Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that the Department of Transportation will provide $500 million for 39 transportation projects in 34 states from its TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) 2015 program. Rural areas received 43% of the project awards, more than any previous year.
“Transportation is always about the future. If we’re just fixing today’s problems, we’ll fall further and further behind. We already know that a growing population and increasing freight traffic will require our system to do more,” said Secretary Foxx. “In this round of TIGER, we selected projects that focus on where the country’s transportation infrastructure needs to be in the future; ever safer, ever more innovative, and ever more targeted to open the floodgates of opportunity across America.”
Projects funded through this round of TIGER support several key transportation goals, including making the U.S. transportation system the safest in the world, improving public safety by reducing transportation-related injuries and fatalities.
Grant funds will also go to projects that support innovation and meet future challenges of maintaining and expanding infrastructure and support technology integration.
This is the seventh TIGER round since 2009, bringing the total grant amount to $4.6 billion provided to 381 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, including 134 projects to support rural and tribal communities. Demand for the program has been overwhelming, to date the Department of Transportation has received more than 6,700 applications requesting more than $134 billion for transportation projects across the country.
