USDOT Awards Reconnecting Communities Grants

The U.S. Department of Transportation has announced 45 recipients of grants totaling $185 million under the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, funded via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

The program “provides technical assistance and funding for communities’ planning and construction projects that aim to connect neighborhoods back together by removing, retrofitting, or mitigating transportation barriers such as highways and railroad tracks.”

According to a press release from USDOT, “This first round of grants will fund construction and planning for transformative community-led solutions, including capping interstates with parks, filling in sunken highways to reclaim the land for housing, converting inhospitable transportation facilities to tree-lined Complete Streets, and creating new crossings through public transportation, bridges, tunnels and trails.” Some of the awarded projects include a highway cap and tunnel in Buffalo, New York; a freeway redesign in Long Beach, California; and planning for the redesign or removal of Baltimore’s infamous, never-completed ‘Highway to Nowhere.’

Some recent articles warn that Reconnecting Communities dollars could end up funding road expansion projects and perpetuating car-centric planning.

The press release states that “President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act also established a new, $3 billion program called the Neighborhood Access and Equity Grant Program which can also fund projects that reconnect communities. DOT anticipates launching this program later this Spring.”