crash history data alone is not sufficient. Predictive analysis, which examines factors such as speed, traffic volume, land use/demographics and roadway characteristics, allows communities to anticipate where crashes are likely to occur and proactively focus resources on those places to prevent future fatalities and severe injuries. 

Many agencies possess large volumes of data and community feedback but lack the time and capacity to translate it into actionable insights. Leveraging data effectively requires parsing patterns, identifying specific risk factors and connecting analysis directly to design and policy decisions. Seasonal and contextual factors also matter. 

For example, some cities have seen that the shifts in daylight during the fall because of daylight savings and fewer hours of sunlight can change commute conditions in ways that correlate with increased crash risk, illustrating how nuanced data analysis can inform targeted responses. 

The first step in many SS4A efforts is comprehensive data analysis, followed by converting findings into clear, location-specific actions. This can mean addressing high risk highway ramp approach areas, modifying left turns, changing speed limits or prioritizing visibility improvements at complex intersections. 

Turning Awarded Funds into Reduced Fatalities

SS4A funding can unlock meaningful change because it allows communities to develop a holistic roadmap to improve safety, using a “safe system” approach to look across agencies and leverage a broad array of community assets to make streets safer for all. 

SS4A-developed safety action plans provide a delivery-focused approach, turning plans into impactful safety projects and including tools to measure progress in real and meaningful terms. Good action plans provide clear project pipelines, defined roles and responsibilities, and monitoring and evaluation frameworks tied directly to fatal and severe injury reduction. They are also the needed ingredients for successful Demonstration and Implementation grant awards.

Successful communities treat safety action plans as living documents with regular planned updates; adapting priorities as new data emerges during implementation. SS4A delivers the greatest value when it accelerates existing projects rather than creating parallel processes that slow delivery. 

A holistic approach, one that embeds safety into day to day decision making and capital programming, helps ensure that safety priorities persist beyond the life of a single grant award, becoming part of the annual capital improvement planning process. 

The Window is Narrowing

With $993 million remaining for 2026 and no additional funding announced beyond this year, SS4A represents a closing window to access federal road safety funding at this scale. 

However, establishing a strong safety action plan now that guides capital planning for years to come will help leverage future implementation grants when they become available. Data is essential, but it can only take communities so far. 

Communities that pair credible analysis with realistic delivery strategies and clear accountability measures will be best positioned not only to win funding now, but to translate that funding into safer streets for everyone who uses them for years to come. Now is the time to act and take advantage of this waning funding window. 

Kate Fillin-Yeh is a Senior Associate at Stantec’s Transportation practice in New York. She can be contacted via email at [email protected]. Jesse Mintz-Roth is a Senior Associate at Stantec’s Transportation practice in New York. He can be contacted via email at [email protected].