TIGER grant awards announced

Today, 51 projects were announced as recipients of the Department of Transportation's TIGER grants.  The TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant program of $1.5B was included in the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act (ARRA) to fund  "innovative, multi-modal and multi-jurisdictional transportation projects that promise significant economic and environmental benefits to an entire metropolitan area, a region or the nation."  Projects funded through the TIGER program include improvements to roads, bridges, rail, ports, transit and intermodal facilities.  

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, over 1,400 applications requesting funding for almost $60 billion worth of projects were submitted for review, which is 40 times the amount available through the program.  In the Pacific Northwest, three projects have been included as grant recipients. 

In Washington, forty-nine applications were submitted, for a total of $1,658,874,584.  Two grants have been made.  The first is to WSDOT for the southbound lanes of US-395 in Spokane, from Francis Avenue to Farwell Road, for $35,000,000.  The second is to the City of Seattle for multi-modal improvements along Mercer and Valley Streets in the South Lake Union area, for $30,000,000.

Twenty-one requests were made from entities in Oregon, for a total of $848,971,440.  One grant was made, to the City of Portland in the amount of $23,203,988 to reconstruct SW Moody Avenue in the South Waterfront area.

In Idaho, eight projects were submitted to DOT for application, for a total of $301,623,252.  However, no grants were  made to any Idaho applicants.