USDOT awards $1.5 billion in INFRA grants

The U.S. Department of Transportation late last week officially announced the award of $1.5 billion in funding from the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA), a competitive grant program for highway, multimodal freight and rail projects designed to improve the nation’s transportation systems.

Projects receiving the grants are expected to make transportation safer and more resilient, as well as eliminate supply-chain bottlenecks and improve critical freight movements.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed by President Joe Biden in November 2021, increased funding for the INFRA program by more than 50%. Over the next five years, the law will provide $8 billion for the INFRA program, USDOT officials said in a press release.

Rail projects receiving grants include:

• $70 million to the Illinois Department of Transportation for the CREATE WA-1 Segment, the Ogden Junction project, to rehabilitate track, upgrade signaling and replace, remove or rehabilitate 18 viaduct structures on an approximately 1.9-mile-long segment of the Western Avenue Rail corridor from Kedzie to 16th Street. Approximately 10,000 feet of new track will be constructed and approximately 31,000 feet of track will be shifted. New power turnouts and crossovers will enable an automated path to be controlled by the dispatcher and new friction management equipment will be installed;

• $32.5 million for the Downtown Mile Safety and Connectivity Improvement project in Flagstaff, Arizona, to deliver pedestrian safety improvements and freight- and passenger-rail infrastructure enhancements along a 1-mile segment of the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe (BNSF) Southern Transcontinental Corridor; and

• $17.3 million to the Green River Area Development District to rehabilitate the Rockport Freight Railroad Bridge in Ohio and Muhlenberg counties, Kentucky.

To read the full list of projects to receive INFRA funding, click here. 

Under a new streamlined process created by USDOT, grant applicants were able to submit one application for three different grant programs, including INFRA and two new programs, the Rural Surface Transportation Grant program (RURAL), and the National Infrastructure Project Assistance program (Mega). The recipients of RURAL and Mega grants will be announced in the coming months, department officials said.