Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded $3.2 billion in grants to fund 180 projects on Tuesday.
- Grants went to programs administered directly by the DOT as well as several operating administrations, with the Federal Highway Administration receiving over $1.4 billion, or about 44% of the total.
- The transportation department said in a press release it had inherited 3,200 unobligated grants previously announced by the Biden administration and has so far approved 329 of those grants.
Dive Insight:
President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” directed all federal agencies to stop disbursing funds pending review of each grant appropriated through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the Inflation Reduction Act. Subsequently, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a memo that the department would prioritize grants for “communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average.”
Duffy further warned grant recipients in an April 24 letter that grantees must cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officials and avoid diversity, equity and inclusion practices to qualify for federal funding.
“The last administration liked to grab the headlines but didn’t want to do the hard work of building,” Duffy said in a statement. “They also tied road construction up with red tape and leftist social requirements – adding millions in costs and months of delay – all while our outdated infrastructure sat in disrepair.”
The Federal Transit Administration will administer $497 million of the latest grants, most of which come under the Low or No Emission bus grant program. Among the grants were those to the Connecticut Department of Transportation, the Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority and King County Metro Transit in Washington state.
Amtrak will receive $30 million for a bridge replacement program in Maryland on the Northeast Corridor. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation gets $3.6 million toward the Boston-Albany, New York, rail corridor, and the Illinois Department of Transportation will receive $500,000 for a program to extend rail service to the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa.
The FHWA will administer $1.4 billion over 17 grants for bridge repair and improvements. These include projects in Alabama, Minnesota, San Diego and Washington, D.C.
A full list of grant awards is available on the transportation department website.
