MTC’s $10 million SS4A grant: enhancing support for safety in the Bay Area

MTC has received a grant of $10 million in Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant funds to help prevent roadway deaths and serious injuries.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) established (SS4A) discretionary program with $5 billion in appropriated funds over five years, 2022-2026. The SS4A program funds regional, local, and Tribal initiatives through grants.

The program offers two grant types, planning and demonstration (40% of funding), and implementation (60% of funding). In the first round, the Bay Area received over $60 million in grants for eight different projects,  an impressive 8% of the overall nationwide funding distributed in that cycle.

Second round awards were announced in October and December 2023, with MTC receiving the grant of $10 million, along with 17 other cities and counties in the region, a regional total of $20 million out of a national total of $300 million (nearly 7% of funding). MTC’s planning grant was one of the five largest planning grant awards in the nation, alongside several other major MPOs.

Implementation grant awards were also announced in December, with San Francisco receiving $8 million, and San Jose receiving $13 million. This was out of a national total of $600 million for implementation grants, or around 3.5% of the total implementation funding. Across both grant types, the Bay Area received over $40 million, or 4.5% of the national total.

For the second round of SS4A, MTC’s strategy was to pursue funding to support our regional safety efforts, while also supporting local applications for the program. This strategy paid off, with $10 million in planning grant awards to our partners, and over $20 million in implementation grant awards to our partners. MTC also provided letters of support to many of the successful projects: projects with a MTC letter of support received a total of nearly $20 million in awards.

MTC received $10 million for supplemental planning and demonstration activities to support regional partners including cities, counties, and other jurisdictions with resources to make strides to improve safety in their communities, while not duplicating local planning efforts. The project will involve MTC leadership of the following areas:

• Safety studies of key arterials, including study of the impact of quick build countermeasures. Arterial roads for study will be selected in coordination with regional partners, and MTC will play the funding and coordination role, especially where these arterials traverse multiple cities or counties.
• Improving partner access to key safety data, infrastructure data, and other important data as determined by partners. Building on our BAYVIZ tool, we will improve the tool and data accessible through the tool.
• Developing a Vision Zero toolkit for use by all regional partners to call on to develop safety plans, implement countermeasures, and develop projects. The aim of this component is to ensure that all regional partners have the resources they need to advance Vision Zero in their communities.

The goal of this project is to lead our partners in improving safety in their communities, without duplication of their own efforts.