USDOT awards 'Reconnecting Communities' grants

The U.S. Department of Transportation yesterday announced the award of $185 million in capital and planning grants  through the department's new Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program.

The program is designed to reconnect communities cut off from opportunity and burdened by past transportation infrastructure decisions, USDOT officials said in a press release. The program calls for removing, retrofitting or mitigating transportation barriers, such as highways and railroad tracks.

Several projects involve rail infrastructure. Those projects and their grant awards include:

• $13.2 million to New Jersey Transit for a project to remove a problematic grade crossing and construct a pedestrian tunnel at Long Branch Station to provide station access;
• $1 million to the West Virginia Department of Transportation's Reconnecting Bluefield project to build a multimodal street facility integrated with bridge landings;
• $1 million to the city of Wichita, Kansas, to study how best to reconnect its 21st Street Corridor, a vital portion of the city that is divided by several grade crossings;
• $741,800 to the city of DeFuniak Springs, Florida, for its Multimodal and Rail Mitigation Planning Project to plan and design one or more pedestrian bridges over the Florida Gulf and Atlantic Railroad main line and construct associated multi-use trails; and
  
• $375,031 to the Region 1 Planning Council in Rockford, Illinois, for the SW Rail Yards Planning Project to study the feasibility of removing and repurposing eligible rail tracks and yards, as well as the configuration of additional rights of way for alternative uses and mixed-use development.

All projects but the Long Branch Station Pedestrian Tunnel received planning grants. NJ Transit received a capital grant for the project.

The program was established by Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021.