The federal government’s latest round of TIGER grants have been awarded. The list of winners shows that the only DC-region grantee is VDOT, who received $20 million to leverage a TIFIA loan for HOT lanes on I-95.

The regional request for bike/ped improvements to rail stations was not funded. The reason appears to be that bike and ped projects in general are big losers in this round. Only a single dedicated bike/ped project is on the winner list, a small $1 million project to add a separated pedestrian crossing over a busy state highway in Minnesota. Even it appears to be as much about getting pedestrians out of car’s way as it is about helping peds.

Here is the break down of the award winners, by type:

• Port and freight: 10 grants awarded.
• Highway: 12 grants awarded.
• Transit: 10 grants awarded.
• Complete streets: 6 grants awarded.
• Bridges: 6 grants awarded.
• Signalization project: 1 grant awarded.
• Bike/ped: 1 grant awarded.

Several of the projects that are primarily other modes do contain bike/ped facilities. For example, Chicago received a $20 million grant for track reconstruction of its Blue Line, which included money for expansion of Chicago’s tiny bikesharing system. Another example is Stamford, CT, which received $10.5 million for improvements to its commuter rail station that include some bike/ped facilities. And of course there are 6 complete streets projects.

So while bikes and peds aren’t absent from the grants completely, it does appear that the only way to make improvements for them under this year’s program was to bundle them with bigger projects.

Transit awards

Although the DC area didn’t win any awards for transit, some of those 10 transit grants are pretty exciting. Here they are:

• Stamford, CT: $10.5 million for rail station improvements.
• Charlotte, NC: $18 million for longer platforms at three Lynx light rail stations.
• San Antonio, TX: $15 million for a new downtown transit center.
• Dallas, TX: $5 million to support a TIFIA loan to complete the Orange line light rail extension to DFW Airport.
• Chicago, IL: $20 million for track rehabilitation on the el Blue Line, and for bikesharing.
• Alton, IL (suburban Saint Louis): $14 million for a new downtown rail station.
• Cleveland, OH: $12.5 million to reconstruct the Mayfield Red Line station.
• Cincinnati, OH: $11 million for the Cincinnati streetcar.
• Minneapolis, MN: $10 million for a new platform at the Target Field light rail station.
• Seattle, WA: $10 million to extend Seattle’s airport light rail line to a new terminal station further south.