U.S. Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, announced today more than $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects across the U.S. thanks to the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program. The goal of the grant program is to to improve roads and address traffic fatalities.
The grant program, established by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), provides $5 billion over five years for regional, local, and Tribal initiatives, from redesigned roads to better sidewalks and crosswalks, in order to prevent deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roadways. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) also launched a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots that can help target needed resources.
The SS4A Grant Program comes at a time when traffic fatalities have reached a 16 year high in 2021, and preliminary data indicates will remain near those levels in 2022, while getting worse for people walking, biking, or rolling as well as incidents involving trucks.
“Every year, crashes cost tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy; we face a national emergency on our roadways, and it demands urgent action,” said Buttigieg. “We are proud that these grants will directly support hundreds of communities as they prepare steps that are proven to make roadways safer and save lives.”
The SS4A Grant Program support USDOT's vision of zero roadway deaths and its National Roadway Safety Strategy: a comprehensive approach launched in January 2022 to make our nation’s roadways safer for everyone
USDOT is awarding 473 action plan grants and 37 grants for implementation projects in this first round of the program.
Some project winners include:
- San Diego, California: $680,000 for the Safe Streets for San Diegans proposal to develop a Slow Streets Program and make the roads safer
- Fayette County, Iowa: $10.4 million to address roadway departure crashes
- Charlotte, North Carolina: $4.4 million to implement the city's Vision Zero initiative and improve infrastructure
- Pima County, Arizona: $1.52 million to develop its Safe Streets for All to improve the safety of residents
A full list of projects can be found here.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Source: USDOT
