DOT awards $544 million to reconnect communities divided by transit infrastructure

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) is allocating more than half billion dollars in funding to reconnect communities and reunite some of America’s most segmented neighborhoods. 

The DOT will award $544.6 million in grants to communities nationwide through the Reconnecting Communities Pilot (RCP) discretionary grant program, a federal funding initiative intended to reconnect communities harmed by past transportation infrastructure decisions

The RCP program reinforces the DOT’s commitment to address historical inequities in jobs, education, healthcare, food, nature and recreation nationwide. Backed by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, RCP delivers grants to projects that improve the access, reliability and development of community necessities and economic opportunities. 

RELATED: NYC plans to reconnect neighborhoods separated by Brooklyn-Queens Expressway construction

These federal awards, split into community planning and capital construction grants, will support projects that develop and engage plans with community stakeholders and initiate construction activities, respectively.  

The highest-awarded projects in this round, including funding allocations and project descriptions, are listed below: 

• New York – $100 million capital construction grant to the Inner Loop North Transformation Project. Building upon community input, the project will reclaim 22 acres for equitable redevelopment and green space by removing a 1.5-mile segment of the grade-separated Inner Loop Expressway. The segment will be replaced with an accessible, multimodal, at-grade network of complete streets that reconnect disadvantaged neighborhoods to Rochester’s downtown. The project will also benefit from a $123 million commitment from New York State and the City of Rochester. 

• Baltimore, Maryland – $85.5 million capital construction grant for Phase One of the West Baltimore United Construction project, which seeks to tear down an existing highway that has segmented communities in West Baltimore for over 50 years. The project will construct a single-block cap over US 40, tear down existing highway ramps and develop a variety of complete streets and safety improvements to improve mobility and accessibility. 

• Cleveland, Ohio – $69.3 million capital construction grant to the Cleveland North Coast Connector Land Bridge + Downtown Boulevard Project. The proposed project will address barriers that hinder communities’ ability to access Lake Erie and mitigate nearly 100 years of transportation and land use decisions that have separated greater Cleveland communities. 

• Somerville, Massachusetts – $43.1 million capital construction grant to the McGrath Boulevard Project in Somerville, which, primarily, looks to replace an elevated highway with a ground-level multimodal boulevard. This new proposed boulevard will feature protected bike facilities, more accessible sidewalks, crossings and safe connections for residents to schools, jobs, parks, businesses and other critical destinations. 

• Vancouver, Washington – $30 million capital construction grant for the Vancouver Community Connector Lid Project, which intends to develop a lid over Interstate 5 to create a new public space. The joint project, led by the Washington State Department of Transportation and the City of Vancouver, will also reconnect downtown to Fort Vancouver and other surrounding neighborhoods. 

• Los Angeles, California – $26.6 million capital construction grant to support the Resolving Inequitable Pedestrian infrastructure and Safety project in the Watts neighborhood. The project, led by the Housing Authority for the City of Los Angeles, will create a network of safe, accessible pathways and facilities that mitigate transportation disadvantages and challenges for all residents. The grant will also enable the authority to address faults related to the Metro A Line, retrofit existing streets, develop climate resilient upgrades and spur affordable housing developments. 

A full list of RCP awards for FY 2024 is available here. Interested entities can find more information on the RCP, including previous grant awards and ways to get involved in future funding announcements, on the DOT’s program website. 

Photo courtesy Dougtone, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons