U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently traveled to two Kentucky communities to make grant funding announcements.

The RAISE grant program “provides funding for capital investments in surface transportation that have a significant local or regional impact.”

This round of RAISE discretionary grant money will help fund 162 different projects across the country.

The U.S. Department of Transportation received $15 billion worth of requests this year, but they can only award a fraction of that.

“We did $2.2 billion in projects this year,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Spectrum News in a sit-down interview. “Some of the really exciting ones are out of Kentucky.”

Buttigieg recently traveled to Jackson and Lexington to make grant funding announcements.

“The thing I was really struck by in both of those visits was the level of community ownership of these projects,” Buttigieg said.

In Lexington, more than $8 million in federal funds will go to reconstruct an 86-year-old railroad bridge over North Broadway. The money will increase vertical clearance, add sidewalks and make other roadway improvements.

“It’s dangerous,” Buttigieg said, adding that the investment is needed because there are a lot of crashes and bottlenecks in that corridor.  

“They’ve been wanting to do something about it for years,” he explained. “It’s been a huge headache and now with these millions of dollars we’re bringing to solve the problem, it’s going to allow them to change that.”  

Buttigieg also traveled to Jackson in eastern Kentucky to announce $21 million would go to that community, an area that is still recovering from devastating floods that swept through a year ago.

“Sometimes a highway is more than just a highway,” Buttigieg said. “What we are doing with that project around that area called Panbowl Lake is rebuilding Route 15 there, in a way that also improves the dam under it.”

He said that improving the flood gates with these funds will help protect the community from the next flood.

“One of the tough realities of the times we live in is that what used to be a thousand-year flood just isn’t anymore,” Buttigieg said. “These extreme weather events are coming more and more often, so we should factor that into our thinking.”

Buttigieg said that the administration has made it a priority to include rural areas, like Jackson, in the funding. Half of this year’s RAISE grants are going to applicants in rural communities.

“We know that we’ve got to be investing in those rural communities to make the safer and easier to get around,” Buttigieg said. “One thing I hear often in rural communities is a sense of concern and anxiety that the next generation will choose to live in the communities that produce them. Part of how we can help that happen is by making these improvements to basics of roads, bridges and other transportation they can count on.”

This Kentucky trip is a part of the Biden administration’s “Investing in America” tour. A time that President Joe Biden and his Cabinet members are using to highlight what they consider wins under his leadership.

The RAISE grant funds are a part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY., is one of just 19 Republican Senators who supported that bill.