President Joe Biden and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced Jan. 25 more than $4.9 billion in funding from Biden’s Investing in America agenda to 37 projects through two major discretionary grant programs - the National Infrastructure Project Assistance (Mega) grant program and the Infrastructure for Rebuilding America (INFRA) grant program.

This includes $196 million in funding for three projects in the state of Pennsylvania.

Lehigh Valley International Airport will receive $40.7 million under the INFRA program for a north-side logistics and cargo complex. The project will construct a consolidated multimodal cargo facility that connects to the National Highway System. The facility will include a dedicated access road and intersection improvements, a cargo building, direct truck to aircraft loading operations area and stormwater infrastructure enhancements.

The project creates a safe truck parking area, as an alternative to the current practice of parking off site in unauthorized nearby locations. The project provides an alternative to congested air cargo hubs in Philadelphia, New York or New Jersey and will serve express carriers by providing specialized facilities for time-sensitive package processing and decreasing travel time from the existing cargo facility to the aircraft operations area by approximately 15 minutes.

The Eastern Pittsburgh multimodal corridor project received $142 million under the Mega program. The project will make multimodal improvements in the I-376 (Parkway East) corridor of Pittsburgh. The project will include resiliency improvements and reduce costly recurring maintenance by addressing a flood-prone area known as the “bathtub” segment and landslides that often force emergency road closures.

The project will also improve traffic management through dynamic lane use, dynamic speed limits, wrong way vehicle detection and queue warning systems that are expected to reduce the higher-than-average crashes on the Parkway East in the project area.

The Packer Avenue marine terminal connector bridge project received $13 million under the INFRA program. This project will construct a new two-lane bridge to connect the Packer Avenue marine terminal in Philadelphia to an adjacent site. The bridge will support a safe on-terminal walkway and a two-way container-on-chassis operation. The bridge will be designed to accommodate heavy loaded reach stackers. Additionally, an aging terminal trestle road will be demolished to accommodate the new bridge.

The project will reduce traffic conflicts with trucks to improve safety for port workers and the surrounding community by creating two-way traffic flow, avoiding diversion of trucks to local streets and providing a well-lit pedestrian pathway. The project promises substantial efficiency gains in port operations through a direct and safer connection to an adjacent container yard.

“With this announcement, we are advancing projects so large, complex and ambitious that they could not get funded under the infrastructure programs that existed prior to the Biden administration,” Buttigieg said. “Our INFRA and Mega programs are helping build the cathedrals of American infrastructure - truly transformative projects that will change entire regions and our entire country for the better.”

The Mega program, which was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and provides $5 billion in funding through 2026, is focused on projects that are uniquely large, complex and difficult to fund under traditional grant programs. For this round of funding, the Biden-Harris administration is investing in 11 different projects that will generate national and regional economic, mobility and safety benefits.

The INFRA program, for which funding was increased more than 50% by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, also funds large scale, transformational infrastructure projects. For this round of funding, the Biden-Harris administration is investing in 28 projects that will improve the safety, efficiency and reliability of the movement of freight and people in and across rural and urban areas. More than half of the projects being funded through the INFRA program are in rural communities.

Two projects received awards from both programs, following through on the department’s commitment to invest in nontraditional, multimodal projects that have been neglected because of complications around how to fund them.

You can view the full list of Mega and INFRA awards, as well as the Rural awards announced in December of 2023. Applicants for Mega, INFRA and Rural were evaluated under the department’s streamlined Multimodal Project Discretionary Grant (MPDG) application, a combined application designed to reduce the administrative burden of applying for grants that allowed applicants to apply for all three programs with the same application.

As with last year’s awards, despite these historic increases in funding, these programs were significantly oversubscribed. The department received 117 applications requesting $24.7 billion in Mega funding and 190 applications requesting $24.8 billion from the INFRA program, far exceeding the amounts of funding available.

Applications for the MPDG grants were evaluated based on the criteria published in the notice of funding opportunity last summer. The criteria include safety; state of good repair; economic impacts, freight movements and job creation; climate change, resilience and the environment; equity, multimodal options and quality of life; and innovation areas such as technology, project delivery and financing.

The department also considered cost effectiveness and project readiness in evaluating the more than 300 MPDG applications received.

The next application period is expected to open in mid-2024.