On Friday, February 2, 2023, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a historic $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the new Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Grant Program, a record amount of funding to improve roads and address traffic fatalities.
The City of Napa will benefit from a portion of these grant awards, as the City's grant application has been recommended for a total of $400,000 in funding (with a $100,000 required local match). In the coming weeks, City of Napa staff will work with federal officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration to execute a grant agreement, in order to begin work. The City of Napa was awarded this grant funding specifically to develop a corridor study along Jefferson Street, which has been identified as a high-injury corridor in Napa. Through this study, a plan will be developed that will identify improvements to enhance pedestrian and bicycle facilities, as well as traffic safety. The work will also advance the planning for streetscape improvements on Jefferson Street that were included in the newly adopted general plan. As this work continues, the City will share regular updates on the progress of the project.
Traffic safety remains a top priority for the City of Napa, and the Safe Streets and Roads for All grant funds will further the City’s goals of creating safer streets for our community.
More About SS4A
The competitive grant program, established by President Biden’s historic infrastructure law, provides $5 billion over five years for regional, local, and Tribal initiatives — from redesigned roads to better sidewalks and crosswalks — to prevent deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roadways. The Department also launched a data visualization tool that shows crash hotspots that can help target needed resources.
The SS4A awards fund improved safety planning for over half the nation’s population, and will fundamentally change how roadway safety is addressed in communities through local and regional efforts that are comprehensive and data-driven. This investment comes at an important junction as traffic fatalities reached a 16-year high in 2021 and preliminary data indicates will remain near those levels in 2022, while getting worse for people walking, biking, or rolling as well as incidents involving trucks. In addition, traffic crashes are costly to American society. A new report shows the economic impact of traffic crashes was $340 billion in 2019 alone.
“Every year, crashes cost tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to our economy; we face a national emergency on our roadways, and it demands urgent action,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “We are proud that these grants will directly support hundreds of communities as they prepare steps that are proven to make roadways safer and save lives.”
The Safe Streets and Roads for All program grants announced today support the Department’s vision of zero roadway deaths and its National Roadway Safety Strategy: a comprehensive approach launched in January 2022 to make our nation’s roadways safer for everyone, including drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, and emergency and construction workers, by stressing responsible driving, safer roadway designs, appropriate speed-limit setting, and improved post-crash care, among other strategies.
As part of SS4A, the Department is awarding grants for both planning and implementation projects. Action plan grants assist communities that do not currently have a roadway safety plan in place to reduce roadway fatalities, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive set of actions. Implementation grants provide funding for communities to implement strategies and projects that will reduce or eliminate transportation-related fatalities and serious injuries.
The Department is awarding 473 action plan grants and 37 grants for implementation projects in this first round of the program.
The full list of awards can be viewed HERE. The next funding opportunity of $1.1 billion is expected to be released in April of this year.
In addition to SS4A grants, tomorrow the Federal Highways Administration will award a total of $21 million to 70 Tribes to improve road safety on Tribal lands, addressing issues such as roadway departures and the need for better pedestrian crossings.
For more information about SS4A, including additional resources and information for interested applicants and stakeholders, click HERE.
To read more about the Department’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, including the Safe Systems Approach, click HERE.