The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is accepting applications under the Fiscal Years 2024-2026 Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) Program.
Donor Name: Department of Transportation
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 02/24/2025
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The purpose of the PROTECT Program is to provide grants on a competitive basis for projects that seek to strengthen surface transportation to be more resilient to natural hazards, including climate change, sea level rise, heat waves, flooding, extreme weather events, and other natural disasters through support of planning activities, resilience improvements, community resilience and evacuation routes, and at-risk costal infrastructure.
The vision of the PROTECT Discretionary Grant Program is to fund projects that address the climate crisis by improving the resilience of the surface transportation system, including highways, public transportation, ports, and intercity passenger rail. Projects selected under this program should be grounded in the best available scientific understanding of climate change risks, impacts, and vulnerabilities. They should support the continued operation or rapid recovery of crucial local, regional, or national surface transportation facilities. Furthermore, selected projects should utilize innovative and collaborative approaches to risk reduction, including the use of natural infrastructure, which is explicitly eligible under the program. Also called nature-based solutions, these strategies include conservation, restoration, or construction of riparian and streambed treatments, marshes, wetlands, native vegetation, stormwater bioswales, breakwaters, reefs, dunes, parks, urban forests, and shade trees. They reduce flood risks, erosion, wave damage, and heat impacts while also creating habitat, filtering pollutants, and providing recreational benefits. Projects in the PROTECT Discretionary Grant Program have the potential to demonstrate innovation and best practices that State and local governments in other parts of the country can consider replicating.
Types of Grants
There are four categories of funding under the PROTECT Discretionary Grant Program. One category is for Planning Grants. The other three categories are for Resilience Improvement, Community Resilience and Evacuation Routes, and At-Risk Coastal Infrastructure projects, and throughout this NOFO are collectively referred to as Resilience Grants.
- Planning Grants may be used to develop Resilience Improvement Plans in accordance with 23 U.S.C § 176(e)(2) for States and MPOs; resilience planning, predesign, design, or the development of data tools to simulate transportation disruption scenarios, including vulnerability assessments; technical capacity building to facilitate the ability of the eligible entity to assess the vulnerabilities of its surface transportation assets and community response strategies under current conditions and a range of potential future conditions; or evacuation planning and preparation.
- Resilience Improvement Grants may be used to improve the ability of an existing surface transportation asset to withstand one or more elements of a weather event or natural disaster, or to increase the resilience of surface transportation infrastructure from the impacts of changing conditions, such as sea level rise, flooding, wildfires, extreme weather events, and other natural disasters. Extreme weather events may include heat waves.
- Community Resilience and Evacuation Route Grants may be used for activities that strengthen and protect evacuation routes that are essential for providing and supporting evacuations caused by emergency events including activities that will improve evacuation routes, provide safe passage during an evacuation, and reduce the risk of damage to evacuation routes as a result of future emergency events. For routes that inadequately facilitate evacuations, including the transportation of emergency responders and recovery resources, activities include expanding capacity through installation of communication and intelligent transportation system equipment and infrastructure, counterflow measures, or shoulders, in addition to constructing new or redundant evacuation routes, acquiring evacuation route or traffic incident management equipment or signage, or ensuring access or service to critical destinations, including hospitals and other medical or emergency services facilities, major employers, critical manufacturing centers, ports and intermodal facilities, utilities, and Federal facilities.
- At-Risk Coastal Infrastructure Grants may be used for activities to strengthen, stabilize, harden, elevate, relocate or otherwise enhance the resilience of highway and non-rail infrastructure, including: bridges, roads, pedestrian walkways, and bicycle lanes, and associated infrastructure, such as culverts and tide gates to protect highways that are subject to, or face increased long-term future risks of, a weather event, a natural disaster, or changing conditions, including coastal flooding, coastal erosion, wave action, storm surge, or sea level rise, in order to improve transportation and public safety and to reduce costs by avoiding larger future maintenance or rebuilding costs.
Funding Information
- Planning Grants
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2024-2025: Up to $56 million
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2026: Up to $30 million
- Resilience Improvement Grants
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2024-2025: Up to $408 million
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2026: Up to $210 million
- Community Resilience and Evacuation Route Grants
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2024-2025: Up to $56 million
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2026: Up to $30 million
- At-Risk Coastal Infrastructure Grants
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2024-2025: Up to $56 million
- Approximate Funding Available FY 2026: Up to $30 million.
Eligibility Criteria
Planning Grants, Resilience Improvement Grants, and Community Resilience and Evacuation Route Grants have the same statutory rules for all applicants eligible to apply. At-Risk Coastal Grants have different statutory rules for applicant eligibility.
- Eligible Applicants Planning Grants, Resilience Improvement Grants, and Community Resilience and Evacuation Route Grants
- A State or political subdivision of a State. (State includes the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico)
- An MPO.
- A unit of local government.
- A special purpose district or public authority with a transportation function, including a port authority.
- An Indian Tribe (as defined in 23 U.S.C. § 207(m)(1)).
- A Federal land management agency that applies jointly with a State or group of States.
- A multi-State or multijurisdictional group of entities described in (1) through (6).
- Eligible Applicants At-Risk Coastal Infrastructure Grants
- A State (including the U.S. Territories Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands) in, or bordering on, the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, Long Island Sound, or one or more of the Great Lakes.
- A political subdivision of a State
- An MPO in a State
- A unit of local government
- A special purpose district or public authority with a transportation function, including a port authority.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
