AASHTO Journal, 30 October 2015
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded $500 million in 2015 TIGER grants to 39 infrastructure projects across the nation, with one of the largest grants – $25 million – for a Midwest regional truck parking management system to be shared by eight state DOTs.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said the projects aided by this year’s grant program extend to 34 states, and rural areas received 43 percent of the awards for the highest rural percentage in seven rounds of the program.
The grants go to a wide range of project categories – highway, bridge, urban and rural transit, passenger and freight rail, port and bicycle/pedestrian. “In this round of TIGER, we selected projects that focus on where the country’s transportation infrastructure needs to be in the future; ever safer, ever more innovative, and ever more targeted to open the floodgates of opportunity across America,” Foxx said
But the USDOT also said it received 627 eligible applications from all 50 states plus several territories and tribal governments, a total of $10.1 billion in project grants.
Foxx used the announcement to say the nation needs to invest more in its infrastructure. “Transportation is always about the future,” he said. “If we’re just fixing today’s problems, we’ll fall further and further behind. We already know that a growing population and increasing freight traffic will require our system to do more.”
Among this year’s awards is that eight-state grant to provide truck drivers with real-time information to make the best decisions about where to find parking for their big rigs, with a regional parking information management system along interstates in Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
The detailed list of awards includes a $20.8 million grant to the Texas DOT for rural transit. The Rhode Island DOT got $9 million to help build a multimodal travel plaza on I-95 in Hopkinton. DOTs in Missouri and Illinois share $10 million to help replace the 87-year old Champ Clark Bridge on U.S. 54 across the Mississippi River from Louisiana, Mo., to Pike County, Ill.
Other DOTs also received grants for passenger and freight rail, multimodal, rural transit and ferry projects.