U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg today announced $33,144,007 in grants for South Carolina as part of $1 billion in grants through President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. The funding will go directly to 354 local, regional, and tribal communities across the country, including 13 in South Carolina, to improve roadway safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries on America’s rural and urban roads, including some of the most dangerous in the country.
Today’s announcement – a key component of DOT’s comprehensive National Roadway Safety Strategy launched in 2022 – is paired with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s release of its early estimates of traffic fatalities for the first half of 2024, estimating that traffic fatalities declined for the ninth straight quarter. An estimated 18,720 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, a decrease of about 3.2 percent as compared to 19,330 fatalities projected to have occurred in the first half of 2023. Fatalities declined in both the first and second quarters of 2024.
Even with road fatalities decreasing over the past nine quarters straight, they remain far too high. Over 40,000 people have died on U.S. roads in each of the last three years, and a disproportionate number of people are killed in rural areas or while walking or bicycling. Additionally, traffic fatalities remain a leading cause of death for school-aged children and young adults.
“Through new funding programs like Safe Streets and Roads for All, the Biden-Harris Administration is helping communities of all sizes make their roadways safer for everyone who uses them,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “We should be energized by the fact that together we’ve reduced traffic fatalities for more than two years in a row now – but so much work remains to fully address the crisis on our roads. Today’s roadway safety grants will deliver funding directly to 354 communities and continue the important work we’re doing to reduce traffic fatalities to the only number that’s acceptable: zero.”
The Safe Streets and Roads for All program provides grants directly to communities for implementation, planning, and demonstration projects aimed at preventing deaths and serious injuries on the nation’s roadways. Since launching in 2022, SS4A has funded projects in more than 1,400 communities, supporting roadway safety for nearly 75% of the U.S. population.
Additionally, SS4A is making investments in rural and underserved communities, and many of this year’s awards will address critical safety hot spots on some of the country’s most dangerous roads. The projects and activities aim to improve safety for all roadway users, including drivers, passengers, pedestrians and students heading back to school, bicyclists, transit users, and people with disabilities.
With this round of announced awards:
- Rural communities comprise around half of all SS4A grant award recipients to date.
- 682 SS4A communities (43% of award recipients) have populations under 50,000.
- 793 SS4A award recipients (50% of all recipients to date) were new direct Federal funding recipients to USDOT.
- Over half of SS4A funds will benefit underserved communities, providing equitable investment to places that need funding the most.
View a fact sheet on today’s awards here. Communities and projects being awarded funding in South Carolina this round include:
The City of Goose Creek was awarded $6,000,000 for the St. James Corridor Safe Streets & Crossings Project to address a four-lane roadway that lacks pedestrian infrastructure and poses significant safety risks for all road users. The project includes the development of a 3.28-mile shared-use path parallel to Highway 76 with enhanced crossings to provide a dedicated and safer route for pedestrians, reducing the risk of collisions and enhancing overall pedestrian safety by separating them from vehicular traffic.
Spartanburg County was awarded $16,000,000 for the Safe Streets for All Spartanburg County: Improvements to Asheville Highway and N. Pine Street Corridors Project to address existing safety problems along Asheville Highway and N. Pine Street, which are priority corridors that serve as gateways into the heart of the community. The project addresses these issues through a comprehensive program of systemic and spot projects that employ Proven Safety Countermeasures and include implementing road diets, spot safety treatments, an educational campaign, signal and timing upgrades, managing access to limit left turns, improvement of sidewalks and crosswalks, extension of bike lanes, and adjusting of on-street parking spaces.
The Town of Batesburg-Leesville was awarded $7,991,392 for the Not Our Roads, Definitely Our People: Safe Roads for All in and Around Batesburg-Leesville project to systemically reduce the risk of roadway departure crashes, improve intersection safety, improve pedestrian safety, and reduce speeding. The town is in a rural area outside of Columbia, South Carolina, and faces safety challenges such as speeding, lack of guardrails, slow crash response times, and a lack of safe pedestrian facilities. On at least 8 roads that approach town, the project will add rumble strips in advance of curves to slow traffic, use reflective centerline marking to improve visibility at nighttime, and upgrade advance warning signs.
South Carolina also received $3,152,615 for ten safety planning and demonstration projects.
View the full list of today’s awards here.
The third and final round of this year’s SS4A grant awards is expected to be announced in November. View more information on the SS4A program.
