Demand for TIGER grants remains strong

Demand for the $500 million in available funding for the United States Department of Transportation’s TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) competitive grant program was easily trumped, with applications for the seventh round of TIGER grants coming in at $9.8 billion, or nearly twenty times the available amount, DOT said this week.

The objective of the TIGER program is to ensure that economic funding is rapidly made available for transportation infrastructure projects and that project spending is monitored and transparent.

DOT said the 2015 TIGER grants will fund capital investments in surface transportation and infrastructure and are awarded on a competitive basis to projects that will have a significant impact on the nation, a region, or metropolitan area. And DOT added that the funding will continue to make transformative surface transportation investments by providing significant and measurable improvements over existing conditions, with the grant program focused on capital projects that generate economic development and improve access to reliable, safe and affordable transportation for communities, both urban and rural.

The DOT’s GROW AMERICA proposes to doubling funding for the TIGER grant program at $7.5 billion over six years.

The $9.8 billion represents 625 TIGER grant applications, including: 60 percent for road projects; 18 percent for transit projects; 8 percent for rail projects; and port and bicycle-pedestrian each at 6 percent. The 625 applications, which are comprised of projects from all 50 states and U.S. territories, top the 565 applications received in 2014. 

“The consistent number of high quality projects we’re unable to fund through TIGER every year demonstrates the need for Congress to act to give more communities access to this vital lifeline,” DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement. “That is why we proposed doubling TIGER in the GROW AMERICA Act.”

In 2014, $584.1 million in TIGER grants were awarded, which DOT said supported 72 capital and planning transportation projects in 46 states and the District of Columbia. And since 2009 TIGER grants have paid out a total of $4.1 billion to 342 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, with DOT having received more than 6,000 applications for a total of $124 billion.