Log in

Transportation

4 Valley cities receive federal funding to improve local roads

Biden-Harris administration announces $4.7M for Arizona municipalities

Posted 2/1/23

The cities of Glendale, Mesa, Phoenix and Scottsdale have been named recipients of a federal grant program aimed at implementing roadway safety plans.

Today, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete …

You must be a member to read this story.

Join our family of readers for as little as $5 per month and support local, unbiased journalism.


Already have an account? Log in to continue.

Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here

Otherwise, follow the link below to join.

To Our Valued Readers –

Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.

For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.

Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.

Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.

Sincerely,
Charlene Bisson, Publisher, Independent Newsmedia

Please log in to continue

Log in
I am anchor
Transportation

4 Valley cities receive federal funding to improve local roads

Biden-Harris administration announces $4.7M for Arizona municipalities

Posted

The cities of Glendale, Mesa, Phoenix and Scottsdale have been named recipients of a federal grant program aimed at implementing roadway safety plans.

Today, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant Program, including eight grants for communities in Arizona.

As part of Safe Streets for All program, the department is awarding grants for both planning and implementation projects. Action plan grants assist communities that do not currently have a roadway safety plan in place to reduce roadway fatalities, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive set of actions.

Implementation grants provide funding for communities to implement strategies and projects that will reduce or eliminate transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries.

The department is awarding eight action planning grants to help improve roadway safety in Arizona. The applicants receiving awards are:

  •  City of Glendale
  •  City of Mesa
  •  City of Phoenix
  •  City of Scottsdale
  •  City of Tolleson
  •  MetroPlan (Flagstaff Metropolitan Planning Organization)
  •  Pima County
  •  Town of Prescott Valley

The competitive grant program, established by President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law, provides $5 billion over five years for regional, local, and tribal initiatives — from redesigned roads to better sidewalks and crosswalks — to prevent deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roadways. The department also launched a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots that can help target needed resources, according to a press release.

The SS4A awards fund improved safety planning for over half the nation’s population and will fundamentally change how roadway safety is addressed in communities through local and regional efforts that are comprehensive and data driven. This investment comes at an important junction as traffic fatalities reached a 16-year high in 2021 and preliminary data indicates will remain near those levels in 2022, even getting worse for people walking, biking, or rolling as well as incidents involving trucks.

In addition, traffic crashes are costly to American society. A new report shows the economic impact of traffic crashes was $340 billion in 2019 alone.

“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,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a prepared statement. “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 Safe Streets and Roads for All program grants being announced support the department’s vision of zero roadway deaths and its National Roadway Safety Strategy: a comprehensive approach launched in January 2022 to make our nation’s roadways safer for everyone, including drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, and emergency and construction workers by stressing responsible driving, safer roadway designs, appropriate speed-limit setting, and improved post-crash care, among other strategies.

The next funding opportunity of $1.1 billion is expected to be released in April of this year.

In addition to SS4A grants, tomorrow the Federal Highways Administration will award a total of $21 million to 70 tribes to improve road safety on tribal lands, addressing issues such as roadway departures and the need for better pedestrian crossings, the press release stated.