Federal officials awarded about $1 billion for a range of proposals in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and other cities, with projects including parks, transportation improvements and new space for commercial development.
The grants were announced this week as part of the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act that combined are slated to provide billions of dollars for development projects.
In Atlanta, a proposal to cap an interstate highway that runs through downtown with a platform was awarded $157.6 million. The Stitch would allow for the creation of 14 acres for new parks and space for new commercial developments, according to its backers.
The $713 million Stitch project would run about a mile, connecting neighborhoods that were separated when Atlanta’s Downtown Connector highway opened in stages starting in 1951.
"The Stitch has been a dream of the Downtown Atlanta community for 20 years,” A.J. Robinson, president of the business group Central Atlanta Progress, said in a statement. “We are now able to make this dream a reality.”
A separate project in Atlanta to develop a trail connecting the 22-mile Atlanta BeltLine walking path to the Flint River Trail south of downtown was awarded $50 million.
Philadelphia officials are pursuing a similar plan to cap two segments of Interstate 676, also known as the Vine Street Expressway. The city’s Chinatown Stitch project was awarded $158.9 million. The freeway platforms would create space for commercial development and parks and reconnect portions of the Chinatown neighborhood that were separated after highway construction.
Los Angeles was awarded $139 million to enhance bus transit and create new mobility hubs to improve connections between neighborhoods separated by highways.
A project in Oakland, California, was awarded $30 million for street and safety improvements along a 10-mile corridor. The improvements would include new bikeways, shared-use paths, pedestrian safety measures and new lighting and landscaping.
The feds also awarded $22.5 million to Sacramento, California, for transportation improvements and neighborhood infrastructure to promote commercial development.
Projects in California received a total of $236.9 million, with San Francisco, San Diego, San Rafael, Watsonville and Los Angeles County also being awarded grants.
In upstate New York, the feds awarded the city of Syracuse $180 million to demolish the Interstate 81 viaduct and construct street and pedestrian safety improvements. Buffalo was awarded $102.7 million to develop and construct a new bus rapid transit line on Bailey Avenue on the city’s East Side.
In Ohio, a $42 million grant was awarded to the city of Columbus to build new stations and expand the route for the LinkUS bus rapid transit system. The city of Toledo was awarded $28 million for safety improvements on Front Street and Main Street, two corridors that have seen repeated auto collisions with injuries.
Montana was awarded $24 million to upgrade Highway 200 between the cities of Missoula and East Missoula.
The grant awards were announced on Monday and Tuesday by elected officials in states where winning projects are located. The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to announce a complete list of the grant recipients on Wednesday, according to a department spokesperson.
The grants announced this week are part of two DOT programs, the Reconnecting Communities Pilot program and the Neighborhood Access and Equity program.