The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced the FY 2025 Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Program Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) on March 28, 2025. The Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program provides Planning and Demonstration, as well as Implementation grants, to fund a wide array of infrastructure projects. There is $982.2 million available for awards ranging from $100,000 to $25 million, but you must act fast, as the SS4A application deadline is June 26, 2025. The SS4A program was authorized under the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA).
FY 2025 SS4A grants will be awarded on a competitive basis to support “planning, infrastructural, behavioral, and operational initiatives to prevent death and serious injury on roads and streets involving all roadway users, including pedestrians; bicyclists; public transportation, personal conveyance, and micromobility users; motorists; and commercial vehicle operators.” Planning and Demonstration funding is available to develop or update a comprehensive safety action plan, to supplement an existing action plan and/or to carry out demonstration activities. The comprehensive safety action plan includes strategies to implement the Safe System Approach for safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speed, safe roads, and post-crash care. This approach involves a paradigm shift to improve safety culture, increase collaboration across all safety stakeholders, and refocus transportation system design and operation on anticipating human mistakes and lessening impact forces to reduce crash severity and save lives. Action plans must include these seven defined elements: goal setting / leadership commitment; planning structure; safety analysis; engagement and collaboration; policy and process change; strategy and project selections; and progress and transparency. Supplemental planning activities must support or enhance an existing action plan, while demonstration activities should test proposed strategies and are temporary measures intended to inform an action plan. SS4A Planning and Demonstration awards range from $100,000 to $5,000,000. The expected period of performance for Planning and Demonstration Grant agreements is between 12 months and five years, depending on the scope and extent of the grant activities.
SS4A Implementation awards range from $2,500,000 to $25,000,000 and support the implementation of projects and strategies identified in an Action Plan to address roadway safety problems, and may also fund supplemental planning and demonstration activities, as well as planning, design and development activities for projects and strategies identified in an Action Plan. These can include project-level National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance, associated environmental review activities, permits and approvals, and construction design. Applicants for Implementation grants may submit pre-application eligibility review requests by May 9, 2025, to ensure that proposed projects are viable under the program criteria. The period of performance for Implementation Grant agreements may not exceed five years.
The Safe Streets and Roads for All program requires a 20% nonfederal match of the total eligible project costs. There are two exceptions to this requirement. One is for applicants with a required match of less than $200,000 located in U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The other is for federally recognized Tribes in receipt of Tribal Transportation Program and Tribal Transportation Program Safety Funds who can use these funds for match even though they are federal.
Eligible SS4A applicants include metropolitan planning organizations, political subdivisions (i.e., cities, towns, counties, special districts, and some transit agencies), federally recognized tribal governments, and multijurisdictional groups of entities described in any of the aforementioned three entity types. Nonprofits are eligible applicants if they were created under state law with roadway safety and/or planning responsibilities equivalent to a political subdivision of a state. Note that applicants must identify the Census tracts in which proposed activities will be carried out. Rural areas are defined under this funding opportunity as jurisdictions outside an Urban Area (UA) or located within UAs with populations fewer than 200,000. Lists of UAs are available on the U.S. Census Bureau website here.
There have been many changes in the SS4A application requirements from the FY 2024 NOFO, including that the program has one deadline, whereas there were three Planning and Demonstration and one Implementation deadline in FY 2024. In addition, rather than using “underserved communities” as a term to describe preferential award areas, this NOFO uses the term “persistent poverty areas” (experienced grant writers will know that this is a difference without a distinction). Areas of Persistent Poverty are defined as any county that has consistently had greater than or equal to 20% of the population living in poverty during the 30-year period preceding November 15, 2021, as measured by the 1990 and 2000 decennial census and the most recent annual Small Area Income Poverty Estimates from the Bureau of the Census; any census tract with a poverty rate of at least 20% as measured by the 2014 – 2018 five-year data series available from the American Community Survey of the Census; or any territory or possession of the U.S. Also, Planning and Demonstration awards in FY 24 had a maximum grant award of $10 million, while under the FY 25 NOFO, the maximum Planning and Demonstration award is $5 million.
Like all good grant proposals, the more that proposed projects meet program goals, the more competitive they will be. Goals include the promotion of safety to prevent fatal and serious injuries on public roadways; the use of low-cost, high-impact strategies that can improve safety over a wide geographic area; the equitable investment in the safety needs of underserved communities / persistent poverty areas in both urban and rural communities; the application of evidence-based projects and strategies and innovative technologies; and the demonstration of engagement with a variety of public and private stakeholders.
SS4A applications are not submitted on Grants.gov, but require submission on DOT’s Valid Eval system. Note that there are separate application portals in Valid Eval for Planning and Demonstration grants and for Implementation grants. Why use one portal, when two will do? (Grant writer joke here!)