Biden Announces Nearly $830M in Grants to Make Transportation Infrastructure More Resilient to Climate Change
With extreme weather events only seeming to increase, becoming more and more frequent due to climate change, our nation’s transportation infrastructure calls for some assistance. These severe storms are damaging our transportation system, which was primarily designed and built before the realities of our current climate.
The Biden-Harris Administration announced nearly $830 million in grant awards for 80 projects nationwide via President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-saving Transportation (PROTECT) Discretionary Grant Program. This funding will help states and local communities save taxpayers money while strengthening surface-transportation systems and making them more resilient to extreme weather events worsened by the climate crisis, flooding, sea-level rise, heat waves, and other disasters.
“From wildfires shutting down freight rail lines in California to mudslides closing down a highway in Colorado, from a drought causing the halt of barge traffic on the Mississippi River to subways being flooded in New York, extreme weather, made worse by climate change, is damaging America’s transportation infrastructure, cutting people off from getting to where they need to go, and threatening to raise the cost of goods by disrupting supply chains,” said Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Today, through a first-of-its-kind program created by President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are awarding nearly $830 million to make transportation infrastructure in 39 states and territories more resilient against climate change, so people and supply chains can continue to move safely.”
“Every community in America knows the impacts of climate change and extreme weather, including increasingly frequent heavy rain and flooding events across the country and sea-level rise that is inundating infrastructure in coastal states,” said FHWA Administrator Shailen Bhatt. “This investment from the Biden-Harris Administration will ensure our infrastructure is built to withstand more frequent and unpredictable extreme weather, which is vitally important for people and businesses that rely on roads and bridges being open to keep our economy moving.”
According to the Federal Highway Administration, As part of today’s announcement, the Federal Highway Administration is awarding funding under four different grant types to 80 projects in 37 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands:
- Planning Grants: Twenty-six projects will receive approximately $45 million to help grant recipients develop resilience-improvement plans, resilience planning, predesign and design activities, capacity-building activities, and evacuation planning and preparation initiatives.
- Resilience Improvement Grants: Thirty-six projects will receive approximately $621 million to enhance the resilience of existing surface-transportation infrastructure by improving drainage, relocating roadways, elevating bridges, or incorporating upgrades to allow infrastructure to meet or exceed design standards.
- Community Resilience and Evacuation Routes: Ten projects will receive approximately $45 million for improvements to enhance the resilience of evacuation routes or to enhance their capacity and add redundant evacuation routes.
- At-risk Coastal Infrastructure: Eight projects will receive approximately $119 million to protect, strengthen, or relocate coastal highway and non-rail infrastructure.
