The US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that the application process is now open for communities of all sizes to apply (DOT-SS4A-FY22-01) for $1 billion in Fiscal Year 2022 funding to help them ensure safe streets and roads for all and address the national roadway safety crisis.

The Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) discretionary grant program—which was established with $5 billion in advanced appropriations including the $1 billion for FY 2022—provides dedicated funding to support regional, local, and Tribal plans, projects and strategies that will prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries. The SS4A program supports the Department’s comprehensive approach, laid out in the National Roadway Safety Strategy, to reduce serious injuries and deaths significantly on US highways, roads, and streets. This comes at a time when traffic fatalities are at the highest level they have been at in more than a decade.

The primary goal of the SS4A grants is to improve roadway safety by supporting communities in developing comprehensive safety action plans based on a Safe System Approach, and implementing projects and strategies that significantly reduce or eliminate transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries involving pedestrians; bicyclists; public transportation, personal conveyance, and micromobility users, commercial vehicle operators; and motorists. Funding can also be used to support robust stakeholder engagement in order to ensure that all community members have a voice in developing plans, projects and strategies.

The funding supports DOT’s National Roadway Safety Strategy and collaborative efforts to advance the Safe System Approach and address safety by implementing redundant measures that lead to multiple types and layers of protection.

Applications may come from individual communities, or groups of communities and may include Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), counties, cities, towns, other special districts that are subdivisions of a state, certain transit agencies, federally recognized Tribal governments, and multi-jurisdictional groups.

In FY 2022, DOT expects to award hundreds of Action Plan Grants, and up to one hundred Implementation Grants. For Action Plan Grants, award amounts will be based on estimated costs, with an expected minimum of $200,000 for all applicants, an expected maximum of $1,000,000 for a political subdivision of a State or a federally recognized Tribal government, and an expected maximum of $5,000,000 for a metropolitan planning organization (MPO) or a joint application comprising a multijurisdictional group of entities that is regional in scope.

For Implementation Grants, DOT expects the minimum award will be $5,000,000 and the maximum award will be $30,000,000 for political subdivisions of a State. For applicants who are federally recognized Tribal governments or applicants in rural areas, DOT expects the minimum award will be $3,000,000 and the maximum award will be $30,000,000.