U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Tuesday that his agency received applications for $9 billion of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants, when only $474 million is available.
The Department received 568 applications from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa, the Department of Transportation announced.
The TIGER program is enormously popular and is now in its fifth round of grants since 2009, supplying money on a competitive basis to state and local governments and agencies for transportation projects of regional or national significance.
TIGER grants often supplement bond and public-private partnership financing, since many of the projects awarded federal grants cost far more than the amount allotted to them. A $240 million Chicago Transit Authority terminal project received a $20 million grant last year that it paired with local money.
“President Obama challenged us to improve our nation’s infrastructure to provide the transportation choices people and businesses want and the efficiency and safety they need,” LaHood said in a release. “TIGER projects do exactly that – across the country, they are helping relieve congestion, create jobs and generate lasting economic growth.”
President Obama signed the latest TIGER appropriations into law March 26. After the sequestration cuts were taken into account, the program was left with $474 million of an original $500 million.
The previous four rounds of the TIGER program provided $3.1 billion to 218 projects in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. During those four rounds, the Department of Transportation received more than 4,050 applications requesting more than $105.2 billion for transportation projects across the country.
Despite the popularity of the program with state and local leaders, it has come under fire from Republicans who have tried to eliminate it from recent appropriations legislation.
