FHWA Awards $26.5M in Bridge Planning Grants

Funding comes from the IIJA's Bridge Investment Program
Illustration by Scott Hilling/ENR, original elements by Getty Images

The Federal Highway Administration has selected 28 projects to divide a total of $26.5 million in planning grants that the agency hopes will produce the next wave of bridge construction projects around the U.S.

The grants, which FHWA announced on Aug. 7, come from the planning funds category of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s (IIJA) Bridge Investment Program.

In all, state and local agencies in 18 states were winners in the new batch of planning grants—the second round since the IIJA was enacted in 2021.

Largest grants: Minn., Houston, Alaska

The largest individual award in the latest group of planning grant winners is about $2.3 million to the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation for a strategic asset management plan for seven “high-priority" bridges on the state’s Trunk Highway System.

The second-largest grant is $2 million to the city of Houston for determining preferred alternatives for rehabilitating nine bridges along Buffalo Bayou in the city.

Another big award is just under $2 million to the Alaska Dept. of Transportation and Public Facilities for planning and environmental studies for four bridges along the state's Dalton Highway and Koyukuk River drainage corridor.

Under the. program, grants go to projects in their early phases and can go for planning, feasibility analyses and revenue forecasting. The grants are much more modest in size than other FHWA bridge categories under the IIJA

Forming a project pipeline

FHWA Administrator Shailen Bhatt said in an interview with ENR, “Everybody loves when we combine a couple of years of funding and get a $5-billion construction grant."

Bhatt says, "But what is critical, and why these grants are so critical, is to establish that pipeline of construction-ready projects, by moving through the environmental process and making sure those projects are ready to go to construction.”

At that later stage, a project could be eligible for larger construction grants from other Bridge Investment Program categories. For example, FHWA says that in 2022, the replacement program for the Interstate-5 bridge between Washington and Oregon received a bridge planning award.

Work carried out under that grant supported a later application and award of a $1.5-billion large bridge grant on July 17 as well as a $600-million grant on Jan. 24 from the IIJA's Mega category.

Tom Ichniowski has been writing about the federal government as ENR’s Washington Bureau Chief since the George H.W. Bush administration, and he has covered at least five major highway bills. A recognized expert on government policy on infrastructure and regulation, Tom is also a Baltimore native and Orioles fan who grew up rooting for Brooks and Frank Robinson. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia’s graduate school of journalism, where he once used “unrelentless” in a headline.

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