Biden-Harris Administration Announces 3rd Year of SMART Grants, Funding Transportation Technology & Innovation

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Division of Transportation (USDOT) introduced immediately that it’s accepting purposes for the third 12 months of its Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program. The SMART Grants Program was made doable by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation, signed by President Biden on November 15, 2021. As a part of the President’s Investing in America agenda, this system will fund as much as $500 million in grants over 5 years to conduct demonstration tasks targeted on superior sensible neighborhood applied sciences and techniques that enhance transportation security and effectivity. Within the first two rounds of SMART Grants, USDOT chosen 93 tasks in 39 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, totaling $148 million.

“The SMART Grant program has helped communities, states, and tribes across America deploy new kinds of transportation technology solutions to improve safety and resilience,” mentioned U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “As the program enters its third year of funding, we’re excited for even more communities to get funding and support to develop technological solutions to their most pressing transportation challenges.”

By means of this SMART Discover of Funding Alternative (NOFO), USDOT will settle for purposes for Stage 1 Planning and Prototyping grants. Throughout Stage 1, the SMART program will fund know-how demonstrations and prototypes that clear up real-world transportation issues and construct knowledge and know-how capability for State, native, and Tribal governments. Later this 12 months, recipients of Stage 1 grants might be eligible to increase their tasks by means of the primary of a number of Stage 2 grant alternatives.

The funding alternative is open to public sector entities in search of to hold out transportation tasks that display no less than one of many following know-how areas:

• Coordinated automation
• Related automobiles
• Sensors
• Methods integration
• Supply/logistics
• Modern aviation
• Good grid
• Visitors indicators

“From Alaska to Maine to Puerto Rico, the SMART program has supported locally driven solutions across the country to make communities safer for all users and more connected and accessible. The popularity of this program demonstrates the demand for purpose-driven technology solutions, and we are excited to open the opportunity for another round of applications,” mentioned Dr. Robert C. Hampshire, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis and Know-how and Chief Scientist at USDOT.

Profitable tasks will create sustainable partnerships throughout sectors and ranges of presidency, partaking business, labor, academia, and nonprofits to raised meet neighborhood transportation wants.

The NOFO is open now and could be discovered on the SMART Grants Program web site. It’ll even be posted on grants.gov later within the week. There might be a ‘How to Apply’ webinar on Might twenty eighth, 2024. Register for the webinar on the SMART Grants Program web site.

Functions should be submitted by 5:00 PM EDT on Friday July twelfth, 2024 to the Valid Eval Submission website.

For extra data go to https://www.transportation.gov/grants/SMART.nbsp;

Press launch from U.S. Department of Transportation.