$27 Million Awarded to Providence for “Urban Trail Network” by Federal Government
Wednesday, February 01, 2023
The U.S. Department of Transportation on Wednesday announced $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program.
The competitive grant program, established by President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law, provides $5 billion over five years "for regional, local, and Tribal initiatives — from redesigned roads to better sidewalks and crosswalks — to prevent deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roadways. The Department also launched a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots that can help target needed resources."
According to the U.S. DOT release, Rhode Island received one award for implementation projects in this first round of the program:
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTOver $27 million for SS4A Implementation Grant to Advance Engineering & Construction of Providence, RI's Urban Trail Network (Providence, RI): The City of Providence plans to advance engineering and systemic construction of its Urban Trail Network (UTN) to eliminate fatal and serious crashes for vulnerable road users in the city’s 25 neighborhoods.
Project components include a combination of on-road and road-adjacent protected bicycle lanes and shared-use trails, neighborhood greenways on low volume streets, and offroad shared use paths.
The Department is also awarding an action planning grant to the City of Providence.
The full list of awards can be viewed HERE.
The next funding opportunity of $1.1 billion is expected to be released in April of this year.
About Program
According to the DOT, the SS4A awards "fund improved safety planning for over half the nation’s population, and will fundamentally change how roadway safety is addressed in communities through local and regional efforts that are comprehensive and data-driven. This investment comes at an important junction as traffic fatalities reached a 16-year high in 2021 and preliminary data indicates will remain near those levels in 2022, even getting worse for people walking, biking, or rolling as well as incidents involving trucks. In addition, traffic crashes are costly to American society. A new report shows the economic impact of traffic crashes was $340 billion in 2019 alone."
“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 U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete 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.”
As part of SS4A, the Department is awarding grants for both planning and implementation projects. Action plan grants assist communities that do not currently have a roadway safety plan in place to reduce roadway fatalities, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive set of actions. Implementation grants provide funding for communities to implement strategies and projects that will reduce or eliminate transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries.
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