On Thursday, U.S Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that the Biden Administration awarded $1.5 Billion from the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) program. INFRA is a competitive grant program for highway, multimodal freight and rail projects that will make the nation's transportation systems safer and more resilient, eliminate supply chain bottlenecks, and improve critical freight movements.
Thanks to the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), funding for INFRA increased more than 50%. Over the next five years, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will provide approximately $8 billion for the INFRA program, including the $1.5 billion made available in this round of funding.
"Today we are announcing transformative investments in our nation’s roads, bridges, ports, and rail to improve the way Americans get around and help lower the costs of shipping goods,” said Pete Buttigieg. “Using funding from President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we are able to support more excellent community-led projects this year than ever before."
Thanks to a new, streamlined process created by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) in order to reduce the burden on state and local entities, applicants were able to submit one application for three different grant programs, including INFRA and two new programs, the Rural Surface Transportation Grant program (RURAL), and the National Infrastructure Project Assistance program (Mega). The recipients of RURAL and Mega grants will be announced in the coming months.
In addition to prioritizing projects that will deliver national or regional economic benefits, INFRA projects were also evaluated based on safety, how they supported freight movement and job creation, their efforts to address climate change and resiliency, impacts on equity and quality of life, how they applied innovative technology, their cost effectiveness, and demonstrated project readiness. Further, USDOT awarded a significant amount of funding to rural areas, historically disadvantaged communities, and areas of persistent poverty to address historic underinvestment in these communities. Approximately 43% percent of awards will go to rural projects, exceeding the statutory requirement to award rural projects 25% of INFRA funding.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also expanded INFRA eligibility to include, for example, wildlife crossing projects, marine highway corridor projects, and surface transportation projects located within or functionally connected to an international border crossing.
For a full list of projects being funded, click here.
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Source: USDOT
