BROWNSVILLE — Brownsville and partners have been awarded a highly competitive, $10 million federal grant to improve public transit and create a pedestrian/bicycle path along the Queen Isabella Memorial Bridge.
The TIGER grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation will go toward a $23.8 million “Connecting Communities” project.
TIGER stands for “Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery,” a DOT program that awards federal money to improve roads, transit, cargo rail, hike-and-bike and maritime infrastructure.
The city of Brownsville’s application was one of 40 accepted out of 585 applicants around the country. The total amount of TIGER grant funding available this year was $500 million, while the program received $9.3 billion in requests, according to DOT.Brownsville was the only community in Texas to receive a TIGER grant this year, the eighth year of the program.
The Connecting Communities project has two main components, the first of which involves improvements to Brownsville Metro, the city’s bus system, and METRO Connect, which links the upper and lower Rio Grande Valley.
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