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It took about six months, but the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has whittled down more than 1,400 applications for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants to 51. Yesterday, the agency announced the recipients, which include rail, transit, intermodal, port, bridge and highway projects in 41 states and the District of Columbia.

Included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the TIGER grant program provides $1.5 billion for transportation projects deemed to have a significant economic and environmental benefit to a metropolitan area, region or the nation. In September, the USDOT received applications seeking a total of $57 billion, or about 40 times the amount available through the program.

Sixty percent of the approved grants — which range from $105 million to $3.1 million — will go to economically distressed areas that are home to 39 percent of the nation’s population, according to the USDOT. Rail-related projects will receive a total of $789 million, or slightly more than half of the total allotted, according to the National Railroad Construction & Maintenance Association (NRC).

Rail-related grant awards include:
• $105 million for Norfolk Southern Railway’s $2.5 billion, 2,500-mile Crescent Corridor domestic intermodal route;
• $100 million for the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency, or CREATE, program to fund six projects ranging from rail line and viaduct improvements to a grade separation;
• $98 million for CSX Corp.’s $842 million National Gateway intermodal corridor;
• $83 million for New York City’s Moynihan Station project, phase one;
• $63 million for Tucson, Ariz.’s streetcar project;
• $55 million for Fitchburg, Mass.’s commuter-rail extension and Wachusett Station project;
• $45 million for New Orleans’ streetcar project;
• $33.8 million for the Alameda Corridor East-Colton crossing project;
• $20 million for Port of Gulfport, Miss., rail improvements; and
• $17.5 million for R.J. Corman Railroad Group’s “Appalachian Short-Line” track rehabilitation project in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia.

The USDOT demanded “rigorous” economic justifications for projects costing more than $100 million and will require all grant recipients to report activities on a routine basis, according to the agency.

“TIGER grants will tackle the kind of major transportation projects that have been difficult to build under other funding programs,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in a prepared statement issued yesterday — the ARRA’s one-year anniversary.

For a complete list of grant recipients, follow this link to download a pdf file.

Meanwhile, Congress has appropriated $600 million for a TIGER follow-on program called National Infrastructure Investments (NII) in the fiscal-year 2010 transportation appropriations bill, said NRC Director of Operations Matt Ginsberg in an emailed news bulletin.

“We expect that a new round of solicitations will take place later this year,” he said. “In addition, President Obama has proposed $4 billion in funding for FY2011 for a new program tentatively called the National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, which will combine TIGER and NII-type multi-modal discretionary merit-based grants with TIFIA-type infrastructure project loans.”