Buttigieg and USDOT recently announced $3.3 billion in funding from President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act headed to over 130 different communities in 40 states. These projects (which are planned and led at the local level) will physically stitch communities back together by capping highways, adding new transit routes, adding sidewalks, bridges, bike lanes, and more — all to make it easier and safer to get from Point A to Point B.
During the reconnecting tour, Buttigieg visited Dallas, Texas, to highlight an $80 million grant that will reconnect neighborhoods by building highway caps in four different locations around the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The Secretary drove past two of the locations that will receive money from this award and then joined Mayor Eric Johnson, U.S. Congressman Marc Veasey, U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, and community leaders for a news conference to celebrate the award at the site of a future park that will cap I-35 and provide a connection between the South Dallas community and the Dallas Zoo.
Buttigieg concluded his time in Dallas by convening a roundtable of Dallas-area Disadvantaged Business Enterprise firm leaders to hear about the successes and challenges these firms have experienced performing work on local infrastructure projects.
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During the Secretary’s travel, USDOT shared a new step to help communities on their journey to reconnect. The department announced the award of a contract of up to $27 million to Cadmus Group, Inc. to establish and administer the Reconnecting Communities Institute, which will be USDOT’s center for learning on restoring and reconnecting communities that have been harmed, isolated, and cut off from opportunity by past transportation choices. The institute will assist communities in developing and delivering reconnection projects that better connect people to jobs, education, health care, and economic opportunities being created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
