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Transportation grant application rejected
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Mayor John A. McNally wants to know why the city’s federal grant application for a corridor linking downtown, Youngstown State University, Eastern Gateway Community College and St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital was rejected.
“It would have been a great project,” he said. “I’m very disappointed.”
The city was the lead entity for a $15.5 million U.S. Department of Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery discretionary grant for a $20 million two-phase project.
About 40 projects were awarded grant funding to project multimodal and multijurisdictional projects.
The work would allow more transportation options, establishing a Western Reserve Transit Authority loop from the university to the hospital.
McNally penned a letter this week to Andrew Foxx, USDOT secretary, requesting a meeting to explain the decision. From there, the city and the other involved entities will be able to tailor an application in future cycles of project funding.
YSU, EGCC, the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, WRTA, the Youngstown Business Incubator and Mercy Health partnered with the city, kicking in match dollars to fund the remainder of the project cost.
McNally wrote in his letter to Foxx that he’s happy for the entities whose projects were funded, but “I am deeply disappointed that some level of TIGER could not be found to be awarded for this important public-private partnership project in Youngstown.”
The grant application requested $11.5 million for the project’s first phase. The second phase, which would have installed a bicycle path to Mill Creek MetroParks, is estimated at about $4.5 million.
The city wasn’t notified its project wasn’t funded, but a news release last week from USDOT listed plans that were funded – and Youngstown isn’t one of them.
Pittsburgh got $19 million, and Brownsville, Texas, got $10 million, for example.
“Our application expressed a new community vision for a smaller city with a focus on improving the approximate $600 million of private, local, regional, state and federal investment in the last 10 years which has occurred in” the project corridor, the mayor wrote.
He said the city will move forward with some of the near-term work that’s part of the vision, including putting Fifth Avenue and Commerce Street on a “road diet,” reducing the number of driving lanes.
The Fifth Avenue project also includes water and sewer upgrades, signage, a pedestrian/bicycle lane and improvements to meet Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. It’s set to begin in 2019. For Commerce, which is set to begin late next year, the plan will involve reducing the number of driving lanes as well.
“We’re going to go forward with what we can do without help from the federal government – again,” McNally said.