Over $15M awarded to State College for road safety project

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (WTAJ) — The Borough of State College has been awarded over $15 million to help reduce vehicle crashes on Calder Way.

The award was part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s  $28,843,216 in grants for Pennsylvania through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. Nine projects in Pennsylvania will be receiving funds to improve roadway safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries on roadways.

The Borough of State College was awarded $15,885,560 for the Building a Healthy, Safe and Resilient State College Project. The funding will be used to create a shared street at Calder Way and to help reduce vehicle injury crashes and create a safer multimodal network in its downtown core, where most pedestrian injuries have occurred.

For the first half of 2024, an estimated 18,720 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes, a decrease of about 3.2 percent as compared to 19,330 fatalities projected to have occurred in the first half of 2023. Fatalities declined in both the first and second quarters of 2024, according to the Biden-Harris Administration.

Over 40,000 people have died on U.S. roads in each of the last three years, and a disproportionate number of people are killed in rural areas or while walking or bicycling. Additionally, traffic fatalities remain a leading cause of death for school-aged children and young adults.

Other projects in Pennsylvania:

• The City of Harrisburg was awarded $955,184 for the City of Harrisburg Downtown Traffic Signal Retiming project to address an increase in traffic fatalities by retiming 25 signalized intersections in the core downtown area.
• Pennsylvania also received $12,002,472 for seven safety planning and demonstration projects.

Get the latest news, weather forecasts and sports stories delivered straight to your inbox! Sign up for our newsletters .

The grants for Pennsylvania are just part of the $1 billion that President Biden announced. You can view the full list of today’s awards here .

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WTAJ - www.wtaj.com.