Small Infrastructure Grants Can Make Life and Death Differences

Rep. Steve Cohen (D), a congressman from Memphis, says he played a major role in bringing his city a $13.1-million U.S. Dept. of Transportation grant to rebuild the city’s most dangerous intersection. He says he considers the project a memorial to Tommy Pacello, a city planner and Complete Streets advocate who died in 2020 at age 43.

That tribute would add an extra layer of meaning appropriate to the project goals. Pacello was an attorney-turned-urban planner and new urbanist who lived many of the principles behind the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All program, for which DOT has awarded $2.7 billion of $5 billion available so far. The funds, ENR reports, come from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Communicating the importance of the legislation has been one of the most challenging aspects of the soon-to-conclude Biden Administration. There could be no better method than looking at the funded Safe Streets and Roads for All program. These aren’t the massive infrastructure projects that typically are the subject of ENR features. The grants usually top out at $25 million, with many much smaller. They are the singles and doubles, rather than the home runs, of what we mean when we talk about infrastructure’s potential to save lives and prevent injuries. 

Take the Memphis grant. The six-way crossroads to be rebuilt leads all other city intersections in crash frequency. You can just see the accidents developing in your mind when you look at an aerial photo of where Lamar Avenue, Kimball Avenue and Pendleton Street meet. The intersection now has a confusing array of signals, fading and disjointed pedestrian connectivity, and little guidance on appropriate movements. It practically invites collisions as well as puzzling pedestrians. The city plans to close one of the three roads at the intersection, simplifying the geometry and operation and installing a new traffic signal and facilities for pedestrians, as well as new green spaces. 

During his work for the city, Pacello always advocated for safe, walkable neighborhoods. 

The grants have a splendid local specificity that doesn’t always come through when we use the word infrastructure.

In the latest round of DOT grants, Harrisburg, Pa. gained almost $1 million in funding to address an increase in traffic fatalities by retiming 25 signalized intersections in the core downtown area. 

Kansas City, Missouri, will get $10 million in funding to implement safety countermeasures on Prospect Ave., which is an important north-south connector for Black communities and one of the most dangerous, with a lot of reckless driving and speeding. 

Kalamazoo, Mich., will pick up $25 million to improve safety and eliminate hazards on 130 miles of mostly rural aim is to cut down on the rate of deaths and serious injuries, 74 and 30 respectively in the last five years, many involving lane departures. 

Infrastructure is meant to promote life and health and higher quality living.

That’s the way Pacello saw streets and cities, and so do we.