WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration will announce on Wednesday that it will allocate $800 million to redesign highways, improve sidewalks and make other improvements to address the sharp increase in traffic deaths in the United States.
Traffic fatalities rose 10.5% to 42,915 in 2021, the highest number of fatalities on US highways since 2005. After declining for decades, traffic fatalities rose sharply after the expiration of the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 and more drivers engaged in unsafe behavior.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Reuters the United States must make “a decision as a country that we need to treat this seriously and it’s not just routine… We are facing a national emergency on our highways and it demands action.” urgent”. “
Most of the 510 awards for regional, local and tribal initiatives are for planning grants funded by a five-year, $5 billion program under the November 2021 infrastructure law.
USDOT is also awarding 37 implementation grants that fund low-cost measures such as new sidewalks, crosswalks, protected bike lanes, roundabouts, speed bumps, improved lighting, and speed control strategies to slow cars in high-traffic areas. of pedestrians.
Other projects include mid-block crosswalks, rumble strips, narrower lanes, and rear plates with reflective edges to improve traffic signal visibility.
USDOT has also released a data visualization tool that shows where traffic accidents occur.
“Literally while we were making the decisions, we had a map up: you could see the hotspots,” Buttigieg said.
Buttigieg said preliminary data indicates that 2022 traffic deaths “appear to have stabilized” near 2021 levels. “We have to change the plus sign to a minus sign,” he said.
The number of pedestrians killed increased 13% in 2021 to 7,342, the most since 1981. The number of bicyclists killed increased 5% to 985, the most since at least 1980. Both categories continue to rise.
Awards include $10.4 million for rural Fayette County, Iowa, to add rumble strips along 50 miles; Missoula, Montana, will receive $9 million for new bike lanes, sidewalks, and bus stops.
Boston will receive $9 million for improvements at nine key intersections, while Seattle received $25 million to build four miles of protected bike lanes, 1.5 miles of new sidewalks and other improvements.
Improving America’s highways won’t come cheap. The United States has 4 million miles of highways and nearly 300 million vehicles that travel more than 3 trillion miles a year.
Last year, a top lawmaker said that highway planners for years only emphasized “fast performance for cars and trucks.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Kim Coghill)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
