Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently announced a historic $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program, including seven grants for communities in Oregon.
The competitive grant program, established by President Biden's historic infrastructure law, provides $5 billion over five years for regional, local and Tribal initiatives — from redesigned roads to better sidewalks and crosswalks — to prevent deaths and serious injuries on the nation's roadways. The Department also launched a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots that can help target needed resources.
Oregon received one award for implementation projects in this first round of the program.
A total of $20 million for Safe Systems on 122nd Avenue: A Model for Humanizing Arterial Streets (Portland, Ore.): The city of Portland will use this funding to employ low-cost, high-benefit treatments on 5.5 mi. of 122nd Avenue in Portland, Ore., which is in the top 5 percent of the Portland metropolitan area's most deadly and injurious streets. Project interventions include filling gaps in street lighting; converting existing parking to 4 mi. of protected bike lanes; making signal improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists; reducing vehicle lanes; and adding seven pedestrian crossings, raised center medians along 1.5 mi. of two travel lanes, 11 raised medians for four travel lanes, street trees along the entire 5.5-mi. corridor, nine bus stop curb extensions, six speed reader boards with automated enforcement and one roundabout.
The department also is awarding six action planning grants to help improve roadway safety in Oregon. The applicants receiving awards are:
- City of Hermiston;
- City of Ontario;
- Douglas County;
- Jefferson County;
- Lane County Department of Public Works; and
- Oregon Metro.
To view the full list of awards, visit https://www.transportation.gov/grants/ss4a/2022-awards
The SS4A awards fund improved safety planning for more than half the nation's population and will fundamentally change how roadway safety is addressed in communities through local and regional efforts that are comprehensive and data-driven. This investment comes at an important junction as traffic fatalities reached a 16-year high in 2021 and preliminary data indicates will remain near those levels in 2022, even getting worse for people walking, biking or rolling as well as incidents involving trucks. In addition, traffic crashes are costly to American society. A new report shows the economic impact of traffic crashes was $340 billion in 2019 alone.
"Every year, crashes cost tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy; we face a national emergency on our roadways, and it demands urgent action," said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. "We are proud that these grants will directly support hundreds of communities as they prepare steps that are proven to make roadways safer and save lives."
The Safe Streets and Roads for All program grants being announced support the department's vision of zero roadway deaths and its National Roadway Safety Strategy: a comprehensive approach launched in January 2022 to make our nation's roadways safer for everyone, including drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, emergency and construction workers by stressing responsible driving, safer roadway designs, appropriate speed-limit setting and improved post-crash care, among other strategies.
As part of SS4A, the department is awarding grants for both planning and implementation projects. Action plan grants assist communities that do not currently have a roadway safety plan in place to reduce roadway fatalities, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive set of actions. Implementation grants provide funding for communities to implement strategies and projects that will reduce or eliminate transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries.
For more information about SS4A, including additional resources and information for interested applicants and stakeholders, visit https://www.transportation.gov/grants/SS4A.
Today's top stories
