Dive Brief:
- Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced in early July a new funding round offering $607 million for the Department of Transportation’s Reconnecting Communities Pilot program, which aims to restore communities impacted by transportation infrastructure such as highways.
- Eligible for the grants are projects that remove, retrofit or mitigate existing facilities and infrastructure to restore community connectivity. The funds can be used to study such projects or to fund construction.
- States, local governments, metropolitan planning organizations, tribal governments and nonprofit organizations are eligible to apply by Sept. 30, 2024.
Dive Insight:
The 2021 infrastructure law established the $1 billion discretionary grant Reconnecting Communities Pilot program. The program is designed to improve residents’ access to jobs, education, healthcare, food, nature and recreation, with priority given to projects that benefit disadvantaged communities.
Previous grants have gone to capping over part of the Kensington Expressway in Buffalo, New York; planning for a park to deck over a highway in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood; and performing preliminary engineering analysis to expand access and transit among neighborhoods in Bluefield, West Virginia.
“Through President Biden’s infrastructure law, we’re addressing infrastructure choices of the past and making sure that our transportation investments serve to connect, rather than divide, people and communities across the country,” Buttigieg said in a statement.
The funding available in this round includes allocations from fiscal years 2024 through 2026, the final year of the infrastructure law. According to the DOT, last year’s program was “oversubscribed and highly competitive.”
