DOT Awards Disaster Relief Funds to Transit Agencies
Forty projects will receive a total of $3.59 billion.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced that 40 projects will receive a share of $3.59 billion in federal disaster relief funds to help public transportation systems that were affected by Hurricane Sandy to become more resilient against such natural disasters. Approximately 90 percent of the funds will be invested in resilience projects primarily in New York and New Jersey, with the rest going toward projects in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.
A list of all funded resilience projects is available at http://www.fta.dot.gov/15138_16147.html.
"We've made great progress rebuilding critical transit connections since Hurricane Sandy, and we want to make sure no one pays for these repairs twice," said Foxx. "While no one can predict the future with certainty, we believe these investments will help to harden transit facilities against future storms that Mother Nature dishes out, supporting President Obama's call to address climate change now and reducing the risk of service disruptions and future damage to some of the nation's busiest rail and bus services."
"Over the last two years, the Federal Transit Administration has delivered on its promises to provide emergency relief funds as quickly and responsibly as possible, to help transit agencies in the Northeast recover from the worst transit-related disaster in U.S. history," said Federal Transit Administration Acting Administrator Therese McMillan. "As we have said since the day Hurricane Sandy made landfall nearly two years ago, we share an obligation not only to fully restore transportation systems that millions of riders depend on from New England to New York to D.C., but also to ensure that we can do an even better job of protecting these vulnerable assets in the face of future natural disasters."
FTA received 61 proposals seeking a total of $6.6 billion. The project evaluation process involved specialists from the FTA, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Railroad Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.