Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced that $900 million in grants have been made available to states for infrastructure purposes. The money is supposed to be used for projects that will have a significant local or regional impact, but truckers who hope to see an improvement in roads and bridges don’t have much to smile about.
All $900 million will be awarded through the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) Transportation Discretionary Grants program. The BUILD program focuses on all types of transportation infrastructure. Projects involving roads, bridges, public transit, rail, ports, and intermodal transportation are all eligible to receive money through the program.
Each grant awarded has a maximum amount of $25 million, and no one state will be awarded over $90 million in grants per year.
According to Secretary Chao, grant applications will be evaluated based on several criteria. Those criteria include improvedments to safety, quality of life, innovation, economic competativeness, and use of partnerships with multiple stakeholders.
That last point may be important – it’s the same language that the White House has been using when speaking about the public/private partnerships that it hopes to rely on to raise the $1.5 trillion target for a major infrastructure plan.
While $900 million is not a small amount of money, the number is .058% of the White House’s full goal. Still, this comparatively small round of funding grants may serve to make it clear what the Administration is looking for in public/private partnerships. But while funds for infrastructure repair and upgrades are desperately needed nationwide, it isn’t clear that public/private partnerships like the one that gave us the infamous Indiana Toll Road debacle are good for the long-term health of our nation’s infrastructure.
A bipartisan meeting has been set for next week to discuss the infrastructure plans put forward by both Congressional Democrats and the White House.
Source: fleetowner, fortune, asce
Herman Grajeda says
Excuse me for the comment before this one.
How do we apply for a grant?
Pleas do email the answer.
Tommy Molnar says
How much grant money did it cost to study and come up with the “BUILD” acronym? Give me a break!
Jay says
5.3 Billion for a useless wall and 900 million for roads and bridges. What?
Grim Reaper says
The wall is not useless, unless you want to drive for $.15 / mile or less, because thats what illegals will do it for!
Electric trucks??? Hell, they only need the poor downtrodden immigrants to drive & you to go away
WAKE UP AMERICA
Gabe says
You do realize the USA provides benefits of up to 100+ billion a year to illegals… people shouldnt be aloud to roam in freely and reap out welfare system. Get a job like everyone else.
DSlater says
You made up that 100+ billion amount, didn’t you?
Herbert Swiney says
Your surprise is expected! We should take the money set aside for humanitarian aid to foreign countries to take care of U.S. needs!
Rufus says
When Ike created the highway system, he mandated each state and the federal government to set 12% annual revenue for infrastructure aside.
Solomon says
How many billions, maybe trillions, have been collected by the feds and states as taxes and excises applied on every gallon of highway fuel, be it diesel or gasoline ???
As highway fuel taxes went higher we’ve seen the transportation infrastructure crumble and more tolls being applied as the states sold transportation infrastructure to private entities, many of which are foreign entities, right?
Now we’ve got a 1.5 trillion dollars promised to be allocated by the feds for transportation infrastructure needs as the feds are 22 trillion in the hole, and counting a steady exponential increase by the second, while the language of the allocation is so vague to the point where the budget can be spent entirely on “bridges to nowhere” and anything else which will not fix a mile of existing highway, exactly how it’s been done previously with all the money allocated for the road transportation infrastructure.
Folks, the problem has never ever been the money !!! The problem has always been the corruption and the greed of corporatists, bankers and politicians, and regardless of how much tax money will be thrown at anything, there’ll never be enough to fix anything !!! The only thing that will always increase is the taxes, the debt and the misery for generations to come as far as humanity will exist on this planet.
Get rid of the money and the power of those few which already hold and control the entire wealth of the world and you’ll fix half of the problem. The other half it’s called morality, or “the fear of God”.
Super trucker says
The money will go to electric vehicle infrastructure in san francisco and los angeles, those cute desings that cost millions of dollars on bridges and overpasses, and a certain “high” speed rail that still doesnt have any length of track built. Still waiting for the calls to audit to grow
Donny B says
Where is all the Federal and State taxes per gallon of fuel going? Certainly not on our roads California just raised the tax 25 cents per gallon for autos and 50 cents for trucks that’s a lot of money per day and the roads are terrible… Wake up America…
Steve McDonough says
We need to cut out foreign aid to other countries when we do not have enough here
Kent Krueger says
An overdue highway improvement projects in my area of the country has already cost over $1billion. That’s a 1 followed by 9 zeros, and it’s not done yet. This highway project has been in the work for longer than I have been driving. I’m 63. It’s decades old. It’s been started and then delayed many times. This isn’t the only highway project that just never seems to have enough funding to be completed. We have several in our area of the country that just never get the funding to get them done. Worst thing is, if it get’s started and then money runs out, the part that is done goes neglected and has to be done over again when the money does become available. Normal taxpayers understand this, politicians never grasp the concept that delays cause cost increases, inconveniences and often lives. There are more automobiles and trucks on American Highways than they were ever designed to handle. Add to that, people are poorly trained in how to drive, or are too absorbed in themselves to think about anything or anybody else to care. As a society, we are in to big of a hurry to grasp the concept of safety. Then in addition to inadequate highway infrastructure, our mass transit in this country stinks. Most areas no longer have intercity busses and passenger train service is almost non-existent. As a country, we should be ashamed of ourselves. I remember passenger train service to almost anywhere in our great country. Busses ran between most cities. My parents use to ride the bus between Appleton, WI and Shawano, WI all the time. Just try that now. That was only a generation ago. This is the kind of thing we’ve lost. Public transportation between cities was common place, now in many cases it doesn’t exist. I don’t know what the answer to our infrastructure is, I would guess it’s a combination of things. One more thing I will say, these days the wealthy have a tendency to live outside the citys. They have to travel to work every day. When I grew up, a wealthy family lived right next door to a regular family, and we were friends. We partied together, we had picnics together, we worshipped together. I miss that togetherness. We lost some civility when we started to live apart.
R jack says
It’s funny how they give all these Grant’s, and when you break all the bs down the trucker’s are the one who don’t make no money, the so called brokers make all the the money. Payouts and bribery.
Daren G. says
Yeah and Ike made sure the Cherokees will be paid someday by the Feds who borrowed more money to build roads on land not yet paid for. Is he also the guy who MANDATED that social security funds never be used for anything but retirees income needs. Pretty sure he figured it would be the baby boomers problem to fix.
Harold Dougherty says
Lack of Communication is the real problem. We do not REALLY need to improve local roads and streets. What the nation needs right now are 2 main bypass highways. 1 with 20 lanes starting just west of Kansas City, KS. Going to I-4 close to Disneyworld. Tying in with only the other interstates along the way.
And 1. 20 lane highway going from
Western Michigan going to Larado ,TX. Or possibly EL PASO, TX. Agaain intersecting with only the interstates along the way. However I cannot get the parties who make the decisions to listen. If we could get this built it would improve traffic flow in major cities like Atlanta, GA and St. Louis,MO and Gary, IN— simply because it would take the 27 million trucks passing through these cities each week another way to deliver freight. Can you get them to listen? If you can;be sure to tell the planners the interstates need 25 foot shoulders on both sides to deal with breakdown and room for truckers to park. Also a reasonable speed limit needs to be established. 90 MPH or higher.
A J Edmisson says
“Won’t make a dent”. Really? Sounds like $900 million more than we had before. Furthermore, I have seen more road construction and bridge replacements in the past two years than in the previous 8 years before that. I see state governments upping their fuel tax rates with the promise to do more to improve the state roads. Construction zones can be a hassle, but not as bad as blowing tires or having to have constant alignments because the road conditions are bad due to the lack of funding to fix them.
Lord knows I don’t want to be on a bridge when it fails like the ones did in Minneapolis and Nashville.