The U.S. Department of Transportation is announcing $2.26 billion in grants for 162 infrastructure projects in each of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The grants include funding for $73 million in Missouri projects for Boone, Benton, Nodaway and Jackson County, along with $67 million for Illinois projects in Cook County and Champaign County.
The projects were selected through an application process that allowed local communities to pitch the federal government on where dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act passed last year should be spent.
“Wherever you live, chances are in some way or another we have supported or soon will support work that's going to make your community safer, cleaner, fairer,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig said on a call briefing reporters ahead of the announcement on Tuesday.
Buttigieg said the projects are split evenly between rural and urban areas of the country, with roughly 70% going towards “low-income or underserved communities.”
The projects include rebuilding bridges and developing new ones, renovating train stations and implementing new bus systems, and fixing roads and overhauling highways to reconnect communities divided by their initial construction.
In Kansas City, the grant will fund a $4.5 million study of transit connection and street enhancements between the University of Kansas Health System and Arrowhead Stadium and Kauffman Stadium at the Truman Sports Complex.
“Planning will analyze safety improvements such as the inclusion of medians and pedestrian refuge islands, road diets, lighting, and backplates. The project aims to create a modal shift from personal vehicles to active transportation or transit in an effort to reduced green house gas emissions. Affordable transportation choices will be established as the new transit corridor will be zero-fare,” the DOT said in the grant announcement.
Read more about the funded projects here
Ultimately, applicants asked for $15 billion and projects had to be narrowed down to the $2.26 billion available during the latest round of funding through the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity, or RAISE, program, Buttigeig said. New rounds of funding will be made available to applicants soon, he added.
“With as much as we have accomplished we are still in many ways at the outset of this effort in this infrastructure decade,” the transportation secretary said.
A central aspect considered by the Biden administration as they evaluated applications was environmental sustainability, as required by the infrastructure law, Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy Christopher Coes said.
Regardless of the law, however, Coes said officials were seeing an increased demand from local governments to tackle dilemmas facing their communities impacted by climate change and other environmental factors.
“We are seeing, increasingly, local governments, state [Departments of Transportation] who are really dealing with the challenges of ‘well, there's rising sea levels’ or how to protect ports and ships,” Coes said. “Many communities are trying to get ahead of the impacts of climate and making sure that their infrastructure weathers, ensuring that everyday citizens have access to health care, to make sure that our supply chains are more resilient.”
Coes estimated 30% of applicants could start construction within the next nine months to a year and another 30% who needed roughly 18 months to get started.
The federal government is already set to fund the planned expansion of Interstate 70 in Missouri to three lanes statewide between Wentzville and Blue Springs. Money for that project is in the state budget that Gov. Mike Parson will sign by Friday afternoon.
