The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has awarded $645.3 million from the Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program to help communities around the United States complete transportation projects that will increase mobility, improve safety and generate regional economic growth in rural areas.
The program supports projects that improve highways, bridges and tunnels, address highway safety, increase access to agricultural, commercial, energy or freight facilities that support the economy and bring flexible transit services to rural and Tribal areas.
"Rural communities face some of the toughest transportation challenges, yet are often left out of major federal investments, a pattern that we are changing that under President Biden’s leadership,” said USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “The grants we’re announcing today will make transportation in rural communities better, safer and more reliable.”
According to USDOT, applications to the Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program were evaluated based on multiple criteria, including project readiness, cost-effectiveness and whether the project supported critical goals like enhancing safety, increasing mobility and reliability, improving resiliency and restoring infrastructure to a state of good repair.
USDOT notes applicants also benefited from a streamlined application process that reduced the burden for applicants by allowing them to submit one application for three different grant programs: Rural, the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) and the new National Infrastructure Project Assistance Program (Mega). USDOT expects to announce the recipients of this round of INFRA and Mega funding in early 2024.
As part of the funding, the state of Oklahoma has received $360,378 for the PICK 2.0 project, which will expand microtransit services to rural and Tribal communities in Oklahoma by offering shared curb-to-curb on-demand rides.
More information and a full list of this year’s Rural Surface Transportation Grant Program recipients can be found here.
