SS4A Grant Program will release the next fund opportunity of $1.1 billion in April this year

The U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the new Safe Street and Roads for ALL – SS4A Grant Program. This amount reached the peak of funds for improving the roads and addressing traffic fatalities.

SS4A is a competitive grant program established by President Biden’s historic infrastructure law. The program provides $5 billion over five years for regional, local, and Tribal initiatives, redesigning the roads and buildings, better sidewalks, and crosswalks. The main aim is to prevent deaths or severe injuries on the nation’s roadways.

The Department of Transportation also established a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots that can help target needed resources.

The SS4A Grant Program awards fund confirmed that safety planning is already improved. The core of this fund also manages roadway safety in the communities through local and regional efforts. The statistics indicated that traffic fatalities reached their peak again in 2022, and it’s getting worst for pedestrians, biking, rolling, as well as incidents involving trucks. Incidents are also costly to American society, and according to the United States Department of Transportation, the traffic crashes cost in 2019 was $340 billion.

The U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated:

“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.

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 SS4A Grand Program supports the vision of the Department: zero roadway deaths and its National Roadway Safety Strategy: a comprehensive approach launched in January 2022 to make the 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 others strategies.

The Department is awarding grants for both the planning and project implantation. The planning grants are for communities that currently do not have a roadway safety plan for reducing roadway fatalities. On the other hand, the implementation grants provide funds for communities that need to implement strategies and projects due to eliminating traffic fatalities.

In the first round of the program, the Department of Transportation awards 473 action plan grants and 37 implementation project grants. The following are funded communities through the SS4A Grant Program awards: