This blog post is an update to last year’s post on SS4A Applications, found here. 

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) announced in late February that the next round of grant applications has opened for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) competitive grant program. The SS4A program funds local initiatives that support the National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS), which is centered around the Safe System Approach. SS4A grants fund projects and programs to prevent roadway fatalities and serious injuries (FSIs), including local Vision Zero initiatives. There are three separate deadlines depending on application type: 

  • April 4, 2024, at 5pm, deadline #1 for Planning and Demonstration Grants 
  • May 16, 2024, at 5pm, deadline for all Implementation Grants and deadline #2 for Planning and Demonstration Grants 
  • August 29, 2024, at 5pm, deadline #3 for Planning and Demonstration Grants
What is the SS4A Grant Program?

Congress created SS4A as a new program in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021 (BIL), also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). The BIL makes five billion dollars in grant awards available over five years, with at least one billion set aside in each of the five years. All municipalities, counties, Tribal governments, and Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are eligible to apply for grants. Applications are submitted directly to the FHWA; they are not submitted through a state agency such as the NJDOT. If this is the first time that a local or county government is applying to the federal government, they will need to register for a Unique Entity Identifier number at SAM.gov. All grants require a twenty percent local match. The 2024 application round is the third, following two successful rounds in 2022 and 2023 when the FHWA awarded $1.7 billion to over 1,000 communities across the United States. on April 16, 2024, FHWA announced that the funds available for SS4A Implementation Grants increase from $580 million to $780 million.

The SS4A grant program prioritizes the Safe System Approach. The grant selection process favors applications that:

  • Enhance safety to prevent fatalities and serious injuries on roadways,
  • Invest funds efficiently in high-impact, low-cost strategies,
  • Incorporate evidence-based projects, and
  • Adopt innovative technologies.

Additionally, equity and engagement are major focus areas. Engagement should involve a variety of public and private stakeholders, and proposed investments should include underserved communities. The United States Department of Transportation’s mission and goals revolve around safety, addressing climate change and sustainability, equity, workforce development, job quality, and wealth creation. The FHWA will promote SS4A grant applications which address more of these priorities.

The SS4A Project Pipeline

The process for implementing Safe Streets and Roads for All projects and strategies can be lengthy. Fortunately, many MPOs, counties, and municipalities have already begun the work independently, and those prior efforts can be applied directly to SS4A plans and grant applications. There are two types of grants in 2024: Planning and Demonstration Grants and Implementation Grants. Together, these grants may fund the entire planning and implementation process, as shown below.

Figure 1. The SS4A Grant types and process components.

Figure 1. The SS4A Grant types and process components.

What are Planning and Demonstration Grants?

In 2022, Action Plan Grants were required to make up $400 million in awards per a stipulation in the BIL. As a result, the FHWA awarded 473 Action Plan Grants to communities across the United States, and no eligible applicant was denied for a planning grant in 2022. In both prior years, funding that was available but not awarded has been rolled over to the next round of funding. This year, rollover from 2023 means that approximately $657 million will be available for eligible Planning and Demonstration Grant activities. Like all SS4A grants, Planning and Demonstration Grants are submitted directly to FHWA and require a 20 percent local match.

The FHWA hopes to make Planning and Demonstration Grant funding easily available to communities of all types across the country, and as such the application process for this grant is designed to be simple. At its most complicated, the application requires a budget and a narrative no longer than two pages.

The FHWA revised Planning and Demonstration Grants so that more activities are eligible. The largest change is that these grants may now fund demonstration projects, such as pop-up bike lanes and temporary bus platform extensions. The grants may fund one or more of three activity types:

  1. Producing a new comprehensive Safety Action Plan,
  2. Conducting supplemental planning to update an existing action plan, and
  3. Carrying out demonstration activities to inform the development of or updates to an action plan.

Eligible planning activities include almost any planning activity that can inform a jurisdiction-wide comprehensive Safety Action Plan. Producing a new plan involves compiling statements of support, conducting systemic data analysis, conducting outreach and engagement, and choosing the most appropriate locations and strategies to reduce and eventually eliminate roadway fatalities in the jurisdiction. There are eight official components to a comprehensive Safety Action Plan, which the FHWA has spelled out in this resource document.

Figure 2. Guide explaining the eight components for SS4A Action Plans. [Click to open link.]

Supplemental Planning and Demonstration Activities

If a jurisdiction already has a plan that covers some or all of the eight components required by the FHWA, a new plan is not necessary. A grant to fund supplemental planning activities could allow the jurisdiction to fill the gaps. Additionally, if the plan already has all of the necessary components, supplemental planning activities can also include other network-wide components to strengthen the plan.

Supplemental planning can complete an in-progress comprehensive Safety Action Plan in a number of ways. More detail can improve a jurisdiction’s competitiveness for a future Implementation Grant. In many cases, supplemental planning funds can help smaller local governments to do more detailed safety action planning for their communities as part of a larger jurisdiction’s comprehensive safety action plan. Supplemental planning could include:

  • complimentary, sub-topical safety plans, for example, a Bicycle Safety Plan, a Vulnerable Road User Safety Plan, a Safe Routes to School Plan, a Complete Streets Plan or another similar safety-oriented plan,
  • targeted equity assessments,
  • Road Safety Audits, and
  • consolidation of action plan components from multiple local and regional plans into a single comprehensive Safety Action Plan.

A local government does not need to own a completed or in-progress comprehensive Safety Action Plan in order to apply for and receive supplemental funding. If, for example, a county is currently working on a qualifying Safety Action Plan, a municipality in that county may apply for supplemental planning funds through SS4A to develop more detailed plans of their municipality. However, the municipality would need to coordinate with the county pre-emptively, and the county plan would need to incorporate the municipality’s supplemental planning directly into the county-level plan.

Temporary demonstration projects are now eligible activities to be funded as part of a Planning and Demonstration Grant. Demonstration projects include any project or activity that is temporary in nature, small scale, and informs the list of projects and strategies in a comprehensive Safety Action Plan. While demonstration projects must be temporary in nature, they do not need to be removed if they show positive outcomes.

A Planning and Demonstration Grant could fund a temporary protected bike lane. A demonstration project could use paint and flexible vertical delineators and even large planters that can be removed, if appropriate. After a specified trial period, the results of the demonstration project must be quantified and reported as part of the comprehensive safety action plan, and if successful, these temporary interventions may remain in place indefinitely. On the other hand, if the installation of the protected bike lanes requires major construction and the lanes are effectively permanent, then the project would not be eligible as a temporary demonstration project. As a rule of thumb, if a project requires ripping up or laying down new concrete, the project is effectively permanent and would require an Implementation Grant.

Figure 3. Example of a demonstration project for a temporary bike lane in Asbury Park, NJ, April 2022.

The expansion of this grant type to include demonstration projects opens up the opportunity for almost any local government to apply for new funds. Even jurisdictions who were awarded an SS4A grant in earlier rounds could re-apply to extend the scope of their project. All applicants are limited to one application per round, but the same applicant could apply for additional funding in subsequent years.

Safety Action Plans must systemically cover the full geographical jurisdiction of the applicant or applicants and include all road users, including motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users, persons with disabilities, children, older adults, and others. According to the Safe System Approach, safety is everybody’s right and everybody’s shared responsibility.

In terms of both supplemental planning and demonstration projects, it is important to note that in order to be eligible for funds as part of a Planning and Demonstration Grant, planning and projects must support the development or enhancement of a comprehensive Safety Action Plan. Planning, design, and development of specific projects is not appropriate for this type of grant and should be part of an Implementation Grant. As a whole, the best way to contrast activities eligible for each grant is that Planning and Demonstration Grants fund network-level activities, and Implementation Grants fund project-level activities.

Applicants hoping to receive funding for supplemental planning and demonstration projects may apply using the same application as any Planning and Demonstration Grant. The only extra detail necessary is to include the census tracts where demonstration projects will be located as part of the map and narrative.

What are Implementation Grants?

Implementation Grants are more competitive than Planning and Demonstration Grants. As the name suggests, these grants fund the implementation of projects and strategies that are specifically part of a qualifying Safety Action Plan. Implementation Grants may also include supplemental planning activities and demonstration activities. Applicants must certify that they have an existing plan, either an SS4A Action Plan or another plan that has all the necessary components. The existing plan could be from a larger jurisdiction that fully contains the applicant jurisdiction. State-level plans do not apply.

Implementation Grants are not intended to fund projects whose primary focus is not safety, nor those which fund projects and strategies that focus on non-roadway modes, such as air, rail, marine, and pipelines. New roadway construction for motor vehicles, projects to increase motor vehicle capacity, and maintenance activities are also not eligible.

In the first round of SS4A applications announced in January 2023, the City of Vineland, NJ, in Cumberland County, was the sole recipient of SS4A funding in the State of New Jersey to implement roadway safety improvements; the federal grant is $20 million to implement a road diet along Chestnut Avenue, including a reduction of the number of vehicle lanes, narrowing of travel lanes, installation of bike lanes, improvements to sidewalks, and streetlighting. Vineland successfully received its Implementation Grant thanks to strong collaboration with the South Jersey Transportation Planning Organization (SJTPO), which was already working on a Cumberland County Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety Action Plan.

Figure 4. SJTPO’s Cumberland County Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Plan included data-driven analysis of the safety problem across the county and identified Vineland’s Chestnut Avenue corridor as the highest-priority location for safety improvements.

Figure 5. The City of Vineland developed a concept plan as part of the Implementation Grant application, showing narrower travel lanes, buffered bike lanes, and new sidewalks, among other treatments.

To receive an Implementation Grant, Safety Action Plans require specific components, which the FHWA has laid out in this guide. Additionally, there are many details in a comprehensive Safety Action Plan that can make it more competitive for Implementation Grant funding, including:

  • specific site selections based on systemic analysis of safety data,
  • high-level project concepts have been developed, and
  • high-quality public outreach and engagement.

Any entity hoping to get SS4A funding for specific projects must cover these components in their plans. Vineland and SJTPO worked together to make sure their SS4A Implementation Grant application was strong and clear about how their plans would improve the safety of all road users of all ages and abilities on Chestnut Avenue.

The second round of SS4A grants (2023) included some changes to the Implementation Grants selection. Most importantly, the FHWA is more prepared to partially fund some Implementation Grants. All Implementation Grant applications must fund construction or implementation of permanent projects and strategies, but they may also fund project-specific planning activities for projects in an action plan. The FHWA wants to encourage Implementation Grant applicants to include this project-level planning, including detailed design plans, engineering, NEPA, and other project-related processes. In some cases, the FHWA intends to fund these planning activities to push a project closer to implementation, even if it cannot make a full award this year.

Other changes to the selection process make rural and lower-cost Implementation Grants more competitive. Overall, the FHWA now anticipates that projects funded by Implementation Grants will cost between $2.5 million and $25 million. Additionally, compared to last year’s application, the selection process will also rate applications from rural areas or priority communities within the Federal Thriving Communities Network more favorably. Applications for less than $10 million will also receive additional consideration, as will applications that support diversity among award recipients.

Additionally, in the 2024 application round, Implementation Grant applicants may submit a pre-application that consists of a Self-Certification Eligibility Worksheet and links or attachments to referenced plan(s).  Prospective applicants can email SS4A@dot.gov with the subject “Implementation Grant Eligibility Review: Applicant Name” on or before April 17, 2024 to get a determination on whether they meet the requirements apply for an Implementation Grant. The pre-application process can help steer applicants to the more accessible Planning and Demonstration Grants when appropriate. 

Because Implementation Grants are far more competitive than Planning and Demonstration Grants, municipalities in New Jersey should consider whether they have a strong and competitive Safety Action Plan before applying. Planning and Demonstration Grants will almost certainly be easier for the FHWA to fund, and they can be used to conduct demonstration projects that allow a municipality or county to pilot an intervention before making permanent changes. As such, these grants provide the opportunity to install safety infrastructure on New Jersey’s roads more quickly; however, Implementation Grants may be a better choice in some cases. If a municipality already has a strong comprehensive Safety Action Plan covering it, either a local plan or a county plan, then that municipality is in a strong position to apply for an Implementation Grant. If any of these components are missing or underdeveloped in the existing plan, supplemental planning and demonstration activities should fill the gaps before applying for implementation funding.

How to Get the Most Out of This Year’s Application Round

There are many safety action planning activities in the State of New Jersey, either in progress or soon to begin, at the county level or higher. Thanks to prior SS4A grant cycles, eight of New Jersey’s 21 counties have already been awarded grant funding to produce Safety Action Plans. While the Delaware Valley Region Planning Commission (DVRPC) has covered its entire region with a Safety Action Plan using SS4A funds, both the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA) and the South Jersey Transportation Planning Organization (SJTPO) have also committed to making other funding available to produce county-wide Safety Action Plans for counties who wish to participate.

Figure 6. The three MPOs that cover New Jersey have all taken separate actions to produce county or regional plans.

With these higher-level action plans in the works to cover most or all of the counties in New Jersey, the question becomes, “If my county is already set to receive funding for a Safety Action Plan, what can my municipality fund with a Planning and Demonstration Grant?” FHWA’s answer is that smaller jurisdictions, in this case a municipality, can still apply for a Planning and Demonstration Grant even if a higher-level jurisdiction, such as a county, has an existing plan in place or is in the process of completing an action plan. In this situation, the municipality can still apply for funding for supplemental planning activities and/or demonstration activities, as long as the municipality coordinates the funded activities with the county, and the activities inform the county’s action plan. Demonstration activities will be evaluated in the application process based on their likelihood of being implemented within 18 months. The following graphic may help clarify how best to apply for SS4A funding for any municipality based on its county and regional participation in SS4A or other qualifying comprehensive safety action plans.

Figure 8. Depending on a county's progress level on a county-level plan, a municipality has different actions it can take to secure the appropriate funding from the SS4A program.

A town can apply for a Planning and Demonstration Grant to do additional work that supports the larger region’s Safety Action Plan. For example, a town could apply for funding to conduct plans and perform a demonstration of bike lanes along one or more of its roads. They would communicate with the county to identify the best locations to do the demonstrations. Then, the town would design and implement the temporary bike lanes using quick-build strategies. At the end of the demonstration, the town and county would discuss the project and use community feedback, crash and behavior data, and designs to inform the county’s safety action plan. The county’s plan could recommend making the bike lane permanent, increasing the level of protection, and even replicating the designs in other places around the county.

Safe Streets and Roads for All is a once-in-a-generation investment in making the United States’ roads safer. The investment gives New Jersey, along with the rest of the nation, a tremendous opportunity to save lives, especially for pedestrians, bicyclists, and vulnerable road users. The three New Jersey MPOs each took broad region-wide steps to produce large-scale safety action plans, and with their leadership and support, applicants in New Jersey will be able to get more out of their funding. New Jersey municipalities applying for SS4A grants should coordinate with their counties and MPOs to ensure that their communities can get the most out of their safety grants.

By Greg Woltman