T4America Blog

TIGER grant winners to be announced this week

News on the winners of the sixth round of TIGER, the popular federal grant program for innovative local transportation projects, is leaking out already, with formal release of the full list expected later this week.

It’s always a poorly-kept secret when the winners of USDOT’s TIGER grants are about to be announced because of the requirement to notify congressional representatives for districts containing a winning project a few days before the full announcement. As a result, news on some of the winners begins to leak out 2-3 days before the list of winners from USDOT is released.

Some that have already surfaced:

• Bus rapid transit in Richmond, Va.
• A project to expand the port in Norfolk, Va.
• A new bridge on the border of Maine and New Hampshire
• A system of downtown and waterfront street improvements that includes a new greenway trail in Waterbury, CT
• A new metro station near an emerging job core in St. Louis, MO
• And quite a few others.

We’ll have the full list here as soon as it’s released, and then add new winners to our full map of all six editions of TIGER grants dating back to February 2010. That’s a great way to see the nationwide impact of this important program all at once.

Click to see the full map of TIGER transportation grants.

So what are TIGER grants? First, TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery — a nod to its creation following the economic collapse of 2008-2009. TIGER leverages federal funding and public resources much farther than traditional federal transportation programs. In fact, over the first five rounds, on average, projects attracted more than 3.5 additional non-federal dollars for every TIGER grant dollar.

Almost all of these winning projects over the years have been projects that have a hard time getting funded under the outdated structure of the current federal transportation program.

These projects in communities across the country will create good paying jobs, spur local economic development, and keep our metro and rural areas connected. Winning project applications have to show multiple benefits: 1) that projects improve the condition of existing facilities and systems, 2) contribute to the economic competitiveness of the U.S. over the medium- to long-term, 3) improve the quality of living and working environments for people, 4) improve energy efficiency, reduce dependence on foreign oil, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and benefit the environment, and 5) improve public safety.

To get a good idea of what a successful TIGER story looks like, look no further than the great story of Normal, Illinois’ new downtown (er, well “Uptown” in this case!) multimodal train station, profiled earlier this year in our ongoing series of local successes, and made possible by one of the first TIGER grants.