The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) is doling out nearly $830 million in grants to 80 different projects aimed toward strengthening US infrastructure against climate change.
The funding will fan out over 39 states and territories to projects starting from refurbishing aging bridges to expanding emergency evacuation routes. The grants are “the primary of their kind,” based on USDOT, which is partnering with state, local, and tribal governments due to funding made available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Climate change is intensifying risks to the nation’s transportation infrastructure. The variety of billion-dollar weather disasters reached a record high last 12 months. And even slow-moving calamities like rising seas are forcing communities to adapt to changing landscapes.
The variety of billion-dollar weather disasters reached a record high last 12 months
“From a drought causing the halt of barge traffic on the Mississippi River to subways being flooded in New York, extreme weather, made worse by climate change, is damaging America’s transportation infrastructure, cutting people off from attending to where they should go, and threatening to lift the associated fee of products by disrupting supply chains,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a press release.
The USDOT has pots of money for 4 several types of projects. Roughly $45 million will go into 10 projects to construct out evacuation routes. Another $45 million can be funneled into planning projects that include preparing for evacuations and conducting vulnerability assessments. Eight projects to guard or relocate coastal infrastructure, including roads and highways, will get $119 million, including the Manasota Key Bascule Bridge used for storm evacuations in Florida and a stretch of the Newport Cliff Walk in Rhode Island that collapsed in 2022.
The biggest chunk of cash — $621 million — is earmarked for other varieties of “resilience improvement.” That includes 36 projects aimed toward making roadways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure more impervious to flooding, rising temperatures, and other consequences of climate change.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe, for instance, was awarded a $60 million grant to enhance Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Route 33, a key route through rural southwestern South Dakota and the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The money can be used to lift parts of the road and lay down pavement higher suited to withstanding flooding, snow, and ice. The plan also includes widening the road and adding shoulders to be utilized in emergencies.
The USDOT has a full list of the awardees on its website. All in all, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes $50 billion for climate resilience and adaptation.
The Biden administration recently launched ARPA-I, a research and development project specifically for infrastructure that was also authorized through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. “If we’re going to spend tens of billions of dollars every 12 months maintaining and upgrading what we’ve got, let’s invest a bit of bit and determine easy methods to make what we have now last more,” Buttigieg told The Verge of the initiative last 12 months. “Design things that we are able to’t even imagine today.”
